R E A S O N A N D POLITICAL A U T H O R I T Y *

DEREK KELLY

Whenever men are confronted by or forced to choose between radically competing views of the world, it seems important for those who challenge or support alternative views to be able to show that disputes and dis- agreements can be settled in a reasonable manner. We all admit that there are different kinds of philosophy. We admit, that is, that we must be pluralistic, must tolerate dissent. Yet it often happens that alternative intellectual schemes are often dismissed in such a way that disagreement turns into polemic. This is especially true in political affairs. Political philosophy, which may be defined here as the description and critical examination of different socio-political orders and of the different grounds for accepting or rejecting such orders, often presents dilemmas which tend to upset our pluralism. Can we remain true to our pluralism and yet offer rational grounds for choosing between competing views of political order? Even though we may have our own allegiances, can we defend the ration- ality of competing positions?

These are some of the considerations which provide a rationale for this paper. I have chosen to focus on the notion of political authority because of its centrality in contemporary political discussions.

My basic aim is to suggest that the grounds which may justify com- mitment to any one view of political authoIity result from different views concerning the logical character of rationality: what counts as reasonable in one type of philosophy may not hold for another. In my dosing remarks I indicate some of the ramifications of this claim. My working hypothesis in this investigation is that at the basis of every philosophy there is a principle of intelligibility, i.e., a principle which indicates the kind of reasoning a given philosophy recognizes as legitimate. Since every principle of intelligibility tells us two things about a philosophy, namely what it accepts as significant assertion (epistemology), and what sorts of things may be significantly asserted (ontology), then every philosophy not only says something, it says something in particular about the world.

A simple devise has been used in the construction of the types of philosophy I shall be concerned with here. In a Kantian fashion, space and time have been taken as the conditions in terms of which the real objects of discourse may be defined. From the logical crossing of space and time, four positions and four formulae definitive of each position are derived.

* I am indebted to Professor Erazim V. Kohak of Boston University for many of the insights in this paper, and also to Professor Justus Buchler of SUNY at Stony Brook for his helpful criticisms of an earlier draft.

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Each formula specifies three things about a philosophic type: (1) its method of inquiry, (2) its aims and standards of inquiry, and (3) its political corol- laries. I have called the four types Perfectionism (Plato), Completionism (Aristotle), Contextualism (Kant) and Adventurism.

Perfectionism can be illustrated by the Plato of the Republic, although not of the Laws. 1 In the exercise of the primary philosophic aim, time is primary and space must be excluded since it is a hindrance to the attempt to know real objects. To attain real knowledge of the real objects (or principles) of being we must move from the world of sense-experience to the world of the intellect which is in time. The method of dialectics is the means whereby we move from the world of the spatial interpretation of objects to the world of true objects on which we may reason. Reason, defined as the power to determine truths of more fundamental scope than those derived from contingent matters of fact, is sovereign, and hence the fruits of reason (knowledge) must be regarded as the norms whereby men are to govern their thought and their action. The empirical world is held to be completely accidental, plastic, and a mere receptacle for the imprinting of Ideas. Contingent reality may be shaped by the standards of reason. This formula enables us to derive the political consequences of his position.

If reason is sovereign in thought and action, and if true knowledge is available only to those who have escaped the world of space, then the world of men is divided into two classes - those who have achieved true knowledge (experts) and those who have not (novices). Since the possession of true knowledge is a condition for being able to determine or undertake right action, then only experts have the right to make judgments as to which kinds of conduct are right and which are not.

In political terms, this means that only experts have the right to make determinations as to what men can or cannot do. The ground of political authority is to be found in the rationally achieved knowledge of the normative principles of political life. Several things follow from this view. First, the political determinations of the experts legitimate constraint or coercion of the non-expert so that they will act in accordance with the dictates of reason. Similarly, the political determinations of the experts may involve conduct which transcends the limitations on conduct found in conventional (contingent) rules of governing: those in authority are not limited by empirical or conventional views of right and wrong, good and evil. It follows, further, that those things which are good (the ends at which our conduct should aim) are known only to those who have discovered the objects of real goodness. The good is the reasonable, then, and the reason- able is the good.

1 Since my interpretations of the different philosophies dealt with are not contro- versial, I have not documented the assertions made here.

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We can determine the extensions of the two classes of men noted earlier by considering an optimistic and then a pessimistic version of this doctrine. An optimistic version (Plato's Meno) is that all men are capable of be- coming experts and so may eventually empty the class of novices. On the other hand, we may (like the Plato of the Republic) argue that the class of novices includes the majority of men and that the class of experts is very limited. For the optimistic version, all men are capable of acting according to reasoned principles. If men have in fact attained a knowledge of the necessary, as distinct from the contingent, principles of conduct, then all men can and will concert their wills for the attainment of identical or non-mutually exclusive goals. Each man, being only a numerically distinct authority will of his own (reasoned) choice direct his will for the attainment of socially compatible rational goals. The state, then, will be individuated by each and every man and hence the only political conflicts that will arise will not be between men, but within each man - between his knowledge of that which is good and his own non-rational passions or desires. For this version of Perfectionism, men have the power of self-governance according to rational principles.

On the other hand, a pessimistic version would hold that the class of novices extends to the majority of men, and the class of experts is quite limited. Political authority, then, would only be a property of those few men who have proven themselves capable of knowing the norms of political conduct and of ~overning themselves according to these norms. Political conflict may or may not exist between men. It may exist where those who wield no power or hold no authority do not support those who do. Here a conflict may be resolved through the use of force - either the experts possess the tools of force and will use them to achieve compliance to their deter- minations, or thev do not possess this force and thus may be overthrown with resulting chaos (which occurs whenever those who rightfully are political authorities are not allowed to rule). On the other hand, conflict may not exist where the majority of men are convinced that the experts do in fact know what is true and thus are willing to defer to them in matters of political decision.

If this view of reason is put forward as a ground for political authority. a va~ue and dangerous doctrine will be the result. It is va~ue because it does not tell us how we may judge that someone has in fact attained real knowledge - the question is simply be~ed . And for a food reason. For to five a spatial interpretation, or an empirical determination of the attain- ment of knowledge is (analytically) impossible. There can be only two tests for knowledge: (1) a subjective sense of conviction - which is a dangerous test, and (2) an objective test - that the knowledge assumed to be reason- able in fact eventuates in the kind of political system one can call good. If the first test is upheld, it follows that neither the Truth, nor those who claim to have it, is ever subject to critical examination or revision. The second criterion as a test for true knowledge seems to be the only suitable candidate, and yet it is not a legitimate candidate for the Perfectionist who rejects any empirical basis or test of knowledge.

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The doctrine of the sovereignty of reason as a ground for political authority is also dangerous. It raises hopes which may turn out to be false or to be counterproductive for a satisfactory political arrangement - for there can be no guarantee of success. The radically unempirical quality of political determinations precludes the possibilities of learning from mis- takes, of learning from empirical refutations. The sovereignty of reason, in this version of reason, thus lies on very questionable grounds, and the notion of political authority which it may support is quite problematic.

II

The second doctrine, which I have called Completionism, holds that reason is conditioned by and cannot escape the limits of space, and is thus merely a tool whereby we may discover, through empirical description, what in fact are the norms of political conduct.

The formula of Completionism is the primacy of space: time is viewed as a container and is secondary to space. The object of true knowledge is the individual thing as configurated in some way or other. The function of reason is to correlate the occurrences of individual things. The method for the attainment of knowledge is thus inductive - we begin with individuals and seek out their configurations. To reason, then, is to describe the patterns or configurations of empirical states of affairs. Reason is only a tool, for in the empirical (actual) is embodied the normative and it is the task of reason to decipher the normative in the actual.

Aristotle may be regarded as the clearest classical exponent of this view of reason. For Aristotle, one can never find any political precepts or norms which have exact or universal truth. The object of reason in politics - and this is tantamount to a definition of reason itself - is to formulate those rules which are to guide us in attaining our ends. Reason can formulate the rules of conduct because, for Aristotle, there is no radical discontinuity between the actual and the ideal - the ideal, the normative, is present in the actual as telos. Since ideal (form) is present in particularity, then completion (or consummation) is defined as the proper functioning of the actual.

The political corollaries of this doctrine can be made apparent in terms of the expert-novice model. If the correlations of particulars is the object of knowledge, and if these correlations are derived by induction from particulars, and if, further, this knowledge is normative for action, then those and only those skilled in inductive techniques can rightfully claim to be able to make determinations of political conduct. Although this is similar to Plato's position, it is also quite different, for the object of knowledge is not transcendent to the empirical world, but immanent to it. This kind of knowledge has been called customary, and it is thus the customary which is normative for political determinations. The class of men expert in induction and who can thus know what is customary is the class of political authorities.

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It is possible to see from these principles why the Completionist can in no way be radical or revolutionary. He cannot be revolutionary, as can a Platonist, because reason can in no way transcend the contingent and historically conditioned world. He cannot be radical for he is the tradition- alist par excellence.

What, then, does the Completionist mean by "making political determi- nations?" If reason as the tool of knowledge can discover nothing that is not already empirically constituted, then the ends and means of political conduct will be regarded as embodied within the discovered correlations of particulars. Political determinations will be made on the basis of such knowledge and will be aimed at achieving the proper functioning of the particulars (in this case, men) in accordance with the customary principles of political life. Political determinations which fail to result in the proper functioning of the actual will be regarded as pseudo-customs derived by an incautious use of reason (induction), or, as Hume would say, from the corruption of the will. Against the authority of knowledge which transcends spatial (and empirical) limitations (as in Perfectionism), we have a new authority - knowledge derived from experience, from custom. All disputes about the ends and means of political life are thus handled by appeal to historical experience. This doctrine thus presupposes the truth of the claim that there are no disagreements over the ends or means of political life which cannot be resolved by scientific inquiry.

The class of those who possess authority (the experts) may be either universal or restricted. It will be universal if it is claimed that all men are capable of reasoning and of discovering for themselves the norms of political conduct. Such a possibility is that allegedly envisaged by the Mill of On Liberty. On the other hand, the class of experts may be held to be restricted to an enlightened elite (Aristotle, Mosca, Michels) to whom the masses must defer for political determinations. In either case, the exercise of political authority will be limited by conventional laws which define the grounds and the scope of political authority, and hence political experts may not transcend the limits set by these rules - to do so can only result in the improper functioning of the actual.

Those who seek to justify political authority in terms of this view of reason will be faced by a number of difficulties. If the justification of political determinations is to be found in the fact that a course of action does or does not instantiate an already discovered principle or law, then the only tools needed to decide the legitimacy of a course of action will be those of class inclusion or class exclusion. Having discovered the principles of the proper functioning of the actual, then, we may legitimately make political determinations by considering whether or not a course of action is precedented or not. There are, inter alia, several problems with this view. First, it may well be the case that a "novel" course of action either does in fact conform to a given rule but cannot be shown to do so and is regarded as unacceptable conduct, or else it can in no way be shown to be precedented and is again excluded - even if it does provide a solution

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to a pressing problem. In either case, the novel course of action may be regarded as illegitimate conduct - even if it is in fact legitimate, even if the consequences of so regarding it turn out to be disastrous for human life. Now, I do not wish to argue for the uncritical acceptance of novelty for novelty's sake, but its rejection for that same reason is equally absurd. Yet a strict application of the Completionist principles would do just that. The result may well be a set of political doctrines which may impede necessary change or else, which amounts to the same thing, become irelevant to the needs men have at any one time.

A second, perhaps more damaging, problem with Completionism is that by limiting reason to a correlational role only in the achievement of know- ledge, it thereby reliquishes the critical role of reason. By this I do not mean that this position excludes a consideration of the principles of conduct in terms of the norms of consistency, but criticism in terms of the consequences for human life of various established means or ends of political life. It seems clear that discussion about the acceptability of norms may finally cease. This is a serious drawback since the reasonableness of goodness is decided on the basis of previously established courses of action. By thus appealing to origins and to persistence to solve the problem of the validity of norms, completionism must either privatize the criteria of knowledge, or it must be willing to hold that a norm counter-productive in action is not really a norm at all. The criteria will be privatized if these norms are beyond criticism or revision. Even though the criterion of counter-productivity appears as the only suitable candidate as a means for testing the validity of normative knowledge, it is not at all clear that such a test is open to the Completionist.

III

It would appear from the criticisms of the views above that the third philosophic type to be dealt with - Contextualism - is perhaps a more suitable basis for political authority to be grounded upon. Yet this too would be misleading.

According to the Contextualist, reason is neither completely transcendent to the contingent world, nor is it completely immanent to it. Rather, reason, in one sense or another, is both. For Contextualism, time is primary, but is limited by space conceived as a container. Since time is prior to space, then instead of the spatial correlations sought by the Completionism, temporal correlations and sequences are sought by the Contextualist. Since space is the container of temporal sequences, then the real object of knowledge is immanent rather than transcendent to space. We come to know real objects by being able to discover the laws in terms of which we may understand recurring experiences as recurrences. Thus the object of knowledge, for Kant, is laws such as the law of causality which is a temporal law governing or conditioning experiences. For Kant, then, the intellect treats the real things in space in a temporal manner.

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Yet for Kant, the intellect is not limited to the empirical world. Its function is not only to isolate recurring temporal configurations but also to grasp the universally necessary laws of action. One function of reason, defined as an analytic tool for the discovery of the laws of real or spatial objects, is to know these objects. This is the function of reason qua verstand. But reason qua vernunft has another function. It is to discover the con- ditions for action. In the first case, reason is limited to a study of the empirical world; in the other it functions to apprehend the noumenal world.

Vernuft is, for Kant, void of any cognitive significance, for reason can in no way discover or know the "higher" objects such as god, freedom, and immortality. Vernunft can only grasp the higher objects as regulative ideals for human action. In our practical activities, then, we must use principles which we cannot know but which we can only believe in in order to transcend the limitations of the phenomenal world. Man can transcend the phenomenal world by using it as a means to his noumenal ends. Hence the aim of reason in its highest and practical sense is to make nature rational. Progress in history as in politics is dependent upon man's capacity to rationalize the world.

Vernunft may thus provide men with the norms of political life, but the actualization of these norms is limited by two conditions. For one, the use of the regulative principles of reason to rationalize the natural world may be hindered by the limitation on the means available to man at any one time. As a being incarnate in the phenomenal world and who must use contingent means for the attainment of necessary ends, man must recognize and deal with the possibility that at any specific time the means to his ends may not be available. Consequently, man's progress in rationalizing the world is conditioned by the presence or absence of the means in nature. On the other hand, man is himself a conditioned being, and hence there is always the possibility that his rational will may be hindered by his empirical nature.

Consider what this means for political authority. The ground or justifi- cation of political authority is to be found by considering whether or not political determinations enlarge the sphere of freedom. That is, for Kant, freedom is itself a good (an end in itself) and cannot itself be justified; but it is nevertheless freedom that supplies us with the grounds for the exercise of political authority. That authority is rightfully held and political determinations are rightfuly made when and only when the conduct enjoined is compatible with freedom. And that conduct is compatible with freedom which involves submission to laws which (metaphysically) free agents have made for themselves. Political determinations, then, are right- fully made when the conduct they enjoin is conformable to the rule of law; and political authority is justified by the rational preferability of acting in ways and according to procedures (rational laws) which enlarge the sphere of freedom, i.e., the exercise of powers lacking in a natural or non-rational context.

Now, since the capacity to reason and to determine the laws of conduct

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in accordance with freedom is not merely numerically individuated, but is qualitatively individuated - since all men do not have equally developed powers of reasoning and of self-determination - then some men will be better able to submit their wills to the dictates of reason (vernun#) than others. Thus for those men who are unable or unwilling to submit to the rule of law, coercion by those in authority will be legitimate if that coercion enlarges the freedom of men.

But since the test of every use of coercion is the freedom it enlarges, then in a society based on this model of reason and of political authority, the rights of individual expression and inquiry will be guaranteed - not in the sense of natural rights only (all men being members of the kingdom of ends) but also in the sense of acquired or historically developed rights. The making of political determinations will thus always be subject to the test of freedom and of the criticism of laws which hinder rather than develop that freedom. This raises the issue of the proper opposition to authority. Under the sway of embodied reason, there will always be a conflict or a tension between nature and reason (vernun#), between the specific development of the rule of law and individual autonomy - where a specific law may have enlarged freedom in one era, it may in another come to limit freedom. Hence it will always be necessary to determine in specific instances whether or not a particular law enlarges or limits freedom. Where a law limits freedom it can no longer be regarded as legitimate; where it does enlarge freedom, it is legitimate. The problem of whether or not to support the political determinations of a state will have to settle on this issue. Since the aim of developing and actualizing freedom depends upon the development of a just political system, and since the furtherance of justice is dependent upon the development of rationality, then law is always subject to criticism and revision. Where revision does not occur when it is needed, there men no longer have an obligation to pattern their conduct according to the political determinations made for them.

The development of autonomy is thus conditioned by law; but law is itself subject to the tests of freedom and autonomy, This tension between law and autonomy will exist so long as the two do not coincide. Freedom thus exists only in a context.

This doctrine, like the two previous ones considered, has several draw- backs. One is the ontological and epistemological dualism of the view. The ontological duality of the phenomenal and noumenal worlds would seem to preclude the possibility of man's ever being able to noumenalize the phenomenal world. This would mean that the final rationalization of the natural world is not possible: there will always be an irrational surd at the heart of rationality. That is, we can only approach the idea of freedom in history, but cannot finally make it actual. The tension between autonomy and authority, between freedom and nature, between equality and in- equality, between hope and practice, will remain for all time. But if this is true, then it would seem that recent arguments, such as that of R. P. Wolff in his In Defense of Anarchism who argues that political authority can

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never be justified, are correct. For if political authority can be finally justified only by a freedom actualized, then political authority can never be justified.

This also follows if we approach the problem in terms of Kant's epistemological dualism. For if vernunlt is separated from verstand, and if the latter alone has any cognitive significance, then the ends of reason can in no way be given any theoretical defense and can only be based upon hope. Hope and knowledge are thus disjunctive. Hope and knowledge, practice and theory, can be made to coincide only by transcending the phenomenal world. Yet if the highest form of reason is itself a species of hope, and cannot be rationally defended, then either men will abandon reason (verstand) completely and enjoin action for which there is no conceivable justification other than hope, or men will reject reason (ver- nun]t) in favor of submission to theoretical reason - which negates the possibility of autonomy. Either men will undertake a journey toward autonomy with no more secure foundation than hope, or they will accept the dictates of phenomenal reason. In political terms, this means that men will either take a blind leap of faith in their quest for autonomy, or they will accept the dictates of phenomenal systems of authority which can make no claims other than de facto ones to justify their determinations. In so far as political authority is concerned, it may exist either de facto in the phenomenal world, or de jure in the noumenal world - but never both. And the result will be that de facto authority can never either be criticized or legitimated by normative considerations. This is an intolerable conclusion, for it means that the criticisms of de facto political authority are ultimately beside the point: they are whimsical assertions which can have no effect upon the phenomenal world - and which thus serve no ends other than their own.

Contextualism may thus end up in a political solipsism if the noumenal side of the dualism is upheld, and in political empiricism if the phenomenal side is taken. If the latter, then a species of historicism or conventionalism will be the result. If, on the other hand, the noumenal side of the duality is upheld, then a political solipsism results, that is, an unwillingness or inability to take into consideration any data other than the data of one's own autonomous states of consciousness. All justifications for political authority, on this view, must start with the autonomous self and its states of consciousness. This entails that justifications of political authority must consist of reflective reports and statements derivable from them. But since there are no constraints upon the individual other than those he imposes on himself, then there are no interpersonal or intersubjective criteria for ascertaining the rightfulness of a course of action, and each individual may, one can say, write his own script of what he takes the reality of freedom to be like, for the normative data of vernunft, like the sensory data of the empirical solipsist, are wholly private.

Where the person who accepts the phenomenal world may involve him- self in courses of conduct which are wholly subject to theoretical (and thus

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scientific) norms, the moral solipsist ends up by rejecting all such norms and seeks to propose norms for himself. The attempt to find a reasoned justification for political authority thus ends up either in conventionalism - which cannot criticize itself and thus makes man's attempt to make his life rational wholly illusory, or it ends up in a solipsism - which ends up making reason inefficacious. In either case, the attempt to philosophize about, that is, to conceptualize and criticize political affairs either sinks into rhetoric or becomes messianic sermonizing.

IV

The apparent failure of the three philosophic types above to supply acceptable grounds for political authority has led some thinkers and an increasing number of people today to adopt a fourth possible position on the logical status of reason, which for lack of a better term I call Ad- venturism. Dissatisfied with the attempted justifications of political authori- ty dealt with above, many have adopted the position that de facto political authority is totally illegitimate and that reason in any of its forms is totally useless for determining our conduct.

For Adventurism, space and time are held to be mutually exclusive, and space is held to be the primary and sole reality. The only real object of knowledge is the immediate presentation of the senses, and any attempt to interpret these presentations in terms of temporal sequences or relations is held to be illegitimate and nothing but an arbitrary superimposition on the immediate data of the senses. There are, then, no real relations; the real objects of knowledge are transient objects having no continuity with other objects. The real objects of knowledge are thus either contingently conjoined, or present themselves in opposition to each other. Hence the intellect can only apprehend objects in their reality in the here and now. If the "here and now" is the only real object of knowledge, then the Adventurist will hold that the only two modes of experiencing are the passive reception of sensory data, or the active search for sensory data.

Since objects are real only in their immediate apprehension, then the function of the intellect, of reason, is to rehearse in the imagination the gratifying consequences of possible objects of sensory apprehension. Dis- covery is here linked to creativity - to the ability to either place oneself in a context or discover a context of sensory gratification. The reasonable man, then, is the man who can fashion for himself a satisfactory existence from out of the discontinuous or contingently continuous objects of which the world is made. In this sense, then, the reasonable man is the discoverer or creator of a "world" of his own. Since the locus of activity is the solitary ego, then the focus of inquiry into the grounds of the ego's activity must be sought in the ego itself. Only the ego can propose or dispose courses of action for itself. If the act of discovery is necessarily limited to objects which appear in the present moment, then discovery or creation can only take place in the here and now, and to be in a position to discover or create,

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one must be able to resist the tendency in oneself and in others to super- impose temporal sequences upon the present data - that is, one must be able to inhibit one's historical consciousness and free oneself from the burdens of having a "past" and of moving toward a "future." Severed from these burdens, which refer to fictive sequences and relations, the solitary ego is free to discover or create its own world. The destruction of the temporal sequences is thus the condition for the "construction" of meaning and value: with neither a past nor a future, the solitary ego is free of any constraints or restrictions on his self-creation. His actions become self-verifying for they have no grounds outside of themselves.

It is difficult to draw out the political consequences of this doctrine with any hope of definitive success, but several features can be noted. Since the passive form of discovery is based on the receptivity of experience, I call it the aesthetic mode of discovery; the active form, based on outgoing initiative I call the aggressive mode of discovery.

The aesthetic mode of discovery applies to the man who seeks to clothe himself in the wonders of the present moment. The aggressive mode is exemplified by the adventurer who allows nothing external to himself to deter him from his self-appointed goals. For both, reason has no discursive content: reason is reduced to desire, to the desires of the wholly autonomous individual. In other words, reason is viewed as the "voice" or the "speech" of the will and of the emotions, and hence reason is wholly particularized. For the Adventurist, the form of reason must conform to the content of reason, to the content of the individual's desires. Reason, on this view, is normative, but it is reason reduced to a pale shadow of its former self.

Political determinations will have no justification unless they either issue from or appeal to the solitary ego. And such determinations can appeal to the ego only in sensory manner. Political determinations must be simultaneously self-determinations or else they are groundless and un- justifiable. Since political authority must be instantiated in sensory form, the only possible authority which is rightful is that form which either is welcomed by the aesthetic adventurer, or is created by the aggressive adventurer. And the only instantiation of such authority that I know of is that called charismatic. POlitical authority, in other words, resides either in that individual who is able through creative initiative to lead men where they are willing to go - which is the only form in which there can be legitimate collective response to authority - or political authority will be atomized and will reside in each and every individual. In the first case, political authority will exist only as long as the initiatory individual is able to achieve acceptance or support for his determinations of political conduct. In the second case, all men will seek to determine themselves by themselves, in which case there will either be chaos or contingent com- patibility of wills - and then we speak of de facto order and authority only. One might argue that this de [acto, albeit contingent, order is better than no order at all and that the accidental compatibility of wills is in fact an acceotable form of Political order - that political determlnntlnn~ ~Yi~t ~v~n

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if only as descriptions of an accidental state of affairs. That is a legitimate claim in light of the view of reason of Adventurism. It is also possible to argue that political authority and political determinations exist even where there is no compatibility of wills, for even if the sovereign individuals did not cease and desist from harming each other, if no one objected to such a state of affairs - which I suppose is possible - then one could say that the lack of objection indicated a tacit recognition that the self-determi- nations of men were compatible with the determination of the whole - that chaos is as "good" as order.

V

I have drawn out the consequences of this latter position so extensively because I think it is representative of a prevailing mood, and also because it represents a form of reasoning which is a legitimate philosophic position. Another reason for this extensive review is that in each of the other types dealt with, one can at least recognize what would count as a reason for or against a specific political determination or course of action, but for Adventurism, it is difficult to know just what a reason for or against anything would be. It is for this reason that it appears "irrational" to many. For if whatever I do is sufficient reason for my doing it - and this is analytically true for Adventurism - then it follows that no discussion of the reasons for or against any undertaking can be entered into either before or after the action itself. And the outcome of that is that is does not matter what we do or what we say, for if nothing can be said that matters, then it is useless to say anything at all: we might as well remain silent.

But if this is the case, then philosophy no longer exists as an attempt to give voice (logos) to anything at all: yet this conclusion, far from being true only of Adventurism, is true of the other types as well. For all end in the silence of reason: none of the views considered above can justify its view of reason except by transcending or by arbitrarily limiting reason itself. Can this dilemma be overcome?

In conclusion, I have attempted to characterize four types of philosophic procedure in terms of which justifications for political authority may be attempted. For each type I have attempted to delineate its concept of "reason," that is, to identify what it takes to be acceptable argument, what it holds to be the conditions of discourse concerning fundamental inquiries. In terms of the foregoing examination, four comments are in order.

First, I have attempted to show that to speak of what is "reasonable" or "unreasonable" is to speak from within a particular philosophy. Disputes and disagreements over what is to count as "reasonable" are disputes and disagreements over what are the conditions of discourse and of what is the universe of discourse.

Second, disputes and disagreements over the justification of political authority are fundamentally over the logical status of reason.

Third, until these fundamental problems are recognized for what they

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are, inquiries into the nature, character and justification of political author- ity can only result in rhetoric or polemic, but not truth.

One final point. There are, as far as I can see, no final grounds in terms of which one can decide to take a philosophic position which do not refer to life and the living of life, and political determinations ought to be regarded as one way whereby men propose or assert a possible truth about life. And such political determinations are justifiable, not only in terms of their basis in some concept of reason, but also in terms of the manner in which they sustain and generate conditions for the furtherance of human life.

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