The next stage in human evolution: learning to count beyond two

In a VFR entry last November, reader Sebastian criticized Allan Bloom and the Straussians for divorcing political thinking from any roots in historical particularity, and I replied:

It seems the fatal flaw of the human race is the inability to count beyond two. For example, people act as though there are only two possibilities, particularism and universalism. The idea of a path for man and society that is neither one nor the other but a combination of the two occurs to way too few people.

Thus Strauss criticized the dominant historicism which denied that there is anything that is right by nature and which is thus a stage of nihilism. He brought back the classic philosophical understanding of that which is right by nature. But Strauss’s followers turned his valuable critique of historicism and his revival of natural right into a complete rejection of particularism itself, so that the only natural right is an abstract universal truth disembodied from any actual society. We end up with the neocons and their opposites, the paleocons, each with a woefully incomplete vision of life.

The human race keeps oscillating idiotically and self-destructively between opposites instead of looking for the sweet spot where the opposites are combined and in proper balance. If there is a real human evolution to hope for, it is an evolution toward a humanity that can count to three.

Posted by Lawrence Auster at February 23, 2008 02:11 PM | Send