The world and Freedom
Miquel Casals Roma
Teacher of Geography and History / Degree in Law / Writer
quelocasals@yahoo.es
The world and freedom (translation by Mary Black)
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License.
Artesa de Lleida July 8, 2020
Audiovisual format (Spn):
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yVUfWqnhMag&t=14s
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_fLeehRgRKM
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EAMhYubg4Gg
The World and Freedom: Abstract
“The World and Freedom” seeks to address the dire crisis in which we are all ensnared by giving freedom back its original meaning and restoring the incalculable value of philosophy and ethics. Both sciences would enable us to recognise the paradigms which constrain our vision of the world like an invisible cage. In the second part, this essay suggests a new ethics, based on a transindividual “worthiness of interest”, which can encompass new subjects: the planet and humanity. Including them would lead to significant changes in politics and law of the world. The last part discusses another facet of ethics, called the “ethics of free destiny” (“ethics of the good”), which, it is suggested, could be situated in a middle ground between the individual and society: our shared heritage.
ÍNDEX
PART I. A VISION OF THE WORLD
I.1. Crisis in our world.
I.2. What have we left behind? Or, the thesis of the three forgottens.
I.3. Polethiké and its paradigms.
I.4. Individualism.
I.5. Human Rights.
I.6. Democracy.
I.7. Constitutions and the separation of powers.
I.8. States.
I.9. Capitalism.
I.10. And what about society?
PART II. AN ALTERNATIVE VISION OF THE WORLD
II.1. Prior considerations.
II.2. The planet, ecosystems and biodiversity.
II.3. Humanity.
II.4. New political articulation: The Free Constitution of the world.
II.5. Organization and functioning of the new political system.
II.6. So what about Capitalism?
PART III. AN ETHICS OF FREE DESTINY
III.1. What is the ethics of free destiny.
III.2. Ethics of free destiny.
III.3. Freedom or necessity.
III.4. A “humble” proposal.
III.5. The ethics of free Destiny and the transcendent.
III.6. The ethics of free destiny and humanity.
CONCLUSIÓN: Instructions on how to get out of the cage.
BIBLIOGRAPHY
PART I. A VISION OF THE WORLD
I.1. Crisis in our world.
“Crisis in our world” is an expression made up of two common nouns, “crisis” and “world”, yet when combined they prompt a kind of stupor. Taking about a “world crisis” seems like the privilege of madmen or desperate folks robbed of their common sense. And yet, at the start of this essay I aim to appeal precisely to common sense to explain in this first section that our world is in the midst of a dire, unprecedented crisis.
Let me break it down: to grasp the scope of the expression, I should first clarify the meaning of both words.
According to the definition in the Oxford online dictionary, a “crisis” is both “a time when a difficult or important decision must be made” and “a time of intense difficulty, trouble, or danger”. In the expression used as the title of this section, “crisis in our world”, I choose both meanings: a time of important decisions and a difficult, troublesome time. Note that today the word “crisis” is quite common in the media and even in everyday conversations, although it is usually used with effects limited to just one sector: the economic crisis, or the food crisis, or the political crisis, etc. However, this is not my purpose; instead, I aim to extend it to all spheres of existence.
“World” is defined as “the earth, together with all of its countries, peoples, and natural features” and “all of the people, societies, and institutions on the earth”, so it encompasses everything on our planet: we human beings, other living beings (animals and plants) and what we call the lithosphere, atmosphere and hydrosphere. It is important to note that the very definition of “world” does not mention “community”, so this implies that there is no global organisation in the world but instead a compendium of things which share only the fact that they inhabit this planet.
Following the logic of both premises, we can conclude by saying that “crisis in our world” is a troubling, difficult situation which entails important decisions that affect all things and living beings on the planet.
The title is alarming, although this should not lead one to infer an eschatological message, like the “end of the world”. The end of the world implies the destruction of the planet, and mankind does not have the technology to blow it to smithereens. Nor is my purpose to further fan the flames of distress which are choking humanity; instead, I seek to overcome them. Distress, just like joy, does not depend on the present but on the future: what darkens our faces is not the rumbling of the storm but espying dark shadows gathering on the horizon.
The human species plays an overwhelming role in the crisis in our world. To judge the magnitude of the threat, I shall cite three indicators which I find worrisome: demographic growth, the ecological footprint and the pace at which living beings are going extinct.
With regard to demographic growth, I want to diverge briefly to discuss the belief that there is more than enough land on earth to sustain our growth at its current pace. It is easy to think this when we are struck by the interminable succession of emerald trees as we look out the window of a car or train. Who says there’s not enough room for everyone? Yet it is wrong to believe that human beings only occupy the surface of the planet made up of our built settlements (towns, cities) and their infrastructures, while considering crop and livestock farms (crops, farms and meadows) natural. All farms and pasturelands exist to provide our species with food, either directly (crops) or indirectly (livestock). According to the FAO database (“Global Land Cover SHARE”) in 2014, croplands and pasturelands occupied 25% of the global land cover (12.6% crops and 13.0% pastureland), and forecasts say that food production will have to increase 60% by 2050. That’s a considerable amount of land. Tree-covered areas (along with shrublands and grasslands) accounts for 29.4% of the total, and deserts and ice 23%. In our occupation of the planet, we humans have taken more than 25% of the best land cover.
My goal at this point is not to advocate an egalitarian division among species; nor is it to lower the amount of cropland and pastureland. It is much more modest: to understand that the Earth is not an unlimited resource and does not solely exist for our pleasure. Accepting this, we cannot multiply and spread around the planet limitlessly: a decision on demographic control is needed (until we have conquered other planets) as soon as possible, rationally and equitably, before we have to choose a sudden, violent way to control growth owing to our lack of foresight, which is what I fear might happen. The UN estimates that the more than 7.7 billion people in 2019 will rise to 9 billion by 2050 and 11 billion by 2100. Other estimates are even more pessimistic. But they are only estimates. What is obvious is that the upward curve is beginning to flatten, but it’s still rising. What cannot grow is the planet.
The second indicator I mentioned above is the ecological footprint (Global Footprint Network), which states that the pace at which humans are consuming the planet’s goods (called natural resources in our instrumentalist view) is equivalent to 1.75 planet Earths, surpassing nature’s capacity to regenerate. Every year, the planet has fewer goods (resources) to meet the needs of us living beings that inhabit it. Not only are there more of us in the world every day, but we also consume more.
According to the Millennium Ecosystem Assessment (2005) drawn up on the request of the UN Secretary General, human activity’s impact on ecosystems is significant and growing. The new 2019 report from the IPBES (Intergovernmental Science-Policy Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services), also drawn up under the aegis of the UN, admits that the pace of extinction of living beings has multiplied by 1,000, and it talks about an “unprecedented decline”. One million of the eight million species today are in danger of disappearing. Since the 16th century, 690 vertebrate species have gone extinct. But what’s the big deal about biodiversity? Does having so many different living beings in the world matter? The second question is petty, instrumentalist and anthropocentric, but more importantly it is unworthy. Every type of living being that inhabits this planet (from the water midge to the polar bear, not to mention the speckled butterfly and the horned viper) is unique and the outcome of a formidable biological effort taking millions of years to reach its current form. Each specimen is distinct and peculiar, and its loss entails irreparable damage to the universal patrimony. One perfect example of our homocentric mindset (as well as a chilling perception) is our utter indifference to this phenomenon: the extinction of one or several species is not our concern.
My purpose is not to make this essay an ecological plea, nor for the reader to think that I am using my ideology to interpret the reality of the world. Instead, I tend to think the opposite: that our ideology often conceals this interpretation, that our “capitalist blindness” fails to distinguish the true problems, silences the causes and replaces them with others. Demographics or natural resources are cited as the detonators of World War II or any other conflict or human phenomenon in just a handful of history texts. It is easier to replace ecological problems with others that do not force us to truly reckon with our situation. How will the economic system progress if we have to rein in our demographics and resource consumption? And the fact is that what lies behind any dire threat to the planet is demographic excess and/or a need to monitor the planet’s goods (natural resources, in our instrumentalist jargon).
To understand ourselves as human beings, we need the perspective of the “other”. And that “other”, endowed with reason and consciousness, either does not exist or has not revealed itself to us. It would be a healthy exercise to imagine ourselves observed by more highly developed aliens who are exploring the universe to secretly spy on the situation on our planet. I’m guessing they would do so without drawing our attention, guided by good faith to avoid interfering in our development or causing a sudden commotion, as the Native Americans did when confronted with the European conquerors (if they were malign, they would have no scruples about suddenly appearing and putting their vile designs into practice). What would they think of us? Some accomplishments of nature and humanity are bound to astonish them. Yet they would also discover how we inordinately lord over everything else, and how contradictory it would seem that apparently rational, free beings would conduct the development of their civilisation with an appalling lack of common sense, bringing the human species and all others to the denigrating brink of their own demise.
Why don’t we shift the course of our fate? This is a million-dollar question. To address it, I want to mention one of the most demeaning phenomena of humanity: war, the most dreadful and violent of the resources available to us to solve our conflicts, a blight that is still beleaguering part of the world, including Syria, Libya, Yemen and Iraq. Even though today we seem far from convinced, in other times we lived with the hope that it was possible to eradicate war: in the late 19th century, and in the 1920s (the spirit of the 1928 Kellogg–Briand Pact), in the 1970s and 1980s with the films condemning the Vietnam War, and even in the 1990s with the fall of the Berlin Wall. Yet they were just a swan song. As this century dawned, the fatal pall of bleary resignation settled over our minds: for citizens of this century, war is an inevitable event, an inherent part of our nature, an endemic evil marshalled by an alliance between the profits of the weapons industry and unscrupulous politicians. And no one is taking to the streets to demand peace. Yet this is not the only apparently endemic evil. Pollution is, too, as shown by the failed attempts by countries around the world to reach an agreement to lower greenhouse gas emissions (to which I would add the fragility of implementing such an agreement, even if it were ratified). Each attempt to solve the problem is like a relentless yet futile attempt to break a wall by hitting your head against it repeatedly. The sustainable exploitation of natural resources and demographic control are issues that are no longer even discussed at international forums. When our grandchildren chide us for the melted glaciers, extinct polar bears, depleted oil reserves… what will we tell them? That our generation deserves more than theirs does? Or simply that that’s life; what can we do?! We had too many problems to think about you! Are these the humans that Kant called “worthy” or selfish villains who hardly deserve a place in the universe?
Let us set aside ecology and go straight to the crux of the matter. What I am discussing is not the imminent ecological debacle but another one: what I call the moral crisis that is besieging humanity. It is a moral crisis in two senses: the lack of drive to deal with problems, and the lack of a lodestar to guide us in this endeavour. The hope for a better future has unfortunately been swept away for the sake of pathetic resignation. Humanity no longer aims to struggle because it views as evil inevitable; it stoically accepts its destiny fatalistically, immobilised by the implacable shackles of laws that we ourselves enacted. There is no greater cowardice than fleeing from our own responsibility; this is what Sartre would say, accepting that the laws we have freely created are necessary and not contingent. We are display an immense, selfish dereliction of duty as we push many living beings and much of the planet’s wealth towards the abyss to which we are heading.
We human beings do not believe in ourselves. Yet in our infinite selfishness, we don’t even try to avoid the damage we’re causing to everything else. In addition to allowing ourselves to hurl towards our own precipice, we will also trap the rest of the world so it plunges down with us. We act like an unworthy species, rational beings that merit the repulsion of our ilk (if there are any, anywhere in the universe) and value nothing other than ourselves. How worthy would have been the solution of only wreaking our own ruin but leaving the world free and at peace! Here what comes to mind is the sacrifice by the main character played by Bruce Dern in the film Silent Running (Douglas Trumbull, 1972): he sacrifices the entire crew to protect the capsules where the last ecosystems on Earth are stored.
And here is where I wax existentialist, with all the philosophical baggage that implies, and state with utter conviction that human beings can choose between acting worthily or unworthily. We are given this possibility, which is called freedom, to project our benevolent actions in the universe. We can choose between being a worthy species, which also entails recognizing the worthiness of other interests in the world, and offer the universe our wonderful artistic and cultural creations, or we can appear like the villains who first self-destructed and then brought the planet to the brink of its survival. We will reach either destination depending on the path we choose: the path of glory or the path of the villain. And here is where hope surfaces: hope in believing in and fighting for freedom. And based on this incredible word, I want to continue this essay with what I call the “thesis of the three forgottens”.
I.2.- What have we left behind? Or, the thesis of the three forgottens.
What has happened for us citizens who have embarked on the new century to have spread such demoralization? What have we lost on our road to the future, and what must be regained to get back our faith?
There are three issues which have been decisive at some points in our history, yet we have turned our backs on them, unwisely convinced of their obsolescence, relegating them to oblivion. These three issues, each of a differing scope, share a common space and fit together like matryoshka dolls: the one with the smallest scope can fit inside the second, and the second inside the largest one.
To develop my treatise on “the three forgottens”, I shall follow the model of the matryoshka dolls and begin by unveiling the largest one, which refers to an issue mentioned above.
The first forgotten is genuine freedom. And I say genuine to distinguish it from another kind of freedom which is quite clearly stated in human rights declarations, sliced into all its different variations. The freedom I mean is freedom as power, as our infinite possibility to choose what we are going to do. It is comparable with all the stores of imagination that a writer can draw on when telling a story. These stores are immense. This freedom has gradually slipped away, and another version of it which started with legitimate, liberating pretensions wrested it away, and then became asphyxiating, namely the freedom of imprisoning the course of our entire world in the laws of the necessity of scientific knowledge. In its implacable advance, science, which used to be the great ally of our future, has gradually divvied up human knowledge (and even culture) into areas which are studied from the vantage point of the laws of necessity (mathematics, physics, biology, anthropology, sociology, etc.). There are sciences which call themselves “pure”, whose implacable laws, like the Pythagorean Theorem, are unassailable to any questioning. Yet others not so much: they are slightly “perverted” by unpredictable changes, such as the laws of gravity or biology, and on that ladder of scientific purity we can descend to other “purported” sciences, such as economics, and others whose status as science is even questioned, such as psychology, anthropology and sociology. However, the purpose of all of them is to provide access to the sacrosanct throne of Science, turning their knowledge into scientific knowledge, which is nothing other than explaining how the world works according to laws that are independent of our freedom, laws that seem unquestionable. Following Kant, I shall call them laws of necessity. Thus, I plunge from a precipice because of the law of gravity; I have dreams in which I code my repressions; I buy things for irrational reasons; the price of a product is determined by the supply and demand; a criminal is criminal because his alcoholic father used to hit him when he was a boy; infectious diseases have a certain fatality rate… This tendency to shunt all our knowledge into the scientific perspective of laws, the laws of necessity, has a long history: it got its first tentative impetus in the Late Middle Ages, rose forcefully to life in the 17th century and gained lasting vigor with the Enlightenment. Currently, all knowledge, compiled and sliced up, is explained by these laws. And we have thereby marginalized another kind of knowledge (in the sense of cumulative knowledge and the way we understand the world) that springs from our freedom to shape it, the kind that depends on and is created by us. In this forgotten knowledge I include the sciences of freedom (which are not the same as the humanities or what Dilthey called the science of the mind, or spiritual knowledge), in contrast to the sciences of necessity.
And here is where blind faith in the sciences of necessity dovetails with the course of our present society, because believing that these sciences are the only ones is tantamount to humanity’s resignation (conscious or unconscious, explicit or tacit) to accepting what happens to us as the implacable outcome of these laws, be they mathematical, physical, economic or psychological. They are what justify natural phenomena, and by extension human phenomena. And by accepting this, there is no room to do anything on our own, because necessity governs everything and our hopes in freedom vanish.
And accepting the implacable course of the laws of necessity, resigning ourselves to them, is when we use our freedom precisely by denying it.
And when talking about the sciences of freedom (later I will specifically outline them) the other two forgottens appear, the other two Russian nesting dolls yet to be revealed. The second one reveals itself when we answer the following question: if the method used to reveal the laws of necessity is the scientific method, what is the method used to reveal the laws of the free? The fact is that no method is needed, because the sciences of freedom lack boundaries in their sphere of rational action. But there are words and definitions that help us approximate them. What the scientific method is for the sciences of necessity, philosophy is for the sciences of freedom. And thus the second doll in the thesis of forgottens makes her appearance.
Today, philosophy is considered arcane, an obsolete, futile, eccentric attitude. Just try to speak aloud about Hegel and Kant on a busy terrace in the summertime, preferably at the beach. I doubt that allusions to Heidegger can help you flirt at a disco. What used to be an untamable horse is today a fossil on display at a museum. Nonetheless, we have no other way of understanding and coping with the perceived world as a space where we act freely. It is a tool that has no method, nor any laws other than its own caprice, nor any boundaries other than those encompassing words and thoughts. It is as much an attitude as a field of knowledge, and it resists being addressed from the academic perspective of the sciences of necessity. Philosophy doesn’t search for laws; it invents them.
Our knowledge requires a perspective, and when we try to understand our world, we can do it from the vantage point of either need or freedom. Our culture has been driven – and still is – to reveal the laws of necessity that seem to govern our world. And incidentally, this is a legitimate, beneficial endeavor, since it has helped us collect more knowledge and apply it in technological discoveries. The advances in medicine, chemistry, physics and other fields have helped improve our quality of life and extend our longevity. But we cannot turn our backs on the other kind of knowledge, which we ourselves create, which is the part of the world governed by the laws that we enact. Technological advances seem to lessen the limitations imposed by the world of necessity (food, flying, communicating, etc.), which should in turn boost our freedom to shape our own existences. Thus, human progress releases us from the empire of necessity to bring us closer to the freedom in which nothing limits us: living as long as we want, suffering from no illnesses or pain… However, we are reluctant to believe in freedom.
Philosophy was the mother of all science. It was in Ionian Greece: all knowledge comprised a heterogeneous whole called philosophy, and its adherents were called philosophers. Starting with Aristotle, knowledge gradually became specialized and its different branches delimited: mathematics, astronomy, the natural sciences. By the 19th century, with the Mother now weakened, it became appallingly emaciated with the emancipation of the social sciences: sociology, anthropology, psychology, political science. And thus our knowledge took on its current guise: divvied up into multiple different visions, yet all of them based on the study of and quest for inexorable, inalterable laws which could explain natural and human phenomena. And thus philosophy, which suggested many visions and concepts that are common to us, like science, democracy, capitalism, human rights, state, the separation of powers and many more, lies forgotten and covered in spider webs, like Bécquer’s dusty harp. What remains of it is an attitude and knowledge far removed from the circuit of science: one part has been given over to abstract studies of logic, another to disquisitions that do not have the solid foundation of an objective, another to insipid articles which only serve to fill journals and garner prestige for their authors, and yet another to a secondary-school subject which totters on the tightrope of the curriculum. I imagine that another group of amateurs would have chosen to air their opinions in a secluded Epicurean garden before exposing themselves to the exasperation and scorn of a public eager for victims to sacrifice on their altar of supreme truth.
To uncover the third doll, that is, the third forgotten, I will say that philosophy implies not only a vision of our world on matters which are not determined by the laws of necessity, but also action in this world. Don’t we humans freely determine our political forms of governance and decide on the justice, laws and rules that govern our society and the destiny we wish to reach? Yet not all knowledge was emancipated from philosophy; instead, some remained faithful to it, since it found no support whatsoever in the world of necessity. And the most important among them is ethics.
Ethics continues its course within philosophy and is charged with studying the principles, values and laws that we humans give ourselves in our sphere of freedom. It is a creative science, since we come up with these laws (just like human rights) by thinking, reasoning, ingenuity or imagination without the guarantee of any experimental method; instead, only cumulative knowledge can help us develop new perspectives and solutions. What is ethics today? The only answer that occurs to me is that it is a demoted science. What used to be at the pinnacle of knowledge (stoicism, epicureanism, etc.) has now just become patches or tools for the sciences of necessity called “applied ethics”, an excruciatingly boring subject in the school curriculum, a vacuous word or replaced by another even more meagre and mundane one like “citizenship”, which reminds us more how to respect the elderly and traffic signals than how to cope with the meaning of our lives. The philosophical attitude, the study of the values and principles with which we should regulate our existences (both privately and politically) based on our freedom is now treated like little more than a simple, insignificant scrap of human knowledge.
The classification of the sciences proposed in this essay divides them into the sciences of necessity, which seek to find explanations based on the world of laws not created by us (from maths to psychology), and the sciences of freedom, which are charged with studying and imbuing human values and laws with knowledge. What are these latter sciences? To avoid veering too far from the mission of this essay, let me give a brief preview: the foundation of these sciences is ethics, but along with it are politics and law. All three are made of contents freely created by humans (by and for us). And henceforth I shall call these contents as a whole polethikē (politiki, ethos and dikē). I am aware of the existence of at least a fourth “science of freedom”. But I will keep the reader in the dark and encourage them to guess it. They will find the solution in the last sections of this essay.
I.3.- Polethikē and its paradigms.
Despite some philosophers’ insistence, the concept of science is “purely” human, and we have developed it through our freedom. Accepting that ethics, politics and law are sciences depends on our idea of what a science is. Today, following the tyrannical dictatorship of the laws of the world of necessity, there is a widespread belief that only what can be empirically verified using a specific method is scientific. In my opinion, this definition is valid for what we call the sciences of necessity. But science can also be understood in a different way, as all of humanity’s useful knowledge, whether given by a necessary or free law and without any method determining it, thus expanding its scope to the sciences of freedom. Although my purpose is not to get mired down in issues regarding the philosophy of science, I do have to mention one of its leading luminaries to continue the thread of this essay: Thomas Samuel Kuhn. An indisputable figure through his “The Structure of Scientific Revolutions” (1962), he stated that sciences were governed by a series of shared beliefs, theories and methods grounded in scientists, and that true revolutions are needed in order to replace them with others, as happened in the shift from geocentrism to heliocentrism and creationism to Darwinism. He called these beliefs “paradigms” (“universes of discourse” according to Wittgenstein), a term which is currently quite popular, albeit distorted from its original meaning. I have to acknowledge that after months of disoriented and frustrating meditations, Kuhn’s theory of paradigms was like a sudden lightbulb illuminating the pathway I was searching for: why not admit paradigms into the polethikē?
Accepting that there are paradigms in the sciences of freedom is tantamount to claiming that there are theories or beliefs in the community of philosophers and, by extension, all individuals (since we guide our lives by them) which are articulated as theories, as common, undisputed beliefs, that is, as dogmas. Yet they differ significantly from the paradigms in the world of necessity in that the former are clearly held up as paradigms, while those in the world of freedom are not. Scientists have a clear judgment on what counts and does not count as science, and what scientific dogmas are. But today ethics is not considered a science (Wittgenstein himself, in his Lecture on Ethics, stated that it has contributed nothing to knowledge), and in fact there is no clear picture of what it is. Therefore, given this indefiniteness, paradigms in the universe of our convictions are unnoticed. However, just as the paradigms of the sciences of necessity are discovered by scientists, the paradigms of the polethikē are created by our freedom and can be replaced by better ones (in the sense that they better fit our current situation). Yet this invisibility renders them immune to criticism. The majority of them emerged from the last great outbreak of thinking of the polethikē, the Enlightenment, but others are even older. They have been invaluable to our society, but their pernicious invisibility has led to chronic blindness that is preventing us from understanding the world in a way that would help us cope with it and solve our present-day challenges.
I cannot offer a conclusive answer to the question of what the paradigms of the polethikē are, nor can I claim that I have engaged in a methodical investigation (if this sort of pursuit is even possible in philosophy). I believe that the fundamental paradigm is individualism, and for this reason I will pay the most attention to it. But there are others that are connected and subordinate to it: democracy, nation-states, the separation of powers, human rights and capitalism. Obviously, these are all popular terms. The invisibility I have mentioned lies in the fact that they are considered irreplaceable paradigms, invincible realities with no possible alternatives.
I.4.- Individualism.
Individualism is the mother of all paradigms upon which the others rest. It is the foundation of the polethikē and the dogma that steers the functioning of our societies and what I have called the world of freedom. Therefore, it is the gauge and the yardstick of our ethics; it is the Western worldview of the part shaped by human laws.
What is individualism? It means articulating the world of freedom around individual interests. That is, our laws, our politics and our ethics are formulated by meeting individuals’ needs (individuals as rational human beings, one by one, viewed from ethics). These interests are both tangible (housing, food, etc.) and intangible (life plans, happiness, pleasant experiences, etc.). Individualism atomises the world and society in the belief that it is founded on the interests of each of its members. In order for individualism to make sense, it must be upheld on two premises: the autonomy of the individual’s will (the fact that individuals can make decisions based on their interests) and viewing humans as an end, not as a means.
Individualism has been present in our society since archaic times, but only in isolated cases (privileged groups like kings, emperors and the nobility, and only in their internal relations) and made an intense, brief appearance among the male citizens of classical Athens and other democratic poleis. The fact is that in what we call prehistory, the ancient world, the Middle Ages and the Early Modern Ages, individualism per se had not spread to the majority, and human beings were subjects, at best citizens, inserted within a society that determined what they were via an imposed social system and a common ethics (koinonia, or what I shall call socionism). No one believed that their interests were sovereign, but instead they were subordinated to the interests established by society, which favored the dominant classes. The struggle for individualism, that is, humans’ emancipation from the estates-based society in which they were ensconced, was an arduous, painful process, and it was not until the Enlightenment that the “individualist revolution” occurred in the West, along with one of the most important paradigm shifts in the history of our free world: the status of individual spread to all human beings, and society began to be arranged around their interests. Since then, each human has directed their own life, catered to their own interests and viewed society as a realm where these interests come into play. Radical changes appeared in our world of freedom as the product of this novel notion: a new concept of justice based on human rights, and a new political organization, democracy. States ceased being kingdoms and became nations, and private property became the human law that articulated the economy.
The most important harbinger of individualism was the German philosopher Immanuel Kant (1724-1804). As he was defining his ethics, he ended up defining the individual the way we conceive it today: free, with their own will and worthy in themselves. However, it is important to make two clarifications. First, in the late 18th century, the human population was approaching 700 million inhabitants (that is, one-tenth of the current population) and humans were still struggling to dominate the forces of the planet: the matter of a future ecological crisis barely figured – or did not even occur at all – in Kant’s mindset. The second point worth bearing in mind is that Kant’s ethics is upheld on his belief in God, and especially in a hereafter that could offset all the injustices and duties of the world. Both legs upon which Kant’s individualism stood, now wobbly, mean that it requires urgent rectification or should even be replaced by another paradigm.
It is true that individualism has not had an easy road. The socialist paradigm was hatched in the 19th century, and with the advent of social rights and the welfare state it ended up being combined with individualism following “traumatic” adjustments that are still being debated. In the 20th century, totalitarianism in its Fascist and Communist guises was an aggressive attack against individualism which ended in resounding failure. After the 1980s, with the communist bloc in its death throes, the dictates of Yalta and Potsdam were replaced by the meetings of Reagan-Thatcher and Reagan-John Paul II, which shaped a new model of Western neoliberal individualism to better adapt it to the future global market based on the ethical triad of homeland-family-religion. This model has lasted around three decades without any other rival than the emerging “Chinese mix”.
What are the virtues of individualism that have made it such a resounding success for such a long time? Right now, I shall only discuss one: the measure of interest. Multiple interests converge in society: private, business, hobbies, social… and it is difficult to balance them fairly and effectively. It is an immense relief for political authorities when each citizen manages their lives the way they see best, following their own criteria, either personally or in groups. The opposite would mean interference which would lead to serious injustices. Every time political authorities have decided to group individual interests together into abstract conglomerates known as collective goods (public health, collective safety), the totalitarian temptation has sprouted like a wild mushroom in the autumn. Collective goods are virtually incommensurable, and politicians assign themselves the authority to manage them, even though they are individuals like ourselves. Miscalculations are inevitable. Conferring an added value on health and public safety in addition to the value of the affected individuals means the totalitarian risk of a power that manages an abstract good. Individualistic atomization is useful in that it makes everyone manage their own interests, as each person is in the right position to act within their own sphere, and it entails considering the collective as merely a sum of the individual interests involved. It is true that each individual’s interests are different: sometimes intensely so, other times barely, and here is where politicians get involved, weighing the scope of each of them. The same can be extended to will: there is no general will beyond the will of the individuals comprising it. From our own position, we can weigh, help or guide different interests, but there is no yardstick for what are called general or collective interests. The coronavirus epidemic crisis has laid this question bare, along with many others, such as the need for global coordination. Later I shall return to both ideas, as they are the cornerstones upon which I want to construct the form and function of a new political system.
However, individualism has been the reason why ethics had been forgotten (if not dissolved). In fact, there is an inversely parallel path between the consolidation of the individual and ethics being forgotten (or dissolved). The motive may well be the grand, colossal task that Kant assigned to each of us separately: to develop our own system of principles and values. This task, in addition to being disproportionate, may be detestable to many, who along the way have forgotten who holds the prime responsibility for formulating the paradigms governing their lives: Kant. Individuals have not shown much interest in this task and have preferred to focus on the material and tangible. On the other hand, law has lent us a hand and helped in this gargantuan undertaking by capturing a part of ethics in laws, the ethics of justice (the ethics of the just), and transformed it into a mandate (human rights). However, the fact that an approximate ideal of justice has been captured in texts called laws does not protect us as individuals or as a society from injustices, and does not even make it better per se. It is essential to know more about the roots of the ethics of justice for us citizens to formulate our political judgements reflectively and critically. Yet the reality is that we are far from all this: what I notice when listening to my fellow citizens’ opinions is a vague, diffuse idea of what the value of will and rights and freedoms is. What there is in abundance is the infinite propensity to apply ethical simplicity raised to its utmost expression, “don’t do unto others what you don’t want them to do unto you”, taken to the nth degree.
The other part of ethics, the part charged with telling or helping us find the values of our lives (ethics of the good), has been left even further in the dust. Thus, we have gone from a unified, socially imposed ethics that told us the meaning of our lives (a hereafter comprised of a heaven and a hell) to an ethics sliced into as many pieces are there are individuals on Earth. And in the middle is the path some have taken of choosing arcane religious ethics (Christianity, Islam, Buddhism and Judaism) and living them in the private sphere of their existences. Individualism and ethics seem hard to reconcile; finding this balance is one of the challenges I will try to rise to at the end of this essay.
However, make no mistake: the individual is the ethical subject par excellence. There is no being on our planet gifted with consciousness, rationality, will and a desire to live like the individual. The value of our worth lies precisely here. Grouped into humanity, we individuals have developed an artistic, cultural and technological heritage of our own – beyond our natural heritage – which is another immense legacy for our universe.
Not only is individualism a paradigm; so is the mental association between individualism and liberalism. Can individualism be materialized in a political organization other than liberalism, or will its application always and inexorably lead us to an ethnocentric, capitalistic and privatist system? My bid is to provide new pathways along which this paradigm can travel, because in my opinion it is still necessary in order to articulate our polethikē and the ethics of the world.
Individualism is the paradigm par excellence of the sciences of freedom. It is articulated in another six paradigms (one general, four political-legal and one pseudo-economic) which, given the lack of a specific vocabulary, I shall call “paradigms of application”. They are human rights (paradigm of justice); states, the separation of powers, the constitution and democracy (paradigms of internal and external political organization and functioning); and capitalism (pseudo-economic paradigm). Now let us analyze them one by one.
I.5.- Human Rights.
Human rights are the invention of the philosophers of the Enlightenment which gave individualism its necessary measure of justice. It can be regarded as one of the advances in ethics, if not the best one, throughout human history: human rights allow individuals to accommodate their relations with each other and with public authorities, in addition to representing a secular ideal of justice shared by all. Obviously, these are ideas, laws and principles created by and for humans, and therefore they are part of the legacy of our freedom. Nor can we forget that what gives them value as such is their exercise through free will.
The measure of justice provided by human rights has helped us arrange our societies politically and legally. No other principles of justice have come closer to achieving such global consensus. Envisioned ad intra (from the inside), the state is an instrumental entity created to guarantee these rights (liberal state), in what are called social (or welfare) states, too. The submission of the powers-that-be to the individual is an immense achievement, yet one that requires control through objective information, transparency and the means to inspect, monitor and condemn abuses of power.
Of course, the human rights that were formulated in the 18th century and universally declared in 1948 do not embody ethical perfection. Because they serve as a paradigm, there has been nary a thought of reformulating them; they stand inalterable in secula seculorum. Of course, principles of justice this valuable deserve to be protected, and therefore constant revisions which only introduce uncertainty into our justice system should be avoided. Yet nothing prevents the possibility of allowing a constituent authority to revise them after reasonable periods of time (such as one or several generations, or many years, at least ten). However, this has not happened, and we have turned human rights into a symbolic projection of the tablets bearing the Ten Commandments: a legend engraved in inalterable stone which has witnessed the vertiginous changes in the 19th, 20th and 21st centuries unflinchingly, thus enlarging the distance between the efficacy of those rights and the real world.
The goal is not to give up on the paradigm of human rights but to acknowledge that they are just this, a paradigm, a human creation based on our freedom which can (and should) be amended in a conscientious, methodical, universal revision (perhaps following the celebrated dictates of the discursive ethics of Apel and Habermas) in briefer or longer time intervals.
What disjoints or lacunae may have emerged in our system of rights and freedoms? The purpose of this essay is not to devise a list of grievances, but I shall try to mention a few here.
Let us begin with social rights, which must be actively managed by the public authorities and have led to the current guise of the welfare state (the right to decent housing, education, healthcare, free justice, safety), another of humanity’s achievements which allows the majority of citizens’ basic needs to be covered and gives them suitable opportunities for development. However, there is a stingy perception that these rights may be deserved without contributing; some citizens are convinced that they may legitimately secure them without any commitment: the mere fact of being human gives me access to them as if being free of charge were a logic in the economic world. The laws of necessity require an exchange (of energy, profits or products for money) in order for the economy to work: if we want our children to have free education, if we want the litigants’ pocketbooks not to sway trials, or if we want to provide universal healthcare with guarantees, it is because we all have to contribute, to the extent we can. I thus uphold the “correlate position”, which is nothing other than adding mention of our economic duties to the state in the same paragraph and on par with our social rights. I shall add yet another much more ambitious wish (which I shall discuss later), which is to establish an accounting of individual/state contributions (everything received free of charge from the state and everything contributed) solely for the purpose of making each of us citizens aware of how much we give and how much we receive.
Nowadays, there are constant reports about a “right to die” or a “right to a dignified death” associated with euthanasia. It is paradoxical to associate the expression “right” (subjective) with death, or right to a dignified death, because both terms, right (subjective) and death, are incompatible, just like being and not-being for Parmenides. This does not prevent us from considering the request of someone who wishes to end their life whenever they want in a dignified, painless way. Dying, it is understood, can be more a relief for both those who wish to end their lives and their loved ones, and even for society and the entire planet. There is no doubt that this statement may enrage or scandalize many people (and they should ask themselves why). Obviously, there is no more individual decision than to continue living or not. Allowing someone else to take it would be tantamount to putting an end to the bedrock of our rights and freedoms. Given that the right to die does not seem like a felicitous expression, the best way to say it seems to be right to a decent life. And this right, in turn, includes the decision of the adult who decides to end their life to prevent it from becoming undignified, given their understanding of dignity. Obviously, this “measure of dignified” requires the authorization of specialized personnel.
Another consideration is related to what is called the “right to privacy”, which is increasingly cited and associated with the neoliberal surge since the 1980s. The definition of privacy that appears in the Oxford dictionary, “A state in which one is not observed or disturbed by other people”. When a person’s private life is projected in a physical space (from the toilet bowl to a stroll through a fenced-in garden, or exercising an exertive erotic feat in the bedroom), there seems to be little dispute. The very right to privacy protects these spaces. But private life also includes another sphere, namely information, and I have the impression that persons (individuals transferred from the ethical to the legal sphere) only make a partial, self-serving assessment of this right when we arrogate ownership of “information” we consider our own. Can information be owned? Can an individual have the power to exclusively use and manage a given piece of information, no matter how closely associated it is with that person? Can we extend the principles of private property to information? My opinion is that we cannot. Preventing the spread of information that could harm us is not the same as considering ourselves the legitimate owner of it. Information and knowledge should not be susceptible to appropriation: it is counterproductive. In my opinion, I don’t find the right to private ownership necessary when the right to privacy does its job. And in relation to information, we should be very careful about both how damaging it could be to reveal it to third persons and how harmful and unfair it may be not to do so, since as we all know, there is no power more frightful than information control. Evil multiplies like cockroaches in the dark; justice and goodness can only shine in well-lit places. And this puts us in direct touch with what I consider to be one of the most essential political values for the century in which we live: transparency. Although it may be associated with fairness, it is better articulated as an organizing principle of public authorities.
Another issue is related to the consumption of drugs and intoxicants. Tobacco and alcohol are legal, more for historical reasons than because of their categorization as “soft”. An exercise in the autonomy of will is consuming what a human deems appropriate. We have to understand that each of us decides what is appropriate for our body, as long as we have the right information and education to take decisions. From this standpoint, an adult citizen (let’s say, a 20-year-old) educated in the West cannot be deprived of consuming drugs or intoxicants if they want, even if it is out of addiction. In fact, states ban the public consumption and sale of those substances, but it is materially impossible to categorize and coerce individual consumption in the private sphere. Given that public consumption or retail sale may be an enticement to consume substances that harbour the potential danger of addiction for each individual, banning them may be viewed as sensible and legitimate for a system that protects our rights. Another issue is the “neutral” production and distribution of these intoxicants. States must take control over these activities in order to ensure that drugs are not a “dirty”, iniquitous business the way they are now. Their illegal status has led to a spectacular blossoming of mafias, dirty money and criminals. When engaging in an activity may imply physical, psychological and material damage to individuals (drugs, gambling, slot machines), why not we entrust them to the state as the entity that caters to a neutral discipline determined by laws and acting without a profit motive?
To conclude this section on human rights, I want to mention what is considered the right, value and principle par excellence in our ethics of the fair: equality. In my opinion, two others are equally important, namely freedom and justice, partly because the former is implicit in the latter, since being equitable entails a proportional division, giving everyone what they “deserve”, meaning an amount of goods (healthcare and universal education) and indispensable rights for each individual (ethics), person or entity (legal) or citizen (political). Equality in itself, plain and simple, is not a value but quite the opposite, since it considers individuals identical, a homogeneity which runs counter to the desirable differences that are the source of all riches. Nature itself gives us a clue by needing different gene pools outside the family circle to engender healthy beings. Equality is valuable when it is applied the legal or political spheres, or to discrimination as a condemnable act, regardless of whether it is called legal equality or equality of political rights. The road taken to achieve a society that tries to ensure that we are all treated equally is as sacrosanct as reaching a society in which “we’re all the same” is profane and dangerous. This danger is sometimes a real threat when we clump together citizens into a mediocre, thick lump we call “people”, whose desires are articulated in audience or opinion ratings, or when we marginalize those who excel and plunk them back with the stragglers for the sake of achieving a “reasonable” and “equitable” level of mediocrity. And I want to stress this and ask citizens to notice both sides of the equality coin, with one side as invaluable as the other is perverse.
I.6.- Democracy.
Democracy is one of the “application paradigms” of individualism, specifically the one that establishes the way the internal political system works. The historical ways our societies were organized (absolutism and Ancien Régime, monarchy and feudalism, castes, etc.) reflect what are called the “socionist scheme”, that is, the scheme in which ethics is social and society determines the individual (not vice-versa), rendering them incompatible with the modern vision of individualism. There is a tacit belief that there is no alternative to our democracies, which turns them into the paradigm par excellence of the way our societies work politically. Churchill is attributed with the phrase that “Democracy is the worst system, except for all the other systems”, making it the lesser evil. It seems like an indisputable or unshakeable motto capable of spreading endlessly in our societies, like human rights. Yet actually it is not.
There is not one but several forms of democracy. Ours is called representative democracy, as it is exercised by citizens voting to elect representatives, politicians. In classical Athens, there was a different kind of democracy, participative democracy, which entailed the active exercise of political power by each free male Athenian. In Athens, as in other Greek poleis, there was a kernel of an individualism that never extended to the majority, whose tentative principles spread around the Hellenized world until they were suddenly erased with the outbreak and blossoming of the Jewish, Christian and Muslim totalitarian ethics.
The idea that there is more than one different democratic model should put us on guard. The current model emerged as a possibility in the late 18th century, became a reality in the 19th and was consolidated in the 20th in opposition to the totalitarian onslaughts. Today it is the form of government that has spanned several generations of citizens in the West, and it has barely changed since its inception. The most noteworthy fixtures of this system are electoral processes (and referendums), medium-length mandates (4-5 years), political parties, the right to vote and the legitimization of decisions by the majority.
In my opinion, this ill-fitting jacket is too constricting for current democracies. The current mechanism of our representative democracies is out of sync with the demands of our interconnected societies. Meantime, the Chinese model, verging on totalitarianism, is gaining supporters, especially since the coronavirus crisis: this failure is stimulating citizens to dissolve their individuality themselves and resign themselves to a form of socionism in favor of presumably more effective crisis management. Democracy’s invisibility as a paradigm provides it with a protective shield against the brainpower of citizens, and even philosophers, who relentlessly insist on believing that disastrous political workings are due to short-term causes that can be attributed to laws of necessity, like corruption (human nature) or the influence of economic stakeholders (preponderance of the economic interest). The idea that the true cause is the system itself, which has to be reformed from the ground up, is rarely heard: nobody believes that we have the leeway (freedom) to change the paradigm of the way we operate.
Western democracies are facing the challenge of changing or losing. Everything went swimmingly for them throughout the 20th century; they were always victorious over imperialism, fascism and communist totalitarianism. They are so successful that they have gained an aura of invincibility. But they aren’t, at least for those of us who believe that the future depends on us.
When I lift the ban on criticisms against the evils of the system, arguments start raining down chaotically like projectiles. Where should we even begin? The most appealing target is naturally politicians: those who call themselves legitimate representatives don’t act like that, nor even like statesmen. Elected by obscure procedures through the opaque engineering of the political parties, our leaders reach power without asserting any kind of ethical guarantee. Nor do earned merits matter. They are put at the helm after having won the support of thousands of X’s on a ballot. Our media present their superficial aspects like their image and capacity for persuasion as decisive. Oratory is relegated to the background. They essentially act by offering short-term policies, since their mandates last four years, while seriously neglecting matters that require long-term results. Ultimately, they barely have leeway themselves since they are game pieces moved by the political parties. Politicians hardly act as public servants; instead, they mainly serve their political party or the lobbies around them. Indeed, the true agents of our politics are political parties. They are no longer temporary or strategic organizations but sovereign entities that seek to survive in perpetuity, with interests of their own that are not the interests of either the citizens or the states. I will later call them spurious interests: they distort the flow of interests of citizens and laws. Their hybrid nature enables them to change skin colour at will, like chameleons: they are public when receiving funds, but private when insisting on keeping their inner workings and organization shrouded, even the internal transactions and processes that allow candidates to rise to the top. If one of their members makes a mess, they replace them with another without the need to be accountable to anyone, even if their organization had chosen the former. The parties’ interests are behind the policies and budgets of many actions carried out by the executive and judicial powers.
And yet neither politicians nor parties deserve to be the target of all criticism. Electoral campaigns are comparable with the rallying calls of travelling salesmen of yore purveying hair tonic. And in the eye of the hurricane is the right to vote, the most lamentable of all the ways this system has drifted: the ethical aspiration that has entailed major sacrifices from humanity has been transformed into X’s on a ballot. As such, it is logical that voting is nothing more than an irrational, manipulatable act, yet also an unpredictable Frankenstein which has turned against its creators.
What I have set forth here is a list of grievances against representative democracy, but this list requires a simpler explanation which defines this crisis as the “root of the evil”. From an individualistic perspective, I understand that the cause is connected to the “problem of the flow of interests”, as the mission of democracy is to ensure the management of legitimate interests, namely those of ethical subjects (I shall define this term later) properly manifested and channeled freely towards the decision-making hub (the politician), and where the issues are resolved bearing mind the interests at stake. I shall discuss all of this in further detail in the second part, when I propose alternatives to the current models, even though attempting to delimit an ideal political system and its practical articulation in a mere essay like this is a colossal undertaking.
I.7.- Constitutions and the separation of powers.
The two internal political-organizational paradigms are constitutions and the separation of powers. Their association with individualism is not as clear as the others’; for example, Great Britain has no written constitution. However, they both have the power of invisibility with which all paradigms are imbued: their existence is not even questioned.
A constitution embodies the supreme juridical framework of a state. There is little I can add to this. A constitutional mandate, juridically understood to be supreme and sovereign, is the best guarantee of an organized society. This idea dates back to the distant past: Hammurabi and Solon. A different matter is the configuration of the constituent power and its territorial scope, which I shall discuss in another section. For now, I will add that constitutions are where the similarity to the “tablets with the ten commandments” is manifested the most intensely, in both their sacred connotation and their perpetuity. And here is where I must stress that even though constitutions must be stable, this stability should not translate into a desire for them to serve in perpetuity, which is what I fear is happening. Why not subject our constitutional texts to in-depth generational revisions?
Another factor is the separation of powers. This is a clearly intellectual paradigm, just as human rights are, in the sense that it sprang from a philosophical work (Montesquieu’s “The Spirit of Law”) and is projected onto the physical world. It is imbued with such powerful invisibility that it has gone unnoticed to the critics of the system for almost 300 years: few or no people suggest that the state powers can be divided into more than three (public information powers or inspection powers, as I proposed in “The End of Democracy”), or that they could be organized in different fashion. However, political organizations have so many deficiencies that I view the separation of powers as yet another mortally wounded paradigm, like democracy. The lack of alternatives (philosophical propositions) today makes the separation of powers unassailable, yet to address this paradigm, we have to ponder the very essence of what power is, what the state is from an ad intra perspective, and the division between political and civil society. The solution may lie in redefining the notion of political power (within the sphere of our freedom) or breaking down the strict barrier separating society from the political world, “socio-civilizing the state” as Javier Muguerza proposed, even if the latter retains its public nature. However, I shall not address this proposal in this essay.
I.8.- States.
States are historical, territorial, sovereign models which extend to all of humanity. They are the basic hubs of the political organization and operation of individual, such that the entire world, with the exception of Antarctica, is divided up into states. They are defined by their territory, population and political bodies, and they have two manifestations.
In their ad intra (internal) manifestation, states act as the hubs that manage societies and individual interests. They tend to be viewed as serving the people in liberal states and authoritarian in totalitarian states: these are the two ad intra directions in which they usually act. Currently, the Western world is organized as a liberal state. Another part of the developing world acts as pseudo-liberal or pseudo-totalitarian states, where there is a balance between totalitarian and liberal forces (Russia, Turkey). China and North Korea are at the other extreme: socionism based on the secular ideology of communism.
In their ad extra manifestation, they act with other states in their own interests, which differ from their counterparts’. They are competitors.
This twofold manifestation of states gives them a schizophrenic feel, like jealous parents who dole out loving care to their offspring (ad intra) and display fierce enmity to those outside their family (ad extra) in equal proportions.
The state is the basic paradigm of political organization. From an internal standpoint, states are organized according to limits established in the constitution, where human rights and the separation of powers are enshrined. Externally, states are sovereign, without any higher coercive lording power over them or a common purpose, such that each state seeks the way to get what it wants: the main law governing their relations is the “law of the jungle” to achieve their own interests. States prone to accepting a common international law and a cession of some of their sovereignty to supra-state bodies stand in clear contrast to states which are interested in maintaining the global status quo (United States, China, Russia, Nordic states, etc.).
States are historically constructed entities. They appeared with the dawn of civilization (Mesopotamia, China, Egypt), and despite all their metamorphoses (from what were called city-states to empires to liberal or totalitarian states), their features have remained the same until today: territory, population and power.
There is an almost unanimous acceptance that states are an inevitable paradigm. Few people believe in the possibility of a different model of global political territorial organization. As I shall discuss below, ad extra states are regions that manifest their own interests, which are the sum of the individuals comprising the community. Given that each state defines its own unique interests, trying to achieve a global agreement that satisfies them all is virtually a chimera, since there is a total of 193 states, each with its own idiosyncrasies. It is not even possible to achieve regional agreements, as in the EU, which had to abandon its plans for a constitution or any other project that entails giving up even a smidgen of sovereignty. The requirement for unanimity has doomed any possible progress on this front.
The lack of international agreement in problems with a global scope (climate change, control of the exploitation of natural resources, coordination in pandemics, quelling wars, etc.) is the most serious and urgent of the problems we have to face, not only because of the type of challenges but also because at the vortex of our free organization is state-held sovereignty. However, solving international problems is nothing new; it is as old as wars, embedded in the course of our modernity, sunk in the quagmire of successive failures. The first formulations to politically organize or regulate the world appeared back in the 16th century. Kant mentioned a society of nations, which was ultimately created one century later, the first major misstep. The UN is a project which has gained ground as a discussion forum and a conglomerate of specialized, consultative bodies, a source of objective information and commendable projects, yet without an iota of sovereignty; it is so incapable of articulating its decisions that it’s more like a paper boat moved by the voluble blowing of its member states. The veto of the five countries on the Security Council is a grievous affront to humanity. Based on continuous swooning captured in meetings with no agreement, partial agreement or agreement reached but later too fragile to counter the capricious lack of compliance of one of its members, it has managed to bury the hope of solving the common problems of humanity and the world, a failure sometimes defended by the threat of spawning a totalitarian “global state”. Reaching agreement based on unanimity among states is as vain as finding a needle in a haystack. The international community’s attempts to reach agreement on key issues, repeated throughout the ages and culminating in resounding failures, are a nightmare which is chronically repeated like the wretched figure who wakes up every day on Ground Hog Day. Yet this parody still feeds the media, governments, pseudo-intellectuals and their pathetic messages of “global communion” harboured in documentaries and pieces in poor taste presented by YouTubers, blinded by their belief in reaching a solution without penetrating the walls of the states themselves.
Any solution entails states giving up part of their sovereignty to a global constitutional statute along with international coordination of affairs like those related to the planet and its biodiversity, pandemics, human rights, demographic control and wars. This does not affect the other powers (the majority of them), which would remain in the states’ hands. I shall discuss that in the sections below.
I.9.- Capitalism.
Accepting that capitalism is a paradigm means that we must first define it and distinguish it from another concept, namely, “economics”.
We can understand economics as a science that tries to decipher the world of necessity from the economic standpoint. Therefore, economic laws like supply and demand do not emerge from the realm of our freedom.
Anytime I have tried to relate economics and capitalism, I have come upon paradoxical incongruences, despite the fact that the two concepts seem inextricable. The most important one is the fit between economics, which – as a science – studies laws of necessity, and capitalism, which – like all ‘isms’ – is an ideology created by mankind with laws given by mankind. In this sense, economics and capitalism are incompatible perspectives, and yet we use them as kindred concepts. How can we decipher this incongruence?
Claiming that economics revolves around studying laws of necessity implies a connection between scientific-economic logics and natural logics, like biology, which seems indisputable: the logic behind the systems to source, transform and distribute raw materials, in addition to services and capital, have a parallel connection with our logic of survival, the prolongation of our lives.
Economics as a body of knowledge went unnoticed throughout history; even Aristotle (who made an enormous effort to recognize everything that could be science) didn’t acknowledge it. It is one of the latest sciences: it appeared in the 18th century, and within a brief time it blossomed and grew with unusual vigor, expanding with as many fields of knowledge as possible: mathematics, physics, biology and social sciences… Today, economics is the human science par excellence, as there is no other as closely linked to our fate. Unemployment rates, economic growth rates and inflation rates are all figures with undeniable social repercussions. Economic crises are traumatic events for humanity. How is it possible that what went unnoticed by so many people for millennia has suddenly, within a few centuries, become the most decisive of all forms of knowledge? The question is a meaty one. There is no need to tackle it full-on like a bull by the horns, because I don’t want to deviate from my purpose. But there is an undeniable connection between the rise in economics and humanity’s gradual realization through the “scientific revolution” that our history is a history of necessity, not freedom, and as such our thoughts and actions are determined by laws that we have not created, including economic laws. The power of economics is its ability to dissuade us from doing things on our own, the conviction of the omnipotence of necessity over freedom.
Capitalism is different. It is presented as an ideology, that is, as an aspiration, as the defence of a way of being in the economic world based on private property, with the market at the core, where resources are allocated. Thus, we should deduce that we ourselves have established capitalism for the sake of our freedom, and this would mean recognizing private property and the market as mechanisms of economic functioning created by humans based on our freedom to dictate our own laws. Yet this syllogism isn’t valid because the second premise is flawed. Private property and the allocation of resources in the market are mechanisms that are as old as or older than ideologies themselves. They appeared, in the very latest of prognoses, during the Neolithic. They were dreamt up in the sphere not of our freedom but of our necessity. Private property does not exist because someone thought that was the best way to articulate the human economy. So then, is capitalism an economic system the way feudalism and slavery were? No, it’s not that either. It is our economic system: it has always been among us since the first forms of life on our planet reached for oxygen to nourish themselves. So then, why is it presented as an ideology or a possible economic system? Because philosophers the likes of Adam Smith tried to defend its advantages, and because others like Marx considered and promoted other alternative economic systems. But what Marx was really trying to do (what dastardly intellectual ambition: trying to undermine the foundations of historical materialism!) was situate economics in the sphere of our world of freedom. A commendable, worthy effort. To do so, he had to consider economic systems as free human creations. Capitalism appears as a concept, a system, an ideology when criticisms and alternatives (socialism) are sown, when economics becomes a science. But in this global world, the market and private property are so omnipresent that their description as capitalist is as obvious as the need for oxygen to breathe.
If capitalism is the system, and there is no other, and if it appeared out of necessity, why do we distinguish it from economics when they’re actually the flip sides of the same coin? Economics is the science and capitalism the system, and the triumph of capitalism is the triumph of economics. More accurately, the triumph of capitalism is the conviction that the economic sphere is governed by laws that we cannot change. And this is when the hidden side of capitalism reveals itself, since it brings with it a perverse, invisible conviction: that our societies are driven by the dictates of the economic laws of necessity and we can do nothing to counter them. This is the true oppressive power of capitalism, the one that denies our freedom.
Capitalism is, on the one hand, the false appearance of an ideological proposal formulated from our world of freedom, and on the other a pure description of the current state of the economic system. With this twofold meaning, the acceptance of capitalism implies, in turn, denying that economics, or part of it, may be viewed as a phenomenon of the polethikē. Should we resign ourselves to this belief? No. Economics is mixed: part of it is articulated around laws of necessity, but in another part there is leeway, either broad or narrow, for humans to dictate laws obeying values or principles that we give ourselves. We should not rise to the challenge with the ambition with which Marx did, trying to get communism to replace the system guided by laws of necessity with another guided by free laws. We must inevitably accept that the foundation of economics rests on indisputable laws. However, there is also another space that we can design based on our own freedom. Delimiting this sphere would be a commendable undertaking: economics conceived as a branch of ethics. All of this would imply an “ideology” that accepts that Capitalism is inevitable (instead of denying it) yet would do everything possible to find and design the part that corresponds to our world of freedom.
I.10. And what about society?
With the shift from the “socionist” to the individualistic model, the community integration that used to condition and guide its members becomes civil society, a common space where individuals interact and project their purposes and actions, while also serving as a place of encounter and exchange called the market and the public stage for narcissistic displays (of success, merit and power), as well as for settling conflicts. Few ethical values fit there, and when they are actually invoked, they are paraded before their spectators like puppets infatuated with vanity. Individualism stripped of ethics views society as a space of rapaciousness and predation (getting benefits from it in the form of goods, income, pleasures and experiences, while offering nothing or the minimum possible in exchange) or as a rubbish bin where we toss the undesirable.
Just as we have distinguished between the world of necessity and the world of freedom, and necessary laws and free laws (a more valid distinction as a possible and/or useful perspective than as an unquestionable truth), we shall also distinguish between civil society and political society; the former is guided by laws of necessity and the latter by free laws.
In civil society, individuals group together freely according to their own interests within the framework of the world of necessity. The basic social cell is the family, which is the most intense model of communion of interests either in its “couple model”, as expenses can be shared and solitude vanquished, or in the “descendant model” because of the genetic parent-child bond. There are other models of groups in civil society, some of which are vitally important, such as companies, but none other than the family is capable of bundling individual interests together into one common interest. Many parents have given up any utopian plans beyond the family, and focusing on purely biological individualism, they only project their hopes and solidarities onto their genetic extensions, their children. Children have become the new religion of Western parents. There is no longer any ideal beyond what is imposed by the pure biological engineering of reproduction: a regression to the world of necessity, a faithful reflection of our renunciation of freedom as a forger of plans.
In companies, just as in amateur associations, individuals share a common space which has an interest of its own, but they keep their private interests separate. As mentioned above, the models of groupings in civil society reflect the laws of the world of necessity (families, companies, clubs, etc.), while the organs of political society (Council of Ministers, Parliament, etc.) are created based on laws freely handed down by humans. However, models like the family or companies have been treated ideologically, usually based on conservative interests (examples include family models proposed by Christianity, fascism and today’s neoliberalism designed in the eighties at the Reagan-Thatcher and Reagan-John Paul II meetings), which tells us that part of civil society can be influenced by ethics and is therefore shaped by free laws. The fact that the family model is the only one that guarantees a communion of interests leaves some questions hanging owing to a dearth of other experiences. Is it the only irreplaceable model that can do that job, or are there others? And if there are others, wouldn’t the formidable deployment of conservative political forces and the media (advertising, films) encouraging the classical family model be a way to prevent the appearance of alternative models of the communion of interests that might upset the conservative schemes centred around the nuclear family?
What are the features of today’s Western civil society which enable us to distinguish it from previous models? Bearing in mind that it is envisioned as a “playing field” of individual interests motivated by necessities, I will venture to cite the features of our civil society as being that it is more open, flexible, diverse and informed, with a neutral tendency when faced with conflicts, but also hedonistic, sensationalistic-emotional, hyper-communicated and hyperconnected, with a subversive aesthetic (or anti-aesthetic) and a “diffuse ethics” without any common horizon other than development. All these features are relative, as they are offered in comparison to models from previous societies. Thus, for example, today’s hyperconnectivity may increase exponentially in the future, and future generations may view us as hypoconnected. Hyperconnectivity increases our exposure and commitment. What holds us together today are the bonds which have intensified with the social media, but not the contents: disparity is the norm when developing opinions.
In civil society, citizens’ interests are spontaneously grouped according to needs (economic, social, etc.) and flow more or less effectively to meet those needs. But in what is called political society, the interests of ethical subjects follow the course of the laws dictated by us humans. The groupings in political society, created by humans based on free laws, like political parties and states, control the course of individual interests and sometimes shape them or divert them towards other objectives, meaning that political decisions do not reflect the interests at stake. I shall discuss this later in relation to what I call “spurious interests”.
PART II. AN ALTERNATIVE VISION OF THE WORLD
We commit ourselves with everything we do and with everything we don’t do. Sartre said it that clearly. The musician who sings paeans to freedom and fills their pockets from them but then stays at home and doesn’t head to the streets to defend it when it is threatened betrays their commitment to the world. Aspiring to freedom means accepting the challenge: the more we have, the greater our responsibility. It might have been easier to end this essay with Part I, offering a more or less accurate vision of the world for the times in which we live that is more or less necessary, more or less cohesive. Analyzing our world means treading firmly in the present, but venturing into the future with predictions or proposals for change means allowing yourself to be enveloped by treacherous quicksand ready to devour your arguments; it means exposing yourself to being labelled ingenuous, to discovering the fragility of intuitive thinking, to at times having to settle something that is interminable. And yet, there could be no greater cowardice and intellectual turpitude than stopping before the dense, unexplored jungle of what is to come. My commitment to the world into which I have been cast, whose rules I accept, is with the past, with the present and also with the future.
II. 1.- Prior considerations: Approaches to a deep ethics (and polethikē).
Any ethical construct that is not upheld on somewhat well-grounded reasons has the consistency of a building without a solid foundation which is liable to collapse with the first tremor that emerges from the depths of reason. Aware that proposals of “alternative worlds” need philosophical underpinnings, below I shall broadly sketch several theoretical arguments which I hope will serve as the foundation of the edifice with which I seek to build a new model.
II.1.1. With regard to ethical subjects.
The notion of “subject” can be articulated as either an adjective or a noun. As an adjective, “subjected”, it has a relative, dependent meaning. As a noun, it implies an entity of its own, albeit with differing manifestations depending on the science at hand, from the theory of knowledge (which distinguishes the subject from the object) to grammar (which says the subject is the agent performing the action) to law (subjects of law) and even philosophy itself.
Does the term “subject” exist in ethics? And if it does exist, what does it mean? Even though the notion of subject has been thoroughly fleshed out in the fields of philosophy and law, and even politics, it does not seem so crucial in ethics. The reason is that only a single subject is conceivable in ethics, the individual, and since there are no other possible subjects, it is defined in relation to its opposite, the object, which is the content of ethics: thus, the ethical subject is who ethical norms refer to, those who must fulfil these norms. Their qualities are autonomy, free choice, will, consciousness and judgement. Obviously, there can only be one protagonist in ethics: the individual. This is the foundation which has made individualism omnipresent today, since only their interests are borne in mind and considered worthy. Kant himself, as I said above, placed the individual at the core of the world of values, with independent will and human dignity as the foundations.
Given that ethics can be viewed as the philosophical underpinning of the sciences of freedom, the idea that there is a single ethical subject extends to politics with the citizen and to law with the person.
Is it possible to consider other ethical subjects when human beings are the only rational, conscious beings with will and judgment? Yes. We cannot forget that ethics is equipped with concepts, principles and entities created within the realm of our freedom. The sole condition is that these entities and meanings be coherent within the proposed system. Can we consider the existence of ethical subjects that are not rational and therefore have no consciousness or even materiality? Yes, we can. Being a subject in general implies subjection to something. It is not necessary to have consciousness to be subjected. So then what would the feature characterizing ethical subjects be? The possession of a worthy interest. Therefore, there could be active ethical subjects, namely individuals, and passive ethical subjects, and the trait of having a worthy interest for ethics would be what unites them and makes them worthy of being its recipients. And thus the core of ethics would no longer fall solely upon the individual.
II.1.2. The shift from ethical subjects to politics and law.
Now that we have illuminated the new ethical subjects defined by their holding a worthy interest, we are faced with the mission of transferring their identity to the political and legal spheres.
In the political sphere, the objective is to organize and operate what is called political society, whose foundations rest upon a written mandate called the constitution. Individuals are the basic cells in this society, called citizens (sometimes downgraded to a homogenous mass called “the people”), who are endowed with rights and obligations. There are also entities with territorial authorities, such as states and municipalities, organized into bodies in charge of managing political society. But the new proposal would mean that this order, at the peak of which is the state, is reshaped to manage not solely the civil society of individuals but also the world in general, which would be the pinnacle of the new order and would mean the appearance of new actors. Thus, political society would be comprised of the entire world. The new political subjects would participate in the sovereignty of the world with an identity of their own, endowed with a special investiture and worthy interests established in declarations, plans and projects. What would these new political subjects be called? Entities? No. Simply by their name.
It would be much easier to make the shift from ethics to law using the mechanism of “legal entity”: in law, all legal subjects are considered “persons”, and a legal personality would only be conferred on the civil and/or political bodies that represented the interests of the new ethical subjects.
II.1.3. The interest at the core of ethics.
Worthy interest would become the core of ethics, and it would no longer be solely the individual’s interest. There would be other interests that deserved to be considered worthy, and they would be recognized as such in politics and law. Ethics, politics and law would no longer solely reflect our interests (“Kant’s error”); the polethikē would no longer solely encompass individuals, or even groups as abstract entities. For the first time in our history, the homocentric moral perspective would give way to another one which could encompass other ethical subjects. Consciousness or rationality would no longer be needed for an interest to be recognized; it would only have to be considered ethically worthy. On the one hand, some of us would be the “conscious” holders of our own interest, and we would manage it following our own criteria; while on the other hand, there would be abstract ethical subjects lacking consciousness and rationality, incapable of managing their interests following the rules of our world. A universal mandate, which we would write, would be needed to recognize them and appoint a commission to represent and administer their interests.
II.1.4. The measure of interest.
As I mentioned in the section on paradigms, the main advantage of individualism is that allows interests to be clearly defined. Therefore, goods like collective or public safety or health are indefinite and do not allow their manager (an individual or a group of them) to grasp their true magnitude, which means that political decisions are discretional. For this reason, one can more precisely evaluate the interests at stake by attending to the individuals affected, even though sometimes there are many of them and their interests have differing intensities (example: the difference in the residents’ of a five-story building interest in installing a lift versus the interest of building a public square in a town). In this sense, groups of individuals in civil society can help politicians weigh the interests at stake.
If the interests of ethical subjects other than individuals, subjects that are unable to stand up for themselves and yet are incommensurable, were taken into account, these interests would have to be defined as precisely as possible via mathematical techniques (areas, lengths, amounts, weights, etc.).
II.1.5 Flows of interests and decisions? A theory of flows?
In this ethics of worthy interest, politics and law would be charged with properly channeling them. Thus, in civil society, individual interests flow from the holder of the interest towards its desired destination following the dictates of the world of necessity, while at the same time obeying the laws of the free world; in political society, individuals’ interests, protected by ethics and law, converge in the hubs of political decision-making following a scheme established by our free domain. In this sense, political society is envisioned as a system in which interests flow top-down (from the instituted to the instituting parties) following the course of the laws, and bottom-up (from the instituting to the instituted parties) at the request of citizens, until they converge in the decision-making hubs, which would be articulated at different territorial levels: neighborhoods, districts, municipalities, counties or other regional units, states and supranational organizations, up to a common global body.
What would truly change in this new system is the way the interests of the new ethical subjects would be managed: to do so, not only would we need laws that more approximately outline the measure of their interests, but we would also need to establish a global agency or commission which could ensure stewardship of those interests at all territorial levels.
Thus, at both extremes of this system of flows there would be first the instituting power (citizens) and at the other the instituted power (universal constitution). The instituted power would be a universal mandate written by wise men and women following transparent procedures (discursive ethics?) and approved by the citizens of the world (grouped into necessary majorities which, in turn, would be divided into world regions such as Latin America, the West, East Asia, Central Asia, Africa and Oceania). The universal constitution could be revised generationally through standing councils of wise men and women representing the constituent power and once again approved by the world regions.
II.1.6. Individual interest, a decision as well.
Just as we understand that the best measure of interest is the individual, the same holds true with will and decision-making: there is no will or decision beyond those originating in the individual. The agreement reached by a group of individuals is not a will that goes beyond the sum of their wills; it is not invested by a power superior to what is conferred on the individuals that have reached it. And what makes a will and a decision the most suitable is not more members participating in it but this decision appropriately meeting the interests at stake. One good guarantee of this would be if those who took the decision were properly informed, familiar with political society and endowed with caution and wisdom. What legitimizes a political system is not the majority but the appropriate management of the interests involved; however, the majority is essential in initiating decisions, since it holds the power to carry them out. This is why majority approval is the best instrument for reinforcing the most important political proposals.
II.2.- The Planet, ecosystems and biodiversity.
This title makes the second ethical subject clear. We cannot keep treating everything beyond the boundaries of the individual as an instrument. Ethical anthropocentrism has led us to a dead-end: unbridled predation. “Everything else” can no longer be mere instruments to satisfy our interests; instead, part of it would be invested with an ethical, political and legal interest of its own, worthy of recognition. Expressions like “environment”, “natural resources” and “raw materials” denote the subordinate role we confer on what there is in the world. We cannot deny entity to the “environment of the individual” from the perspective of our laws. However, the conscientious reality is that ethics ignores it, law treats it like an object and politics views it as a resource.
How can we construct and delimit this new subject relative to the part of the world that is not we individuals? The drastic measures of directly granting political rights to living beings or to the planet or nature themselves makes no sense, both because the very construct isn’t coherent with what a subject of laws is, and because it extends protection to ridiculous extremes. Would we go to court every time we killed a fly? The problem is twofold: first, establishing the quality of the new ethical subject (which has been addressed in previous sections) and secondly, delimiting the interest, which is what I shall strive to do below. What interests of “everything else” deserve ethical consideration? The planet, of course, as a celestial body and a place to live, and all its extensions inasmuch as they are needed to maintain tolerable levels of health to house life forms (lithosphere, atmosphere, hydrosphere, biosphere, etc.). Not only is the health of the planet a worthy interest, so is avoiding the scarcity and/or disappearance of each of the unique forms, organic or not, that live here (biodiversity) and the variety of groupings of these forms (ecosystems). The protection of natural spaces should not be viewed as solely for our use and enjoyment, as it is in our ethics today; rather, the mere existence of these spaces gives them a value of their own. This ethical worth cannot be conferred on each specimen (living being or otherwise) but must be generic, expressed in figures whose minimums cannot be lowered, just as we individuals can sustainably explore the amounts allotted to us. Thus, the planet would be an ethically worthy interest, along with its three extensions (lithosphere, hydrosphere, atmosphere) and a fourth one, the biosphere, part of which, ecosystems and biodiversity, deserve care because of their uniqueness. And actually, everything can go back to a sole ethical subject, the planet, if we include these extensions in it.
II.3.- Humanity.
In addition to the individual and the planet, a third subject is needed for this new transindividual ethics: humanity. My mission is not to envision humanity as the sum of all individuals (and their interests) living in the world today. The humanity I mean goes beyond the present; it has a broader and more ambitious horizon unconstrained by time. We all fit in it. And all of us means both those present, living individuals (existent and alive), and those absent: those who have died (existent and not alive) and those who are yet to come (non-existent and not alive). The horizon and limits of individuality are broader than life itself. Existing does not imply living, since existence is “being” in the world, materialized as a person or in a work bequeathed, a quote from a book or the memory of the living. Individuals who have already finished their life cycle (Cervantes, Cleopatra, Mozart, Churchill, etc.) are as existent as those of us still in the thick of it (Obama, Merkel, Nadal, Macron, etc.).
In previous sections I stated that individuals cannot act as if the world were their instrument or exclusively our property. But now I am trying to refer not to all human beings but only to those of us alive today. The world also somehow belongs to those who lived here in the past, and to those who will dwell here in the future. What excuse are we going to give future generations to explain the mass extinction of species? Everything we have brought to the world, since the first homo habilis crafted the first stone flakes, will have a more positive or negative meaning depending on the course of events. The worth of humanity is at stake. Fate binds us all: Mozart will be glorified if we are benign with the universe and vilified if we squander our world. And this common home called humanity would be even more significant if, in a possible future, we discover other different groups of rational beings (aliens).
Humanity’s most proven value lies in the cultural heritage common to all individuals, existent or potential, made up of peerless, extraordinarily significant works in the most varied fields: art, culture, science, technology… yet also philosophy, ethics and religion.
In addition to a common heritage to be bequeathed to future generations and to the universe itself, humanity has its own objectives with which it seeks to benefit us all. Recognizing those interests is a capital matter in buoying up a transindividual ethics. Among the most important are expanding our common heritage, improving the quality of life of the individuals who dwell in the world, guaranteeing their rights and freedoms, and especially ensuring that we individuals enjoy a full existence and are freer. This would be achieved in part by overcoming the limitations imposed by the world of necessity (improving our health, prolonging our lives to the age we wish, expanding knowledge of the worlds of necessity and freedom, exploring and bringing life to other planets, etc.) yet also by fleshing out and improving our knowledge of the world of freedom.
Humanity has a worthy interest, different to that of the individuals who inhabit the world, and even different to that of all existent or potential individuals, because our heritage could be shared and used by other alien civilizations. If we seek to be worthy as individuals, our projects and actions should be benign for the universe. We cannot discount the possibility that our contributions could be useful to others: possible aliens might be dazzled by a Mozart concerto or astonished by one of Goya’s Black Paintings. But there is no more worthy objective than taking the life on this planet to others. If human beings are nature’s favorite feat, it is not only because of the gifts of reason and consciousness but also because of our presumable future ability to spread life beyond this planet. Indeed, the commendable purpose of life is both to diversify and spread around the universe.
The ethical subject of humanity would include a stock (common heritage) and a project (objectives). In addition, it should have the sovereignty to manage some current global affairs which affect individuals, such as demographics, peace, human rights and control of pandemics. The way this proposal is articulated is a matter for politics.
II.4.- New political articulation: The Free Constitution of the World.
Continuing along the road proposed in this essay, going from the theoretical to the practical, from thinking to action, entails a “leap to a new sphere”: from the new transindividual ethics of the three subjects to politics and law. And the starting point will mimic the pattern followed in the West in recent centuries: the formation of a constituent power which drafts a Free Constitution of the World that recognizes these three ethical subjects.
The Free Constitution of the World would be the sovereign, supreme mandate, approved by the individuals comprising the Earth, and led by them in order to fulfil it. It would be the peak power from which all the other mandates, lower-ranking laws, entities and public bodies would be defined.
Writing a Free Constitution of the World can be approached in the traditional, rigid way, by selecting a committee of drafters and charging them with writing it. These writers would be citizens, individuals, people committed to the purpose of conferring recognition and legal validity to the ethical interests considered worthy: those pertaining to individuals, the planet and humanity. And the best people to undertake this job would be those who are most equipped to understand the needs of our world from the standpoint of freedom: wise men and women. How could we recognize the wise men and women in a world which has pushed them into the shadows of anonymity? As Sartre warned, only by acting do we become people, and so by formulating arguments we define our ability to understand the world and offer solutions. But this means falling into the paradox of the chicken or the egg. Who determines the best arguments for discovering wise men and women? Only one answer occurs to me: wise people recognize each other.
However, the Internet offers better resources than what our “constitutionalist forefathers” had: the projects of the new constitution can be formulated individually or in specific groups for this purpose, without the need to establish previous bodies. In this sense, the work of the expert commission would be to choose and/or improve on the proposals received. What does not seem right is allowing the spurious interests of political parties or states in their ad extra facet to participate in the constituent process, since they are likely to distort the underlying purpose, which is to give worth and validity to the ethical interests of individuals, the planet and humanity.
The Free Constitution of the World would require a global referendum of citizens. When casting their votes, they could be grouped into five, six or seven territorial zones: the West, East, Central Asia, Africa, Latin America…
What would the Free Constitution of the World include? Three different, independent declarations which would define the interests of the three ethical subjects: individuals in a universal declaration of rights and freedoms with some slight adjustments; the planet in another declaration that would define everything that has to be protected; and humanity, which would not only reinforce our shared heritage but also develop a common project in which all individuals could feel freely integrated.
The global constitutional corpus would be determined by articles which would lay the foundations and values of the new global system, its authorities, the way relations among the three ethical subjects are addressed and the global subsystems/bodies/procedures entrusted with managing the three interests. It would also include its approval and/or review procedures: ordinary (generational) and extraordinary.
So, what entity could coordinate all three ethical subjects, in addition to serving as the ultimate instance of sovereignty and representation of our world? We could call it the World Forum and include in it a World Parliament to develop laws and a World Court to keep vigil over the Constitution and the laws issued by the World Forum. The constitution itself would determine who would sit on it, what its composition would be and how it would operate.
II.4.1- The Planet.
The political articulation of the new subject, the planet, with its interests worth protecting (and extensions: lithosphere, atmosphere, hydrosphere, biosphere, unique ecosystems and biodiversity) should not be very complex, since a great deal has already been done thanks to the herculean efforts of international institutions (both public and private) specializing in standardizing nature protection. The true leap would come on the ethical plane, with the planet going from being considered an instrument to something endowed with worthy interests. As mentioned above, the new World Constitution should include a declaration of the planet’s worthy interests. Based on that and following the logic of the constitution, it should have laws that outline the “division of the planet” into the areas available for individuals, those where both interests should be combined, and those that should remain free from our interference. A specific organization to represent and manage the planet’s interests would be needed, and it should be endowed with certain authorities like the ability to file lawsuits and use the court system, or to issue opinions, some of them mandatory, even if it would not be equipped with executive or judicial attributions (its law-making would be constrained to lower-ranking regulations). This organization could be in the form of a commission or an agency equipped with its own resources which is organized and operates independently: the Planet Agency, for example. Its staff would have to work exclusively for it.
II.4.2.- Humanity and individuals.
Individuals and humanity would have their own declarations within the Free Constitution of the World; the former would have declarations of rights and freedoms, while the latter would have a charter that would determine the world heritage and the shared project common to all individuals.
With regard to the basic global entity to channel both interests, it could be either affiliated with the World Forum or independent. It would have a global territorial scope, grouping together humanity and individuals, similar to the UN. However, the UN has three disadvantages: it lacks sovereignty, only states (whose spurious designs distort the perception of real interests) are represented in it, and representation is not equitable (five countries have the right to veto).
The new global organization would have sovereignty on certain matters, while others would remain in the hands of the states. These authorities would be those that affect the interests of all individuals, in which there is a need for global coordination: human demographics, control of pandemics, human rights and freedoms, the ban on wars and genocide, management of a common heritage and the promotion of the humanity project. What bodies (political hubs) would this new global organization be equipped with? There is a range of proposals, bearing in mind that flexibility is the norm in this new “liquid society”. One possibility would be an executive branch (commission) elected by the parliament, and a parliament in which individuals from all over the world would be represented according to different criteria (civilization, religion, society, etc.).
Humanity would have its own commission in which there would be room for representatives of those absent, who would keep watch over the interests of the individuals who already populated the world, but more importantly of those who are yet to come. This commission would be charged with helping delimit the shared heritage and carrying out the steps aimed at the future of the project.
II. 5.- Organization and functioning of the new political system.
Another of the fundamental cornerstones freely shaping our world would be the change in the democratic system: from representative to participative. The current political systems in the West follow patterns that are far from the interests of citizens and the world, and replacing them with new ones would mean doing away with electoral processes, political parties and elected posts in favor of greater political participation by civil society, more control and transparency in processes and, of course, elected posts being occupied by competent citizens who are ethically committed to us and the world.
But in the near future, it is difficult to envision a stateless world: the West and other cultural spaces are reluctant to do away with this paternalistic figure, which in its ad intra extension is still useful for many citizens. States would continue to keep many authorities, and an elementary one is shaping their own political system: the shift from a democracy to another system would be an internal matter in which the World Constitution or World Forum could not interfere. In fact, in addition to a World Constitution (Single Constitution) whose mandates would have sovereignty over some matters, each state or group of states would also have their own constitutions (regional constitutions).
The basic idea of the new democracy proposed in this essay is to envision a political system with shared sovereignties whose processes would be undertaken as two-way flows of interests: one that would start from the constitution and laws (top-down flow, or flow from the mandates or imperatives) and another that would start from citizens and civil society (bottom-up flow, or flow of the social agents), with the political hubs at different territorial levels (municipal, regional, state, etc.) in charge of weighing the interests at stake and taking the best decisions. The political decision-making hubs (organs using their traditional nomenclature) would not have a static composition but instead a flexible one depending on the type of matter at hand. Political organigrams would not be rigid but adaptable to needs, and their composition would depend on the type of matter: political officials specializing in the field would participate in them and be in charge of weighing the interests and taking decisions, yet representatives of the civil society stakeholders affected (companies, civil societies, religious groups, etc.) would also have a voice (and vote?), as would representatives of the other ethical subjects, if needed (Planet Commission or Humanity Commission). There would be centers of political decision-making capable of taking executive decisions, others charged with legislative decisions and yet others with monitoring and processing information (the five powers of the state). The entire process would have to be imbued with transparency, and the affairs that are supremely important to the individuals affected would have to require compulsory, binding endorsements. Transparency, which I find to be one of the basic principles of the functioning of political society, has to be guaranteed in all phases of the process. But all these complex, futuristic questions deserve to be examined in greater depth in another essay.
Before shifting gears, I wanted to briefly digress on the principle of transparency, which I believe is vital and essential in articulating the new political societies of the 21st century. Transparency is illumination: just as we associate darkness with evil, we associate light with good. And this association isn’t arbitrary. The basic idea is that in places where there is no darkness, there is no impunity, and where there is no impunity, there is responsibility. We human beings behave better and are better people in transparent scenarios, while evil multiplies far and wide in impenetrable, dark places. The use of audiovisual recording devices in public spaces will contribute to transparency as long as access to the recordings is public or semi-public. Cameras in classrooms, attached to police agents, on the streets and even at workplaces will be beneficial to civil society as long as access to the records is not restricted to a single authority. We fear Big Brother controlling us, the single eye watching over our every movement, because this implies the idea that there is a hidden power who can use the recordings at their whim. Yet here the purpose is for all citizens, or some of us, to have access to them. This would no longer be the omniscient, omnipresent eye but multiple eyes fulfilling the democratic task of making information and monitoring a job for all of us. Some access should be restricted; for example, recordings in classrooms should be limited to teaching staff, school administrations, students and parents of minors, and the recordings of the security forces should only be accessible to their superiors or to judges. Transparency is a basic tool of ethics.
II. 6.- So what about Capitalism?
As I stated in the first part, economics is a science of the world of necessity, but there is also a space in economics for an ethical science (ethoikonomia): economics studied from the standpoint of the world of freedom. This should not be confused with “ethical economics”, referring to the field of what are called applied ethics (ethics downgraded to being an instrument of other sciences). It would not be wise (in my opinion) to compress everything economic into free laws, as Marx and communism tried to do; however, we should acknowledge that there is room in economics for what we can shape. Proposals of economic systems like liberalism, neoliberalism and socialism are nothing other than free human modulations of economics: ethoikonomia.
Detecting what aspects of economics can be modulated by free human laws would be one of the basic undertakings in shaping this potential science of freedom. Matters like redefining private property, the legal configuration of companies and company-citizen relations could be nuanced by free laws.
More collaborative and participative versions of the right to property are emerging in the current course of economics thanks to the efficacy provided by remote networks when managing certain goods (vehicles, homes, machinery). Ethics, politics and law already set limits on that right, both qualitatively (intensity of appropriation) and quantitively (amount appropriated). One of the crucial factors will be the distribution of the territory.
The use of space (ground), which is increasingly limited due to our demographic growth and resource consumption, could be one of the factors most heavily affected by our laws. It seems imperative to create a global and statewide delimitation of what parts of the territory will be set aside to guarantee the planet’s interests (managed by the aforementioned Planet Commission) and what other parts will be used to meet the interests of individuals, distinguishing between spaces for public use, economic use and private use (homes). In terms of spaces for private use, it seems inevitable that limits be placed on both the maximum area and the number of homes per individual. The goal is not to build our homes in small spaces or to establish an equitable canon of area we can occupy but instead to avoid allowing some individuals (usually those with a high purchasing power) to occupy vast areas solely for their private use: our new world does not allow for serious imbalances in the occupation of space.
Ethoikonomia can also offer us a new definition of “company” beyond the purely mercantile vision. Neoliberalism has transformed companies into private devices to bring their owners profits, which is justified to the world because of the jobs that they “offer”. A company, in my opinion, is much more than that. It plays a role in the planet, consumes resources, obtains products and can ultimately contribute to making our world better or worse. There are two factors which could be modulated by our free laws: the public role of companies and the status of the businessperson.
With regard to their public role in civil society, a company is not solely a private business, a mercantile entity. This is easy to understand if we look at the example of a supermarket in a town whose small population does not allow for another one. The purpose of this “business” goes beyond earning profits for the owner and income for the workers. It also has a role among citizens (the expressions “customer” or “consumer” are purely mercantile) since it occupies a space, keeps away other competitors and provides resources that could not be obtained otherwise. This implies that companies have differing public roles which have to be taken into account. And the more intense the role played, the more the need for our free laws to intervene in the interest of citizens. Companies have to be resized and taken out of the realm of the purely mercantile to instead view them as social stakeholders.
In terms of the status of businesspeople, meant as someone who decides to embark on a business on their own account and at their own risk under what are called the laws of free competition, it is common to think that there are businesspeople who do not deserve to be, and others who deserve to be businesspeople so but aren’t. A society in which all individuals could work towards their goals would have to allow free access to the status of businessperson to whoever wants it and shows themselves capable of being one: if they don’t have their own resources for an investment because they had no chance to secure these resources, civil or political society should provide them, with or without interest. Competition among businesspeople who have the support of buoyant family economics and those who have no greater inheritance than what they carry in their genes is neither fair nor free (for free laws)
In the economic sphere, we individuals define ourselves by what we receive and contribute. Given that the instinct or very project of individualism pushes us to get the most from the world without giving anything in exchange, a maxim of virtuous ethics in economics would be someone whose existence has striven to give more than they get: pursuing the purposes inherent to the individual while also trying to benefit the world would be virtuous. Why not try to reflect what each individual contributes to and receives from the world, to the approximate degree possible? One way would be by creating two new accounts: in addition to the usual accounts that show our economic transactions (banks account as we know them today), another would be our account with the planet (reflected by the resources and energy we have consumed on the one hand and what we have contributed or given back to the planet on the other) and the third would be an account with humanity (benefits received from the public authorities in exchange for taxes or other contributions).
PART III: AN ETHICS OF FREE DESTINY
III.1. What is the ethics of free destiny?
One of the most common classifications in ethics distinguishes the ethics of the just and the ethics of the good: the former focuses on what is right (politics and law) and the latter on what is good. My purpose is to situate the ethics of the just and the good within the typology of the sciences of freedom, recalling that in one of the early paragraphs of this essay, I hinted that there was still another science yet to be named. The polethikē (ethics of the world, politics and law) referred to the part of these sciences concerned with the world (ethics of the just), yet there is another science that would solely be concerned with the individual (ethics of the good): I call this the “ethics of free destiny”, a more or less accurate expression for philosophical rationality but appropriate for this part of ethics that so desperately needs symbolic evocations.
The ethics of free destiny is the science of freedom that defines the values, principles and virtues of an individual in relation to himself or herself, which entails an ardent quest for an existential destiny. Religions are the most familiar and widespread expression of the ethics of free destiny, but not the only one. In socionist models, religions traditionally permeated all of society and formed solid dogmas which had to be accepted in perpetuity. These features have been entrenched and remain in place today, even as the paradigms of the ethics of free destiny despite the shift to an individualistic model. Some philosophical systems also contain similar proposals: existentialism, stoicism, epicureanism, Aristotelianism, cynicism, etc. The discovery of one’s own path or destiny gives the individual meaning in their world of freedom and equips them with values, principles or virtues.
III.2.- Ethics of free destiny.
If we totally foreswear the ethics of free destiny, we have to accept for our existences the implacable dictates of the laws of the world of necessity, work towards values and principles bestowed by law or ideologies, and accept our inevitable fate: death. The world of necessity offers us no other ending. Our world of freedom and the desire it entails rebels against this resignation and offers us alternative destinies, accommodating or not, which entail a code of virtues that makes us worthy and deserving of that destiny.
Our free destiny can be manifold, immanent or transcendent: paradise, resurrection, Hades, happiness, pleasure, the eternal return, etc. In any case, the destiny can be the end, but it can also be viewed as the means, a journey: thus, free destiny would be our projection of the past in the present and in the future. Each individual’s actions would imply a projection of that free destiny. It would also be both what has yet to happen and what has already happened. Each of our actions defines our existence and our commitment to ourselves and to the world and is projected towards our free destiny.
In terms of immanent destinies, such as pleasure or happiness, I should first say that they are essentially a resignation to the world of necessity. Aristotle chose happiness, Epicurus choose pleasure and Zenon chose resignation. Are they destinies or pure moods? There is no need to answer this question: in the sphere of freedom, each person can shape, propose and choose their own free destiny.
III.3.- Freedom or necessity.
The scientific revolution and modernity brought the game of the laws of necessity to the fore. However, the coup de grâce to the world of freedom came one century later, when historical materialism extended the purview of the laws of necessity to our historical vision (the story of humanity). Admitting that history is an unstoppable flow of causes and consequences of intertwined phenomena, in which our freedom counts for little, was an incredibly hard blow for the ethics of the world and the ethics of free destiny (“the death of God”), which since then has been eclipsed by the ethics of ideologies, whose values, principles and commitments are constrained to the world of necessity. Ideologies are not based on any transcendent vision, and their accomplishments are related to material rewards associated with wellbeing. They are free constructions associated with the material and immanent. They set forth necessary (imposed) political-social systems in which individual values count for little, since the system itself provides them, and with them, they try to revive a new socionism in its materialistic, political but not religious version. A worthy ethics, as the utmost expression of freedom, limited to the autonomy of individual will, cannot admit ideologies within it.
III.4.- A “humble” proposal.
I shall take advantage of this space to share one of the ethics of free destiny that has moved and seduced me the most: existentialism and its yearnings for freedom and responsibility. I believe that the two basic missions of my existence are to live it as fully as possible and to project my individualism onto humanity, even when this brings unhappiness. The ethics of free destiny would mean viewing existence as a story whose main spectator was myself, and it would encompass all my actions and those yet to come.
Living fully would mean satisfying our own individuality by accepting an existence in which intense, varied, enriching experiences would accumulate; it would entail unforeseen twists and turns, periods of crisis and personal growth, anguish and a succession of challenges, more difficult ones for the ambitious than for the humble. A strong will would be needed for this.
Projecting our individuality would entail the need for individuals to participate in the course of humanity and the world with our labor, ideas, works… The most rudimentary way is by bringing children into the world. This individuality could be projected in both the beneficial and the harmful sense. It would be essential to accept our responsible commitment to the world.
The main loser in existentialist ethics is someone who crosses their arms, whose attitude towards the world is about not acting, because even someone who brings evil is committed, and evilness leads to lessons to be learnt and overcome. The triumph in the existential ethics of free destiny would come to life projects riddled with goodness, fullness and projection in humanity.
III.5.- The ethics of free destiny and the transcendent.
The ethics of free destiny is debated between immanent nonmaterialistic visions (epicureanism, Aristotelianism, existentialism, etc.) and transcendent visions (religions, stoicism, etc.). What is the transcendent if not the great utopia of our freedom? What bigger dream could humanity have in the world of the possible than crossing the boundaries and reaching the “hereafter”?
My personal focus is not to renounce the “hereafter”, as this enables me to polish my faith and hope, which would otherwise be covered in cobwebs. I want to leave a cranny open among my principles and values where the “utopian” and “transcendental” can fit. Believing in an undefined “hereafter” is little more than nothing. On the other extreme are some religions which offer a specific “hereafter”. The “hereafter” which I adhere to is a set of multiple possibilities, some of them associated with the world of necessity (eternal return, the stoics’ cyclical repetition, parallel worlds) or with our freedom, which would imply that in the future we, humanity, might reach such levels of freedom that we could overcome the most unpredictable limitations (death, resurrection, time, etc.). From this array of possibilities, I choose faith that there is at least one, and that this is the best one.
What is the “soul” but an artifice according to the sciences and laws of the world of necessity, yet a sublime creation in the ethics of free destiny and a possible future accomplishment in our free world?
III.6.- The ethics of free destiny and humanity.
The ethics of free destiny is individual, yet it can be projected beyond the individual and shared. Ancient and mediaeval religions offer common, collective, social ethics; the West has assimilated them as spaces of individual conviction. Since Kant, ethics, especially the ethics of free destiny, has ceased to imbue society to instead become an individual matter. But as I stated above, each individual faces the colossal job of shaping their own ethics: we have gone from a totalitarian ethics to a dissolved ethics, with no possible middle ground. Perhaps the real problem of the ethics of free destiny is where to situate it: in society or in the individual? In what other space could it go? In our common heritage. The proposals of the ethics of free destiny, which are compatible with human rights and freedoms, could have their space as dogmas developed by humanity to be freely chosen by individuals. Humanity’s commitment would be to compile the different proposals of the ethics of free destiny, offer them to individuals and divulge them through state education systems and other public spaces. The ethics of free destiny will remain an individual option, not socially imposed, but implicit in the shared project of humanity. Each individual may choose one of them, or a mixture of them, or shape their own, or have none. Accepting the principles and values of one of these ethics, in greater or lesser intensity (the Buddhist, for example), should not necessarily be an inescapable choice but could guide a period of existence (ten years, for example) and later, after the inevitable crisis, another alternative could be chosen, or none at all. No ethics of free destiny should be imposed or taken as an inalterable dogma, nor should it be accepted for an entire lifetime. The idea of the perpetual dogma is part of the paradigms inherited by the archaic religions which we should get past.
CONCLUSION: Instructions on how to get out of the cage
In the film The Man with the X-ray Eyes (Roger Corman, 1963), the main character, Dr James Xavier (Ray Milland), gains a deeper vision of the world from experimental drops. Embodying the Dr James Xavier of ethics is not exactly an exercise in humility, yet I cannot deny that that has been my purpose. I know of no citizen with whom I have discussed politics or ethics who dares to cast doubt on the very “structure” of their free world. I only see stupor in their faces when I set out to turn the set of paradigms with which they unconsciously postulate their principles and values upside down. If I tell them that I’m terrified by elections, that citizens vote irresponsibly, that democracy is a declining system or that states are an obstacle to achieving global interests, some of them are flabbergasted at the scope of my claims while others look at me like they would at someone who has lost their mind: their discourse has to remain within clear, insurmountable limits. There’s no daring to cross the barriers of the system. The worst cage is the one we don’t see, and the most effective bars are the ones we build ourselves and are therefore incapable of perceiving. There is nothing more subversive against ethics itself than acting without understanding our motives or taking a path without knowing why. How sad it us that we humans have ceased making our lives meaningful! Our dignity largely depends on philosophy and ethics, on noticing the “invisible cage” jailing us, a cage of paradigms that we have constructed ourselves and which we should leave behind for the sake of freedom.
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