The Sunday News
The world is probably in this troubled and also troubling condition because of thoughtless political actions and actionless political thoughts. When philosophers brood in their closets and write political treatises that go unread and unimplemented, and when political leaders of the world act on passions, impulses and interests that have no common good in mind and at heart the world stands to be wounded.
It is because of that tragedy that Edmund Burke noted that “the only thing necessary for evil to triumph is for good men to do nothing.” Martin Luther King Junior as a liberation philosopher and good ethical thinker put it this way: “In the end, we will remember not the words of our enemies, but the silence of our friends” in the face of oppression and evil in the world.
The silence and lack of action of good people, it seems, in the Lutheran thought, is more punitive to the human family and the world than the loudness and action of evil people. Darkness thrives because of the silence and the inaction of light, one can say.
Some do gooders of our world stay out of the politics of the world and leave the field to scoundrels and then cry the entire foul that the world is in the hands of evil imperialists, colonisers, capitalists, enslavers and corrupters.
It is Winston Churchill, that witty son of the British Empire, who made the remark that lies can run across the world shamelessly naked while the truths dresses up slowly so that it can tour the world in respectable attire. The truth, and by extension good, is slow to act while evil is shamelessly fast and rules the world as a result. The triumph of evil in the world is not only a philosophical question but also a religious and prophetic issue.
The prophet Jeremiah asked God matter of factly, “why do the wicked prosper?” What the theologians, those troubled philosophers of religion; call theodicy is that dilemma where God seems to permit evil to prevail under the sun.
If good God is the creator of the universe and the earth, why evil prevails is a question that has boggled the minds of theologians and the faithful alike. This dilemma dogs religion and the spiritual universe as much as it has troubled philosophers and political scientists in the political universe.
The vocation of the Philosopher King
One of Plato’s most fundamental pronunciations in his ruminations about the ideal Republic was that until philosophers become kings or those that are kings become philosophers the world will not see the end of troubles.
To Plato’s otherwise elitist thinking rulers and leaders needed to be philosophers or philosophers needed to be leaders or rulers for the world to at last see the back of its economic, political and social problems. Before, during and after the era of Plato, notably, even leaders that are themselves not philosophers but cold and dry politicians have ensured that amongst their close advisors and friends are philosophers, theorists, technocrats and different other operatives whose claim to fame is thought and knowledge.
At the ridiculous end of things, we have learnt from Thandika Mkandawire and other intellectuals that there is a strong temptation from many political leaders to try to perform and pretend to be some kinds of philosophers and thinkers.
That is how in world politics political ideologies and some passions, including tired and sterile slogans, have been mistaken for philosophies and theories. Opinions and some guesses of leaders of the world are frequently exalted and valorised by their followers and supporters, and some enterprising flatterers, as deep and heavy political philosophy. Adolf Hitler, Joseph Stalin and Augusto Pinochet were once held up by their own as philosophers and gifts to the world and humanity.
The capitalist and imperialist opinions and musings of Cecil John Rhodes, as evil as he was, were once lifted up as philosophy and enlightenment.
What remains clear to us is that all politicians and political activists, including the evil scoundrels of the world, understand the importance of philosophy in political life and leadership.
That is why, in reality, even the worst will perform themselves and pretend to be some philosophers of one kind or another. There is no doubt therefore that politics needs philosophy and philosophers, what we must ponder is if good philosophy and ethical philosophers need politics.
The lack of appetite for political activism and leadership by good philosophers of the ethical category might actually be one of the critical faults of world politics.
We have good old Niccolo Machiavelli to thank for a good description of what a good political philosopher would be in a given time and place. Machiavelli taught that “to understand the nature of the people one must be a prince, and to understand the nature of the prince, one must be of the people.” A solid political philosopher, in that Machiavellian way, is one that can think princely while also meditating like and from the condition and experience of commoners.
A good political philosopher, otherwise, is one thinker that gets involved with matters of the leaders and those of the led in one reflection and activity.
Politics needs Philosophy
and Philosophy needs politics
In public life, actionless thought and thoughtless action are not only useless but they are also actually very dangerous.
Hannah Arendt was correct that in politics, because it involves public affairs and wellness, we must make it a point to be always “thinking what we do” and doing what we think. Good thought and good action, otherwise, must walk together in the daily politics of the world. That is what Immanuel Kant meant, I think, by the assertion that we must always deploy “public use of reason.”
The political things we do and say must pass the test of being good and reasonable. Our actions and words that must arise from good reflection must be helpful and not harmful to the common good. What Mahatma Gandhi meant by that “you must be the change you wish to see in the world” is that our words and deeds must perform and become part of the good society and good life that we want to see.
In summation, by all good accounts, a good world needs good philosophy that produces good political actions. Passions, impulses, interests, ideologies and slogans can only drag the world further into blood and darkness.
Cetshwayo Zindabazezwe Mabhena writes from Hogsback Inn in Mathole District in the Eastern Cape, South Africa.
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