Philosophic Discourse on Inequality - Essay Example

Dave Shahinian McCrossin Modern Philosophy April 14, Writing Assignment Introduction Rousseau’s dis on inequality is one that another philosopher, Neiman, does not subscribe to. In case he does, then he does not strongly come out to express his conviction on the fact that inequality exists in the society. Inequality is either acquired in the course of one’s life or one is born already unequal to others (Brumfitt 46). When Neiman offers his insight on the course of life, he generally states that life offers opportunities to every one and it is up to the individuals to claim their share of what life offers. What he does not elaborate is on the manner of exploitation that he claims life offers. Pope, on his part, agrees that there exists equality in life and goes on to expound on those that an individual is born with. He asserts that the inequality that life offers depends on the scope of life that one is taking. The success of life, according to him, is relative and thus the relativity of the inequalities. What one considers success would not be success to the other thus the disparity. However, he agrees with the fact that the elements that aid one achieve that which he or she would consider success vary amongst individuals. Francois-Marie Aroet de Voltaire in most of his works also points out though very briefly on the subject of equality. According to him, each individual deserves that which he or she gets. He groups individuals in categories, and these he argues that life has a way of grouping people then offering them equal opportunity to succeed or fail. His first argument is on class where he implies that an individual simply walks to school not knowing who he is likely to meet there. Once there a class of forty or so, students are attended to by similar teachers and what comes out of them at the end of the ten or so years of a course solely depend on how well they had made use of the equal opportunity life offered them at the beginning (Brumfitt 58). In pre medieval society when life had not been stratified as it is today and there was no formal system of education, Voltaire argues that there still belonged pre medieval ways of life grouping people. These were either in the age groups or sets and he insists that even in the modern society, a person’s success is compared against that of his peers. Rousseau’s Discourse on Inequality Jean Jacques Rousseau starts his discourse by putting a claim that there are two types of inequality which are natural or physical and ethical or political. According to him, these are the inequalities in life that make one individual who was at a similar level with his peers all of a sudden appear to have jumped two or three stages in life. First, he begins by stating that the society is stratified. The stratification he asserts to are the social societal divisions where there are low income earners who belong to the lower class of the society. This is preceded by the middle class which is composed of average earners who are people who are not very rich in the society but they would not lack a basic need and some even afford some elements of luxury. The low class is made up of individuals who struggle to make ends meet, their main priority revolve around the meeting of the three basic needs and most of these people live lives of abject want. At the top of this class societal stratification system are the rich and the wealthy who are referred to as belonging to the first class. Most members of this group are political leaders and business men who he later refers to as capitalist. On natural inequality, he begins by stating is found in the disparities of each man’s physical strength. Some people are stronger than others and this would go a long way in determining the success level of the person, and in the long run determine which of the society’s class he finds himself. The strong can use force to take away belongings of the weak and this was evident in the pre medieval times when Alexander the great nearly conquered the whole world because of his military strength. In a modern society, Rousseau offers an example using a class of forty students. Some pupils are born with hereditary intelligence while others are a little more dwarf ( Rousseau 54). Mental strength is a natural disparity and one would do very little to boost his or hers. The only fact that would make a weak student catch up with a naturally bright one is through hard work and determination which again Rousseau claims would only help in as far as examination excellence is concerned; when put into real life practices the weak individual would still fail. Rousseau, therefore, sums his discussion on natural inequality by stating that this is a product of nature and humans would do very little artificial things to boost it but it is a great determinant of the social class that one finds himself. Kant supposes similar proposition as Rousseau that such cognitive aspects as intelligence and wisdom can be attained through the growth process or predisposition. According to Kant, experiences form the biggest and probably most significant source of knowledge. A child born into a rich family will acquire the rich attitude and capability to become rich also through the experiences as a rich child. He will interact more with other rich children who will later become business associates, continuing the cycle (Rousseau 231b). Physical inequality is another type of inequality that he groups together with the natural inequality. The reason he does this is, as he states, that the factors that bear physical inequality in most cases are natural. This is the case in which an individual is blind and the other is of perfect sight. The society does not care much about the disparities that would be found with people but gives so much attention of how much wealth one has amassed despite his physical condition. The causes of blindness in most cases are natural, and even the man made causes occur in manners than no man would avoid. Humans are made in such a way that they would not accept anything to interfere with their physicality and anything that does this goes against their will and that is why Rousseau refers to such man induced causes of loss of sight as being “natural.” He continues to explain that physical inequality is a major determinant of which class a person finds himself. The blind man referred to above in a fair wealth amassment field would not gather as much wealth as his perfect counter part. But Rousseau goes a head to introduce the aspect of perfectibility in which he states that man, in some cases, would out do nature and rectify natural inequalities. A blind man can regain his sight through a series of medical operations and there after reclaim his rightful position in the society. Ethical inequality goes hand in hand with political inequality and that is why he groups the two together. Politics has often in the past offered ground for inequality in the society and the African continent offers more perfect example of this. The type of inequality that comes with politics and ethics would either be individual or societal. An instance is where a society finds itself better placed to amass the state resources than another. In the African society at the time of independence, their white colonial masters went a way leaving political power under specific individuals who were from specific ethnic societies. Being such an ethicized continent wars and disruptions of peace ensured thereafter with the main cause being the inequality. A child that is then born of a parent who is holding a political position would not be at the same level with his age-mate born of a commoner and the explanations are indeed very clear cut. The son to a political leader would have lots of inheritance from his father and with that not even taken into consideration, the resources around his father would foster him through some of the best schools that the universe would offer and this is very common with most of the best European and American universities with elite African students. The levels of education in these countries are by and large poor and it is a fact that the leaders acknowledge thus the preference for foreign universities for their children. Ethical inequality is also closely tied to politics; a society that had most of its members at the fore for the fight for independence would have most of its members surviving on the national cake as they would be at the positions of governance. Furthermore, a society that occupies a fertile land that receives better rainfall annually would be constituted of very wealthy members who would be deriving their wealth from the practice of agriculture. But in an ideal society, Rousseau puts it that there would be no inequalities based on politics and ethnicity. He states that once a government is elected by the citizens into office, the leaders forget their ethnic alignments and concentrate on service delivery which should be done evenly without consideration given to a particular group for whichever reason whatsoever. Despite him calling for such type of governance, he agrees that greed and general structure of humans would not allow for the creation of an ideal society and that the inequalities born of politics and ethnicity would thus persist for quite some time even in the most developed societies such as America (Rousseau 74). Pure Reason. This, Kant calls the metaphysic. This is the earliest form of knowledge pioneered by Plato and the rest that offered self-evident claims that could not be validated empirically. Such claims about God and the soul had no way of being tested to be proven as true or false. For a long time, he says, pure reason ruled the human reasoning in areas of the arts and sciences. But as scholars developed more knowledge and insight into things previously held sacred, there began emerging questions on the validity of pure reasoning or metaphysics (Kant 234a). Pure reason held that knowledge needed to be analytic to qualify as knowledge. Kant opposes this view and proposes the presence of synthetic approach for fields such as those of pure sciences as mathematics. Unfortunately, this form of reason has today lost its glory among the nobilities as is now perceived to be more sophisticated thinking to ignore the concept of pure reason. Kant, therefore, came up with a new version of metaphysics; the science of metaphysics. This law proscribes that we can only know and claim to know that which is practical and that can be practically reasoned out. Today, knowledge has to be investigated on how it came about and its credibility and subsequent ability to justify its existence, just like taking knowledge to a court of appeal to be challenged. This challenging of pure knowledge or metaphysics as referred to forms the base for the critique to pure reason as offered by Immanuel Kant (Kant 413b). Critique to Pure Reason. Scholars as Hume and the rest accepted the view of rationalism in knowledge. Kant, Born and brought up in a world of realism fell out and did not agree with most of Hume and other scholars’ teachings on reason and rationality that are termed as skepticism. Kant’s response to Hume was on his thoughts and propositions on such basic principles as cause and effect as embodied in Kant’s rationalism. Hume argues that events occur in succession and are not caused by those prior to them. This sparred Kant on a scholarly journey to discover the relationship between cause and effect without having to rely on empirical knowledge as was enshrined in pure reason. In order to arrive at this goal, Kant rejected the use of analytic reasoning as it was not capable of explaining things that were self-evident. In its place, he sought synthetic reasoning. Under this reasoning, events like cause and effect are validated as every effect has a cause and every cause has an effect (Kant 154a). In opposition to pure reason, Kant goes on to argue that it is impossible for one to conceive of an item or object that does not exist in time and space. It is more impossible if the object does not have such components as structure and the effect of causality. He says that although such an object may not be conceivable, it does not mean that it does not exist. To this end, he proposes that there can be no conception of an object or idea without experience. This, according to him, is the role and perspective that the science of metaphysics attempts to address. Kant also adopted a transcendental kind of idealism that posited that phenomena existed in substance, space, and time. This is the knowledge that bridges the gap between the two parts of experience; sense and understanding. Transcendental logic is the attempts to investigate the relationship between one’s ability to understand and the type and amount of knowledge available for him. This logic exists in two forms; analytic and dialectic. The analytic logic seeks to unveil to role of understanding to the existing knowledge. Dialectic logic, on the other hand, seeks to establish the limits of one’s ability to understand given a particular knowledge. According to Kant, priori knowledge is availed to us through priori intuitions and concepts. These, in turn, provide the basis for out posteriori knowledge. It is the space and time and the principles that we conceive that form our experiences, which in turn offer the structure of our perceptions. a thing in itself does not have the capacity to be known. For the thing to gain the qualities that can enable it to be known, it must be experienced or form a part of our experiences. According to Kant, space and time can be interpreted under two major categories; metaphysical and transcendental interpretations. Metaphysical space and time attempts to specify how intuitions can be felt and explained independent of one’s experience. The transcendental space and time, on the other hand, attempt to explain how such metaphysical space and time can be applied to enhance our understanding though the experiences. This view of space and time contradicts that of Aristotelian times of physics and the Newtonian physics (Kant 345a). In his critique for pure reason, Kant seeks to know how it can be possible for pure physical knowledge to exist. He argues that thoughts that are without perceptions and content are empty and, therefore, not of much use. It is through experiences and interaction with the environment that such thoughts can gain content and their usefulness. For any concept to have viable meaning, it must have a related sense of perception that can only be deduced from one’s experiences. There have been claims that Kant’s idea of transcendental idealism refutes the possible existence of external objects. According to Kant, it is impossible for external objects to exist. This, he says is because this would mean that the supposed existence of external objects in space would presuppose an agreement with self-consciousness. Self-consciousness means one’s determination in of self in time which can only be determined through permanence. Kant’s Perspective on Peace. Kant goes on to expound on the issue of empirical reason to explain the existence of states and how their behavior is regulated and determined by empirical reason. States, he says, do not co-exist in peace as a natural occurrence. The natural state is that of war and hostility and that they work and endeavor toward achieving peace. The world is largely amoral and their political processes do not give much attention to issues of morality such as equality and dignity (Kant 289b). He gives the example of the events in medieval Europe where states sought to undermine each other and others getting into alliances that he calls ‘marriages’. In these marriages, some partners may perceive themselves to be greater than others or seek to control the affairs of the marriage. It is through such marriages that citizens got to be abused and misused by the ruling elite through states offering human military aid to their so called partners to aid in fighting off enemy countries that they were not at war with. In the application of morals in the political process and system, Kant proposes an alignment of political and moral philosophy. Political philosophy, he describes as the practical science of what is right, while moral philosophy he describes as the theoretical science of what is right. What is perceived in theory, therefore, must be fused with that which is practical in order to strike the right balance (Kant 281b). Kant goes on to note that there are two types of politicians. One is the one who adheres to philosophical decrees as outlined by political philosophers. This politician is the ideal type who rules by and according to the law. The second type of politician is the pragmatic politician who rules by the prevailing situation, changing laws and protocol to fit circumstances, largely based on his and the experiences of others on similar situation. he will take advantage of the weaknesses of others to take into possession what belongs to another state, he will deny any wrongdoing even if his personal actions and decisions bring harm over those he rules, he will rule with regard to the special political or elite class who saw him into power, and rule the state with a personal authority with powers beyond what democracy entails. Conclusion. After such an insightful deliberation, Rousseau concludes his piece by claiming that societal class is and should not be a measure of success. To him, success is a mental state. What gives one satisfaction and the attainment of that which gives an individual such satisfaction is what amounts to success. To him, such terms as satisfaction and success are extremely relative and should not have a pre defined definition. He asserts that stratifying the society into class offers this clear cut definition to the words satisfaction and success which should never be the case. On the issue of morality and inequality as highlighted by Rousseau and Voltaire, Kant, using his idealism approach, presents a realistic approach in the political process for the virtues. He agrees with T. Hobbes on his idea of the state as war-prone and existing as a state of nature where only the fittest and best adapted can survive. Inequality is inherent in states in their domestic political arrangements and in the inter-state affairs of states. A realistic politician will want to take over weak states and impose his rule on the people. Inequality for states comes about as both physical or natural and ethical or political as comes for people according to Rousseau. Any state that spots and seizes the opportunity can become strong, surpassing fellow states and or subduing them. Kant presents a viable argument against natural reason urging scholars to adopt empiricism as a base for reason. To him, persons are and can only conceive what they have or can experience, so that such phenomenological issues as the existence of God will not find favour with him. Work Cited Brumfitt, J H. The Birth Of Orientalism. Pennsylvania: University of Pennsylvania press, 1958. Print. Kant Immanuel. Critique of Pure Reason. Trans. by Guyer Paul & Wood Allen. NY: Cambridge University Press. 1999. Print (a) Kant Immanuel. Perpetual Peace. NY: Liberal Arts Press. 1957.Print. (b) Rousseau, J. Discourse On Inequality. Amsterdam: Marc-Michell Ray. Print, 1754. Print. (a) Rousseau Jacques. The Three Discourses: On the Arts and Sciences, Origins of Inequality, and Political Economy. Trans. by Cole. NY: Cambridge University Press. 1923. Print (b) Read More