The Right Side of History

by Ben Shapiro

  Is there some work of a soul that you couldn’t ever accomplish with any other living thing that is? For example, managing, ruling, and deliberating, and all such things—could we justly attribute them to anything other than a soul and assert that they are peculiar to it? . . . Further, what about living? Shall we not say that it is the work of a soul?9

  Aristotle agreed: he believed that using our reason, we could determine the purpose of everything around us. Aristotle believed that everything in being relied on a rationale for its existence (in philosophy-speak, a “final cause”).10 So, for example, the roots of a plant only exist to fulfill their final cause—providing nutrients to that plant. And our final cause is the use of reason: “the work of a human being is an activity of soul in accord with reason.”11

  So, according to both Plato and Aristotle, what makes us “virtuous” is doing our job: look at the world with our reason, discerning the final causes for which things exist. This is our purpose. Just as Adam is tasked with naming the animals in the Bible, so we are tasked with recognizing the telos of the world around us in Greek thought.

  The modern mind rebels at this notion—the notion of something’s virtue tied to its inherent purpose. Nature, we believe, is blind and valueless—we don’t blame a snake for biting or a baby for crying. But that’s not what the ancients meant by virtue. They didn’t mean our modern moral sense of “virtue”—being a nice person, or something similarly vague. They meant fulfilling the telos for which you were created.

  Part of fulfilling that telos was the cultivation of those aspects of character that made you most human. Ancient systems of thought carried one significant difference from modern thought with regard to virtue: they focused on virtue in terms of character development. As Jonathan Haidt writes, “Where the ancients saw virtue and character at work in everything a person does, our modern conception confines morality to a set of situations that arise for each person only a few times in any given week: trade-offs between self-interest and the interests of others.”12 Whereas modern systems of morality focus far more on whether given actions are good or evil, ancient ethical systems worried less about rules for action, and more about making men and women virtuous people—people capable of fulfilling their telos as human beings, and utilizing reason and character to carry out complex moral equations.

  Now, this still leaves us with a problem: in order for us to share a community, we have to agree on our telos. As philosopher Leo Strauss suggests, no society can be built on a multiplicity of end goals.13 In order to avoid arguing incessantly over end goals, therefore, the Greeks had to posit an objective, underlying logic to the universe: a Grand Designer, an Unmoved Mover. Were the universe a chaotic, arbitrary, and random place operating according to no design, it would have no telos. But if a grand plan stands behind all of creation, our job is merely to investigate that plan—to uncover the natural law that governs the universe.

  The ancients realized that any theory of telos had to rely on the presence of a designer. As such, they were philosophical monotheists, even if they were religious polytheists. Anaxagoras (510–428 BCE) found a system of universal logic undergirding the world; he called it nous. Heraclitus (535–475 BCE) was the first known philosopher to use the term Logos to describe the system of unified reason behind the world we see and experience. Man could understand the universe because a force had created the universe; man’s mind mirrored that force to the extent that man could uncover its purposes. As historian Richard Tarnas writes, “As the means by which human intelligence could attain universal understanding, the Logos was a divine revelatory principle, simultaneously operative within the human mind and the natural world.” And philosophers were tasked with uncovering this Logos; by doing so, they would be fulfilling both their own telos and discovering the telos of mankind more broadly.14

  THE BIRTH OF SCIENCE

  This investigation led to the birth of science. The science and technology that has bettered our world—the iPhones college freshmen use to denigrate Western civilization—was built on Greek origins.

  The ancient belief that virtue was to be located in use of our reason necessitated the investigation of nature. The ancients believed that by studying the nature of things, we could discover the nature of being. While the Biblical worldview said that God had created nature, it didn’t have much to say about nature itself, or whether investigating nature would lead to God. The Bible didn’t even have a word for “nature”; the Hebrew word yetzer is the closest term, and that generally means “will.” But Greek philosophy was different: it suggested that the best way to investigate the nature of human purpose was to look at reality itself, and attempt to discover the systems behind it. This made it imperative to investigate our universe in order to find a higher meaning.

  Pythagoras (570–495 BCE) led this quest—he believed that human beings could achieve consonance with the universe by seeking to understand that universe. Pythagoras’s philosophy led him to mathematics, an attempt to uncover the supposedly perfect harmony of the cosmos. And that led him to the Pythagorean theorem, among other discoveries.15

  Plato and Aristotle both believed in the notion of objective truth as well. But Plato and Aristotle disagreed with regard to what constituted objective truth: the Forms, or knowledge of the physical world. In the end, this disagreement would wind up creating the basis for the scientific method: deduction would present human beings with a scientific hypothesis; facts presented by empirical evidence would become the basis for judging that theory; the hypothesis would then be accepted or rejected or changed. Aristotle’s establishment of logical rigor with regard to empirical observation would provide the basis for all further scientific thought.

  THE CREATION OF REASON-BASED GOVERNMENT

  Finally, the Greeks gave us the roots of democracy.

  Based on the notion of virtue—use of reason to act in accordance with nature—Plato, Aristotle, and the Stoics developed ethical systems. Those ethical systems didn’t merely recommend personal cultivation. They also encompassed the creation of new forms of government. Some of their ideas regarding government were good; others were bad. But they began the process of applying reason to governmental structures—a process that has continued down to our day.

  The ancients believed that in order to cultivate virtue, the polis—the city-state—must be at the center of human life. As philosopher Alasdair MacIntyre points out, the Athenians universally believed that good citizenship was a prerequisite to being a good man.16 Plato’s ethical system tied together happiness and virtue: the truly virtuous man will be happy. Plato defined various virtues, too: justice, moderation, and the like. But these virtues aren’t individual virtues, in Plato’s view—they only exist in the context of a community. The virtue of justice, for example, exists when each person fulfills his or her function in relation to the polis. Our virtues exist in relations with others.17

  Because the polis is the context in which virtue is cultivated—and because cultivating virtue is the ultimate goal of man—the polis must be governed rigorously so that human beings are inculcated with virtue, according to Plato. That means that those who govern must be the best and wisest among us—that we must rigorously condition a class of philosophers to rule. Otherwise, chaos will ensue. “Unless,” wrote Plato in the voice of Socrates, “the philosophers rule as kings or those now called kings and chiefs genuinely and adequately philosophize, and political power and philosophy coincide in the same place . . . there is no rest from the ills for the cities, my dear Glaucon, nor I think for human kind . . . in no other city would there be private or public happiness.”18

  In Plato’s view, conflict within the state lies in failure of people to recognize their own station. To solve such conflicts, Plato set up a rigorous hierarchy in his utopian vision, between workers, warriors, and philosopher kings. He also recommended a communistic vision of his ideal state in which the philosopher kings are raised. This led philosopher Karl Popper to protest that Plato’s ideal state was
“purely totalitarian and anti-humanitarian,” and accuse Plato of re-enshrining “class rule and class privilege . . . the principle that every class should attend to its own business means, briefly and bluntly, that the state is just if the ruler rules, if the worker works, and if the slave slaves.”19 In defense, Plato scholars Leo Strauss and Allan Bloom rejected Popper’s critique by suggesting that Plato’s entire scheme was at least partially facetious, an attempt to prove the unworkability of full communitarian control.20

  Aristotle’s system of virtue also involved one’s status as a citizen. But unlike Plato, who believed that the Forms could be understood by a select few who could then rule benevolently over the rest of a well-organized society, Aristotle rejected such utopianism. He tore into Plato’s suggested regime, calling it unrealistic and stating that it would rend apart the society itself. “Let us remember,” Aristotle says, “that we should not disregard the experience of ages.”21 Aristotle instead said that a regime combining aspects of democracy with aspects of aristocracy would be best—a clear philosophical iteration of a system of checks and balances.

  The logic of both Plato and Aristotle tied together the existence of the state to its ability to forward and abide by natural law. Their philosophical heirs, like Cicero, would express that view more fulsomely. Thus, Cicero writes in The Republic:

  True law is right reason in agreement with nature; it is of universal application, unchanging and everlasting; it summons to duty by its commands, and averts from wrongdoing by its prohibitions. . . . There will not be different laws at Rome and at Athens, or different laws now and in the future, but one eternal and unchangeable law will be valid for all nations and all times, and there will be one master and ruler, that is, God, over us all, for he is the author of this law, its promulgator, and its enforcing judge.22

  Cicero’s elegant defense of what he termed a mixed system—a system of shared governmental responsibility, in which citizens have a share in control of their government, checked by a monarch, checked in turn by an aristocracy—was treasured by the American Founding Fathers.23 This system, Cicero thought, would ensure the prevention of tyranny and the violation of virtue.

  WHAT ATHENS TELLS US . . . AND WHAT IT DOESN’T

  Yes, classical studies are still necessary. The college students who fulminate against them are undercutting the very foundations upon which they stand—they’re ignoring reason, science, and democracy. We’ll see later in this book just how that abandonment undercuts the strength of the West. But there is no question that without Athens, the West simply would not exist as it is—and that the world would suffer greatly for that fact.

  With that said, Athens alone is insufficient to explain the greatness of the West.

  The world of Athens has shaped us in profound ways—and it shapes us particularly strongly as products of a secular age. It’s easier to spot our debts to Athens than our debts to Jerusalem: they seem to require less faith, less of a belief in the miraculous and the divine. But Athens wasn’t enough—the West still required Jerusalem.

  To understand why, we must once again return to our fourfold framework for meaning: individual purpose, individual capacity, communal purpose, and communal capacity.

  In the Athenian framework, it’s nearly impossible to disassociate individual purpose from communal purpose. Plato, Aristotle, and the Stoics would have all rejected such a division as counterproductive and fruitless: individual purpose lay in acting virtuously—fulfilling our telos by pursuing right reason in accordance with nature. Virtue, in turn, could only be defined with reference to the community. The individual, in this view, tends to disappear into the community.

  Where the Athenians were tepid with regard to individual purpose in the absence of community, they were religious in their belief in individual capacity. They passionately advocated the notion of an order to the universe, and insisted repeatedly that mankind had not just the capacity but the obligation to uncover that order. Uncovering natural law meant seeking to know nature, and Plato, Aristotle, and the Stoics were united in their belief that human beings could turn their minds to nature in pursuit of answers. Humans were graced with a divine power, reason; the human mind reflected objective truths discoverable in the universe. Perhaps the most inspiring legacy of Athens is the unwavering faith in the power of the human mind.

  As already noted, communal purpose was wrapped up with individual purpose: if the goal of the individual was to find happiness through virtuous citizenry, the goal of the community had to be promotion of that virtue. In this communitarian vision, individual freedom in the modern sense completely disappears. Athens rejected the concept of individual freedom beyond the freedom to pursue the virtuous in pursuit of telos; freedom merely meant self-control, the very opposite of what we often mean by freedom today. Freedom in the modern notion is explicitly rejected by Plato, who felt it would lead to anarchy; according to Aristotle, freedom only exists in the individual context when you are involved in philosophical pursuits.24

  What, then, of communal capacity? The community was tasked with two separate functions: instilling virtue in the citizenry, and protecting the citizens from the violation of natural law. Plato thought that fulfillment of the first function could prevent the necessity for the second: if the government could train perfect philosopher-kings to govern, there would be no need to worry about violations of natural law. Aristotle and the Stoics both worried at such utopianism, and believed that the state had to be designed to prevent the violation of natural law through a mixed system of checks and balances.

  The Athenian system of thought establishes certain fundamental notions crucial to happiness: the notion of telos, discoverable by us; the importance of reason-led investigation, leading to the birth of science; the recognition that social ties bind us to one another. But Athenian thought still leaves several serious questions to be answered. The Greeks found happiness in philosophizing, not in action. If you aren’t a philosopher, how do you achieve happiness? Are we really expected to be happy as workers or warriors, in Plato’s tripartite society? How do we avoid the tyranny of the polis, given the link between virtue and good citizenship?

  Most of all, how does philosophy translate over into action? Where the law of Moses is written in stone, the natural law often seems vague or even illusory. How can the world of thought be united with the world of practice? Could the thundering voice of God, demanding action from the mountaintop, somehow be linked with the quiet, questioning voice of the philosophers, demanding reason from nature?

  Chapter 4

  Coming Together

  The worlds of Jerusalem and Athens seemed largely irreconcilable. Judaism was a small but important religion—estimates suggest that perhaps 10 percent of the Roman Empire was Jewish by the end of the first century CE1—and Greek thought had largely been subsumed within the rubric of Roman thought. But the two building blocks of Western civilization, Judaic revelation and Greek reasoning, were at war.

  It was, at best, highly unclear whether consonance could be successfully attempted.

  There were three serious conflicts between Jewish thought and Greek thought. The first conflict surrounded the nature of God: the God of Moses and the God of Aristotle were not identical. Where Judaism posited an active God in the universe, Greek thought posited an Unmoved Mover largely unconcerned with human affairs. “The changeless, Unmoved Mover was the God of Plato and Aristotle,” Rabbi Jonathan Sacks says. “The God of history was the God of Abraham. They simply did not belong together.” Judaism believed, as Greek thought did, in a God who stood behind creation; but unlike Greek reason, Judaism also saw God’s presence in human events, not merely nature. God was intimately involved, in this view, with man’s action. The Greeks believed far more in fate than in a divine presence with a moral sense.2

  Second, Greek reason sought universality in all things; revelation found universality through the specific communication between God and man at Sinai. Greek natural law thinking centered on the notion that
human beings could, through pure contemplation of the world around them, arrive at certain universal truths. Those universals were true for everyone, and represented the ultimate level of knowledge.

  Jewish revelation, by contrast, suggested that human beings were not fully capable of discovering all universals—that revelation would be necessary, a voice speaking from on high to human beings, dictating morality. Thus, the Torah suggested that God wanted human beings to use reason to find general truths, but that His “chosen” people had also been given additional responsibilities. That people was designated His “light unto the nations,” to enact His commandments and, by doing so, spread those universal truths. Universalism suggests that human logic leads to the light outside the cave; particularism suggests that God’s hand can be found in His guidance of one particular nation.

  Third, Greek commitment to the polis contradicted Jewish commitment to the divine. The Greek vision of citizenship focused centrally on the place of the individual within the polis, the city-state; Hellenic thought focused heavily on how to shape individuals to best serve as citizens, and how to cultivate virtues that would be useful in such citizens. Judaism, however, had another commitment: the commitment to individual and collective service to Divine law. These two notions came into direct conflict in 167 BCE, when the Greek king Antiochus IV attempted to defile the Jewish Temple on behalf of the Greek religion and banned many Jewish practices. He used as his proxy Hellenized Jews, who saw traditional Judaism as an obstacle to assimilation. The Maccabees rose up in revolt, and reestablished the Hasmonean dynasty in Judea; that uprising is commemorated by Jews to this day in the form of Hanukkah.

  Could these two traditions be brought together? Could reason alone provide purpose? Could religion alone provide capacity? Or would the two find consonance?

  These questions would drive philosophy and religion for the next thirteen centuries, transform the philosophy and history of the European continent, and provide the next layer of foundational ideas in the building of modernity.