 I'm grateful to the warden of New College for having invited me to give this lecture, and we're all grateful to Alec Roche for having so generously caused these lectures. I'm glad to be speaking in Oxford and at New College. Four of my brothers attended this university, two at New College. Another brother and I were caused to go to another place, presumably on the vaguely Hegelian ground, that Cambridge is not Oxford and vice versa. The self finds its selfhood in recognising the selfhood of the other, as one might say, if one were a German idealist philosopher. On the relative merits of the two places, I will say nothing, except to recall what Samuel Johnson of Pembroke College in this university said to King George III when the king visited Oxford and asked him whether Oxford or Cambridge had the better libraries. Dr Johnson said, I hope whether we have more books or not than they have at Cambridge, we shall make as good use of them as they do. I'm sure we all share that hope. Humanity is suffering from an acute form of psychopathology. Humanity's psychopathology has deep roots in history and in philosophy, in what we have done and in what we've thought. We can't undo what we've done in the past, but we can always reinterpret it. We can re-understand what we have made of ourselves. We can't re-think what we've thought in the past, but we can always re-think, we can re-imagine what we are and what we should be. And that's really what I want to talk about this evening, re-imagining humanity's idea of itself, re-imagining the human world. Throughout our history as a thinking species, we've constructed mental models of the three worlds we inhabit, the human world, the natural world, the supernatural world. For this purpose, we've used three wonderful integrating capacities of the human brain, philosophy, science and religion. There are three forms of universalizing thought. I don't have time to argue the point now. I'll simply assert that an effective treatment for humanity's psychopathology will not be found in global theocracy or in scientific absolutism. That leaves philosophy. Philosophy is thinking about thinking to borrow Hegel's formula. Philosophy is the mind thinking about the mind. Philosophy is the mind thinking about the worlds the mind has made. Philosophy is the royal road, the via regia to human self-healing. A heavy responsibility rests on the shoulders of those of us who think for a living. Those of us whose function in the social division of labour is to keep thinking at every level of thought from the most practical to the most abstract and universal. Humanity urgently needs a new enlightenment, a universal human metanoia, a general reforming of the human mind. You'll be glad to hear that this evening I have time to speak only about one aspect of that new thinking, the social aspect. A striking feature of our social world is that it has been lived at two levels conventionally referred to as the national and the international levels. The strange thing is that the two social levels have developed differently. They've had interlocking but distinct histories as a matter of fact and as a matter of thought. For 5,000 years some of the most creative and active minds have applied themselves relentlessly to the problems of human social coexistence at the level of particular societies. And for thousands of years great struggles of social reform and revolution have been devoted to the practical and theoretical aspects of the organisation of particular societies. Who is to control whom? Lenin said that was the ultimate constitutional question who whom? Human beings have struggled with that question for all of human history. Lenin knew enough of Karl Marx's idealism to know that who controls whom through the power of the mind as much as through the power contained in social structures and systems. At the international level, the level of all humanity the social coexistence of the whole human species the picture has been very different. For some reason the most creative and active thinking about social coexistence has stopped at national frontiers as if there were no way of making sense of the outside world, the international world. I always find it difficult to make people see the amazing peculiarity, the madness of the international world. Then our follows yet another effort to cleanse the doors of people's perceptions. Could we imagine an enlightening model of human supranational coexistence in its present form? I'm going to offer three enlightening models of the existing international system. Number one, in films about organised crime there's always that scene where there's a gathering in a dark room somewhere, usually the back room of a restaurant. Men in double-breasted suits, old men with grizzled grey hair, men with shiny black hair. How come I lose these three good men in joys? I'll translate that as, oh dear, somebody's murdered three of our own men in the American state of New Jersey. But Mugsy, the operation in Atlantic City, got to look out for a dent, we. Well, dear Louis, he's excused s'accuse, perhaps a French connection there. But Mugsy, are you suggesting, notting Louis, I don't do no suggesting, and he produces a machine gun from under the table. That's the Contralto image of the international system. And the Contralto meeting always reminds me of the UN Security Council. Men in suits glide noiselessly into the Security Council chamber. The 10,000th meeting of the Security Council is called to order. The only item on the agenda, I should say the provisional agenda, is the question of recent events in Bandaria. Mr. President, the representative of Utopia has the floor. Mr. President, my government objects strongly to the use of the word question to refer to the genocide of 2,000, 200,000 ethnic Utopians in Bandaria. Is the representative of Utopia suggesting an amendment to the title of the agenda item, substituting the word situation for the word question? Monsieur le Président, I give the floor to the representative of France. Mr. President, my government sees more than a semantic difference between the words question and situation. We propose the establishment of a Bandarian Emergency Investigation Group, Unbinge, to occupy 35 people full time for three months, staying in luxury hotels at the expense of the international taxpayer. A very rare happy moment occurs occasionally in the grim life of the UN when someone creates something known technically as a pronounceable acronym, UNTAD, UNSCOM, UNIFIL, and so on. In UN circles, pronounceable acronyms are called PACS, so you'll hear people say, there's X, he's a four PAC man. Mr. President, I give the floor to the representative of the United States of America. Mr. President, you and other members of the council will know that a contact group will be working on the text of a Chapter 7 resolution, which we hope to present to the council later this evening. I just want to draw attention to Operative Paragraph 15 of that draft resolution which reads, quote, calls upon the United States of America and anyone else who feels inclined to join in to take all necessary measures to sort out the awful mess in Bandaria. Unquote. I should make it clear, Mr. President, that the United States government, president presently, has no plans to do anything necessary or otherwise in relation to the question of Bandaria. This meeting of the Security Council is adjourned. So that's the contralto image of the international system, respect among thieves. The new Security Council is the New York Speakeasy. Number two enlightening scene. The second image of the international system is morning break in the school playground. Hey you, yes you, give me your trainers. Shant, clunk, that's not fair, says who. Hey you, what? Give me your cell phone. Shant, clunk, that's not fair, says who. That's the realest image of the international system, sometimes known technically as the other golden rule of morality. Do unto others unilaterally what you would not have them do unilaterally unto you, but do it quickly. Pre-emptive immorality. The third image of the international system is the day room of what used to be called the Atlantic Asylum. Morning Mr. President Flotsam. Don't call me Flotsam. Sorry, bonjour Napoleon. Heil Hitler, how are you doing? Oh, it's snowing outside. Guess you and I won't be doing much invading today. Tell you what, let's waste some non-renewable natural resource here instead. I'll press the button on the coffee machine and not put a cup under it. You're right, Addy. Right is might, Addy. Dispossession is the tenth point of the most natural, of all natural laws. The self finds its selfhood in recognising its own selfishness and the selfishness of the other. Love you, Addy. Love you, Nappy. They embrace distantly. That's the madhouse view of the international system, otherwise known as diplomacy. I can't resist recalling what Harold Nicholson said about the qualities of a good British diplomatist, as he always called them, in his delightful little book called Diplomacy, published in 1939. Note the date. Quote, the good British diplomatist is tolerant and fair. He acquires a fine balance between imagination and reason, between idealism and realism. He's reliable and scrupulously precise. He possesses dignity without self-importance, demeanour without mannerisms, poise without solidity. He can display resolution as well as flexibility and can combine gentleness with courage. He never boasts. He knows that impatience is as dangerous as ill temper, and that intellectual brilliance is not a diplomatic quality. That may be a dig at the French. Intellectual brilliance is not a diplomatic quality. Continuing the quotation, he knows above all that it is his duty to interpret the policy of his government with loyalty and common sense, and that the foundation of good diplomacy is the same as the foundation of good business, namely credit, confidence, consideration and compromise. One doesn't know whether to laugh or cry when you hear that. A famous definition of diplomacy was given by Ernest Satter in his Guide to Diplomatic Practice published in 1917. Note the date. Quote, diplomacy is the application of intelligence and tact to the conduct of relations between the governments of independent states. An alternative definition of diplomacy might be diplomacy is the application of tact and intelligence in ways which may lead to the mass murder of millions of people, the devastation of whole countries and to social injustice of every kind, locally, regionally and globally. But you will say there are obvious flaws in all three of my models of the current international system. In the organized crime situation there's always the FBI. In the playground there are always the teachers. In the lunatic asylum there are always the doctors. The international mobsters make the rules for themselves, the international bullies themselves, the international lunatics talk to themselves that's called diplomacy. But someone may say but there is someone above them all the international lawyer and you'll be right. We international lawyers do advise the international mob. We say, quote, before you use the machine gun say you looking at me and then it's called anticipatory self-defense. And of course we tell them about Yusin Bello. That doesn't mean don't shoot people in the belly. Yusin Bello means do try to murder people as humanely as possible. And we international lawyers do advise the international bullies. We say, it's no use saying says who after you grab the cell phone. Before you grab it say your possession of that cell phone is subject to conflicting claims. Then grabbing the cell phone can be regarded as self-help as a last resort. Or else it can be regarded as quote, grabbing which is necessary as the only way to safeguard one's essential interest is the disputed cell phone to quote more or less verbatim from article 251a of the International Law Commission's amusing draft articles on state responsibility. And also according to the ILC's witty draft articles on state responsibility we must tell the bullier that grabbing the cell phone will be regarded as a lawful countermeasure only if the bullier bulliee fails to carry out his obligation to hand over the cell phone when notified that the bullier intends to grab it. And that's taken more or less verbatim from articles 491 and 52 1b of the same draft articles on state responsibility proposed by the International Law Commission. When I describe the ILC's draft articles as charming of course I mean that they are an abomination of desolation. The International Law Commission consists of lawyers appointed by governments in-house counsel to the mob of all mobs. Governments gave the ILC the task of inventing law law that governments can then use as they see fit. So the International Law Commission is the Geneva Speakeasy and we international lawyers do gladly advise the international lunatics. We say in a sense you are of course Napoleon. Everybody who thinks he's Napoleon has a perfect right to be treated as such. That's what international lawyers call recognition, sovereignty, territorial integrity, political independence and domestic jurisdiction. I don't know why we need five fancy names for the same thing. All it means is I'll pretend you're saying if you pretend that I'm saying I'll look the other way when you do stuff as long as you look the other way when I do stuff. So diplomacy and war are social processes of the pre-social international system. Games the governing classes play. It seems impossible to make people understand the true nature of war. It's surely beyond belief that there's still something called the law of war. Think about those three words for a moment. Three sinister syllables which seem to naturalize and rationalize and justify a terrible evil. And listen to this for a moment. It's from an essay by Tolstoy written in 1894 and drowning the despair in their hearts with singing, debauchery and vodka torn away from peaceful labor from their wives, their mothers and their children hundreds of thousands of simple good-natured men with weapons of murder in their hands will trudge off where they were sent. They will march, will be frozen, will be hungry, will be sick dying of disease until at last they reach the place where they will be murdered by thousands and will themselves not knowing why murdered by thousands men whom they've never seen who have done them no wrong and can have done them no wrong. Or consider this by Rasmus in 1515 quote Whatever evils war brings must be put the account of those who find reasons for war. What is war indeed but murder shared by many and brigundage all the more immoral for being wider spread but this view is jeered at and calls scholastic ravings by the thick-headed lords today. Rasmus goes on to discuss a threatened war against what he calls the Turks a war he says for which there are three alleged purposes to convert the Turks forcibly to Christianity and or to defend Christian civilization against the threat of the use of force by the Turks and or to get hold of their wealth. I wonder where we've heard those three arguments before and even rather recently if one substitutes the words Western Ideas for the word Christianity. So how on earth did we get into this situation of international criminality, activism and lunacy? The answer to that question is long and complicated. The ancient Greeks the amazing ancient Greeks gave us many things in particular a way of analyzing the human condition and a mental activity which we call philosophy. Their way of analyzing the human condition can be found in Homer and the three traditions Aeschylus, Sophocles and Euripides. Their analysis located three factors or vectors in the human condition the one, the many and the all. Even in Homer but especially in the Tragedians we come across individual human beings not allegorical figures intensely human beings and we see each of these unique individuals as a one in relation to the many of society and in relation to the all that transcends society. Think of Helen in the Iliad and the Odyssey divided in her loyalties between Greece and Troy between her two husbands with her destiny seemingly determined by powers that transcend all human power or Antigone in Sophocles who analyzes her own situation quite explicitly as her relationship with society and with what transcends society the one of the mercy of the many and the all. All these very human individuals were living their lives in relation to particular social forms but also in relation to the transcendental the all either in the form of personalised gods or else some transcendental order fate, Moira, one's own destiny or the destiny of the universe such was the quintessential Greek model of human existence. The second great thing that we owe to the Greeks is a remarkable invention one of its parents was mathematics the obsession of Pythagoras and his followers with a particular universalising capacity of the human mind. Generalisation and abstraction and definition are the essence of philosophy as they are of mathematics any particular triangular theme is an instance of a generalised and abstracted theme in the definition of a triangle. What the obsessively abstracting Greek mind noticed was that there was a way of thinking that is not mythology or religion or mathematics but which is nevertheless a way of thinking abstractly in universal terms about everything including about everything human. This method, philosophy could be applied to the extraordinary diversity of societies known to the Greeks the ancient heretic monarchy of Egypt the intensely multinational empire of Persia the extreme particularity of the Greek city-states and the Greeks saw that such societies might be regarded as particular cases of various general species one of which could be given the species name of Polis a human society whose public affairs are organised in a particular way with its own particular polytheia or constitution each political society has its own substance its own ontogeny its own self but each political society participates in a universal essence the phylogeny the species characteristic of such societies in general every political society is unique all political societies are the same Plato and Aristotle devoted much thought to social metaphysics integrating into a single system of thought the self-ordering of the human individual the self-ordering of society and the self-ordering of the universe the all Plato sometimes called the all god Aristotle usually referred to the all as nature intrinsic to their metaphysics was an ethical view of society for both Plato and Aristotle ethics and politics are two sides of the same metaphysical coin in Aristotle's words society is a natural phenomenon quote originating in the bare needs of life and continuing for the sake of a good life unquote and the idea of a good life implies an idea of virtue that is not merely socially determined but is universal or at least transcendental in relation to any particular society to quote Aristotle again quote hence it is evident that the same life is best for each individual and for states and for mankind quote this way of thinking gave us great power over our social existence we have a way not only of understanding social phenomena but also a way of judging social phenomena in other words this philosophical way of thinking gave us a permanent revolutionary capacity and so from ancient Greece up to the present day up to the present moment we have constantly imagined and reimagined the physics and the metaphysics of human societies and of course I am suggesting that the time has come to reimagine the physics and the metaphysics above all of international society the society of all humanity the society of all societies so the question needs what happened to the Greek analysis of the human condition the philosophical integration of the one the many and the all if we can answer that question we can say why the international world is as it is now and we can say what the international world could become in the future ancient Judaism had established a rigorous integration of the individual the social Israel and the transcendental God early Christianity modified the Judaic integration placing a central focus on the transforming presence of the all in the life of each one in each human individual the rule of love the rule of love rather than the rule of law leaving to Caesar the things that are Caesar's probably early Christianity relied on the assumption that the inward presence of the all in the human individual would also transform the activity of the many in society if only Islam returned to the integration of the one the believer the many the umma the faithful collectively and the one and all of God for Islam the human being in human society and God are morally inseparable the Christian church in the meantime had established itself as a sort of post-Roman imperial mega-polis multinational transnational and supranational a new powerful integration of the one the many and the all well a world historical function of the Roman church would turn out to be as the cradle of a particular civilization a civilization that would ultimately repudiate the church's authority and reimagine itself in other word in other ways Thomas Aquinas in the 13th century undertook a hazardous intellectual enterprise he was himself a product of the 12th century renaissance like our new universities the works of the philosophers of Greece and Rome were available again Aquinas became as it were a new voice of Aristotle but by elevating reason to a status close to that of faith Aquinas and his formidable ilk sowed the possibility of the amazing development of the natural sciences also the possible development of a wholly non-religious view of the human condition and that is of course what happened Aquinas himself picked up the golden thread of what I call the platonic Aristotelian ethical view of the state the idea that society makes possible the good life for the individual citizen by using law to determine the common good of society seen as a reflection of the transcendental paradigm of justice in Aristotle's words quote we call that legal and just which makes for and preserves the well-being of the community through common political action unquote or in Cicero's words quote the state is quote an assemblage of people in large numbers associated in an agreement with respect to justice and a partnership for the common good for Aquinas law is quote a rational ordering of things which concern the common good and Aquinas himself refers to a famous and splendid passage from Augustine of Hippo writing at the beginning of the fifth century quote remove justice and what our kingdom has but gangs of criminals on a large scale what are criminal gangs but petty kingdoms a gang is a group of men under the command of a leader bound by a compact of association in which the plunder is divided according to an agreed convention if this villainy wins so many recruits from the ranks of the demoralized territory established as a base captures cities and subdues people it then openly arrogates to itself the title of kingdom which is conferred on it in the eyes of the world not by the renouncing of aggression but by the attainment of impunity and then Augustine goes on with this quote for it was a witty and truthful rejoinder which was given by a captured pirate to Alexander the great the king asked the fellow what is your idea in infesting the sea and the pirate answered with uninhibited insolence the same as yours in infesting the earth but because I do it with a tiny craft I'm called a pirate because you have a mighty navy you are called an emperor and Aquinas went one step further which would also play a part in the subsequent history of the theory of the international system he took up an idea from the post Aristotelian steaks the idea of natural law the idea of natural law is the idea of a law discoverable by reason which is above all human law and which is human reasons understanding of the moral order of the universe the order of the all seen as nature natural law was an attempt to establish a rational transcendental dimension within the philosophy of human society a set of values by which human law could be judged and to which human law could aspire as an ideal natural law was obviously a rather vulnerable hypothesis it was obviously rather vulnerable to the very different ideas and values of the criminals, bullies and lunatics the self aggrandizing pirates who were becoming the governing classes in the sense of self constituting of the new European politics but the natural law hypothesis was vulnerable also to intellectuals like Marsilio Padre who looked at the social reality that the criminals, bullies and lunatics were making and found as a philosopher one could not be as sanguine about social theory as the Greeks and their intellectual heirs had been Marsilio himself purported to be a disciple of Aristotle and he's sometimes been treated as a prophet of liberal democracy both views are wrong Marsilio is important for our story he was the first legal positivist the prophet of the organic state the self sufficient and self justifying state having no need in its theory for any form of transcendentalism whether of reason or of faith for Marsilio law is essentially the coercive force in society he defined law as a rule backed by sanctions so a pre-ecco of Bentham and John Austin a pre-ecco of Iheri and Max Weber Marsilio is a sort of Franciscan Carl Schmitt of the 14th century a Carl Schmitt of the first Reich one might say fierce justifier of secular power fierce enemy of the arrogant claims of the papacy fierce defender of the German emperor in other words he was much as much of an intellectual nuisance as such near contemporaries as William Ockham and John Wickliffe in parenthesis I may say Oxford must have been a lively place 700 years ago with Don Scotus and Roger Bacon and William Ockham and John Wickliffe as fleeting or permanent presences all of them plotting a revolution in the mind so I'm presenting Marsilio as the symbolic and prophetic representative of what we may call the totalitarian tendency the idea that the many of society become one in the state which internalizes the all and recognizes no need for values beyond its own socialized values well the subsequent story of the development of social philosophy at the national level is very familiar as we know it would come to contain another strand the democratic tendency and the democratic tendency was a negation of the totalitarian tendency as the totalitarian tendency is a negation of the ethical view of the state Marsilio's Defender of the Peace was published in 1324 however by 1324 great changes in the real and legal constitutions of many European countries had already begun to make Marsilian ideas inappropriate at least in those countries those revolutionary developments are the decline of feudalism the rise of urbanism capitalism capitalism and parliamentarianism above all the rise of an urban middle class and a rural gentry Aristotle had already suggested that quote the city which is composed of middle class citizens is necessarily best governed and those states are likely to be well administered in which the middle class is large and larger if possible than both the other classes well the middle class have a personal interest in wealth creation and that requires an efficient system of law and government the middle class are natural individualists who nevertheless have a strong interest in a well organized society so in the city states of Italy and Germany England and Holland the totalitarian tendency would meet a new tendency republicanism the democratic tendency a new story that the middle classes and the rural gentry in British America were glad to hear Hobbes and Locke with great ingenuity devised a republican theory of society which combined individualism and collectivism a subtle new balance between the one and the many and the all in which the all is represented not by God but by nature in particular an idea of the naturally social nature of the human being in the Hobbesian form natural self-interest collectivized as common interest under the sovereignty of the law in the Lockean form natural sociability causing each citizen to recognize the rights and interests of all other citizens under the protection of the law so for both of them Hobbes and Locke and hence for what we call the theory of liberal democracy society is only justifiable in relation to its intrinsic purpose its transcendental purpose in the Lockean version the natural transcendental purpose of society even sets limits on governmental power an idea which would generate a subset of ideas that came to be called natural rights fundamental rights human rights we're all familiar with the benign Aristotelian sayings of John Locke quote the end of government is the good of mankind government is for the good of the government governed laws can only be made for the public good those who make the laws are themselves subject to the laws well one version of post reformation Protestantism seemed destined to reintroduce a theocratic strain into social philosophy reasserting the moral inseparability of the one, the many and the all individual society and God Martin Luther said that all of Aristotle's books should be burned in England this theocratic tendency was excluded as a possible theory of our society in the context of what is known as the civil war in the first half of the 17th century a form of the theocratic tendency crossed the Atlantic with the Puritans and led to many theocracies in several of the British settlements in America with consequences that are detectable in the American mind and American society so in the middle of all this rethinking of the metaphysics of national society what was happening at the international level two big things that happened a so-called new world had been so-called discovered in America and secondly Europe found itself to be teeming with hundreds of extremely diverse polities in a state of more or less continuous change and competition and conflict the social philosopher faced an intellectual challenge far exceeding that which had faced the philosophers of ancient Greece what theory could possibly rationalize the coexistence of such a mass of diverse and unstable social phenomena well the great Spanish progenitors of one international law Victoria and Suarez tried a five track method Christian theology natural law moral rationality human experience and social philosophy moral rationality is another of Aristotle's inventions practical reason as it's called the idea that the well-developed human mind can find moral principles within itself by use of the mind's reasoning capacity for Victoria writing in 1528 the rules of the law of nations could be derived from natural law and from quote a consensus of the greater part of the whole world especially in behalf of the common good of all and Suarez writing in 1612 said quote the rational basis of the law of nations consists in the fact that the human race into however many different peoples and kingdoms it may be divided always preserves a certain unity that's the human race preserves a certain unity not only as a species but also a moral and political unity as it were therefore although a given state commonwealth or kingdom constitute a perfect community in itself consisting of its own members each one of those societies is also in a certain sense and viewed in relation to the human race a member of that universal society Suarez was here picking up another idea of the post Aristotelian Stoic philosophers the idea of humanity as a natural unity of moral consciousness with humanity as a universal ethical category called humaneness humanitas as well as a metaphysical category well Grosius writing in 1625 spoke from a reality of which he was only too personally familiar a Europe seeming endlessly at war including terrible wars of religion among so called Christians well Christian theology was now itself a source of dissension and conflict and was evidently no longer available as a moderating force so Grosius tried to combine two others of the Spanish philosophical methods he tried to uncover principles of moral rationality present in the deep structure of human experience of international relations our experience of what he called war and peace well Grosius's method was an unpromising method for two obvious reasons unfortunately recorded human history is full to overflowing with accounts of the very bad behavior of the criminals bullies and lunatics abused and abused the coexistence of actual human societies through all of recorded human history and secondly the criminals bullies and lunatics of Grosius's own time were probably beyond the redeeming force of intellectualism however intelligent and worldly wise and indeed there was a very obvious and very serious danger that Grosius's moral rationalizing of their behavior would encourage the current governing classes to suppose and to claim that moral rationality is on their side which is of course precisely what happened Grosius, marketed as the lion tamer of the international criminals bullies and lunatics became a paradoxical hero of the European governing classes he said what they wanted to hear but then some very dramatic events occurred, events that would make the international system which survives to this day dramatic events in the real self constituting of our societies and dramatic events in the ideal self constituting events in social practice and in social theory social philosophy was facing yet another new world the new world of the industrial revolution and the french revolution and the rise of the nation state and yet again the necessary social theories were ready and waiting society's new real self constituting found yet again new heroes of its ideal self constituting namely Rousseau Adam Smith and Vattel they each imagined a sort of natural law of society not natural law in the Aristotelian Stoic sense but natural law in the Newtonian sense a physics of the metaphysics of society it all happened in a period of less than 20 years Vattel 1758 Rousseau 1765 Adam Smith 1776 Rousseau's general will Adam Smith's invisible hand and Vattel's national state masterpieces of philosophical model making they share the characteristic that they suggest that society has a systematic existence that is organic a totalizing mechanism which is virtually that of a living thing and above all it is a natural process the all of nature determines the relationship of the one and the many politically, economically and internationally the general will and the invisible hand are of course metaphors, fictions but wonderfully powerful theoretical models of social philosophy models which cause individuals and whole societies to behave in conformity with them Vattel's nation or state is another metaphor another fiction a powerful theoretical model which has caused governments to behave in conformity with it and I'm going to quote Vattel quote when men have agreed to act in common and have given up their rights and submitted their will to the whole body as far as concerns the common good it devolves henceforth upon that body the state and upon its rulers to fulfill the duties of humanity towards outsiders in all matters in which individuals are no longer at liberty to act and it particularly rests with the state to fulfill those duties towards other states since men are by nature equal and their individual rights and obligations the same as coming equally from nature nations which are composed of men and may be regarded as so many free persons living together in a state of nature I say that again nations which may be regarded as so many free persons living together in a state of nature are by nature equal and hold from nature the same obligations and rights since nations are free independent equal and since each has the right to decide in its conscience what it must do to fulfill its duties the effect of this is to produce before the world at least a perfect equality of rights among nations in the conduct of their affairs and in the pursuit of their policies the intrinsic justice of their conduct is another matter which it is not for others to pass upon finally so Vertele ingeniously uses very traditional and very fashionable ideas nature was a terribly fashionable idea in the 18th century but integrates them in a dramatically new and ironical way nature, the state of nature nation, state, sovereign freedom, equality, rights and duties will, interests, common good duties of humanity the Vertele world view is a collection of autarchic autocracies an unsociety of self-contained self-justifying self-seeking societies of the greatest possible real world inequality but reimagined for legal purposes as equal sovereign persons and the hesitation implied in Vertele's disjunctive category nation or state was full of enormous real world potentiality a potentiality that would be actualized in terrible events in the 20th century the 19th century would see the inexorable rise of the conjunction of the nation and the state the nation as a natural and imperious social subjectivity and the state as the ultimate natural embodiment of the nation Vertele became another paradoxical hero of the governing classes of so-called great powers he told them what they wanted to hear to tell powerful people that their status and their power are imaginary categories but categories that are natural and inevitable is to tell them something that they are glad to hear well we've lived in the Vertele fantasy world for 250 years has come to seem inevitable but now of course in this very interesting 21st century the new millennium we find ourselves in yet another new world the world of globalization I would define globalization as the socializing of all humanity in the absence of an appropriate theory of international society with globalization the old game is over the internal has exploded into the external the external has flooded into the internal national and international are inseparable revolution from within gives way to revolution from above diplomacy gives way to collective government tribes of national and international civil servants huddle inside their pronounceable and unpronounceable acronyms like orphans in a storm national government becomes residual in relation to international social phenomena war gives way to the management of world public order social phenomena above all economic and cultural and antisocial phenomena crime flow promiscuously and uncontrollably across national frontiers dominated by non-state actors the most urgent and difficult problems of social coexistence and our global problems requiring global thinking global decisions and global action the criminals, bullies and lunatics at last have the whole world as their oyster whole world as their playground their turf, their asylum but are they pleased about it no they are at a loss disorientated, adrift unable to control phenomena which far exceed the explanatory and justificatory capacity of all existing social philosophy national and international humanities this new real self constituting has made obvious what was long there to be seen the fatalian ideal and legal constitutions are obsolete not zeitgeist but zeitgespenster ghosts of time past the geist of a former zeit, like diplomacy and war the inhuman comedy is finished the ancien regime is philosophically kaput and to tell the truth so are existing theories of democracy and capitalism they are also the geist of a former zeit the ancien intellectual regime both national and international is philosophically kaput if madness is defined as supposing that you live in a reality that is not the reality in which you actually live then the human world is mad so what are we to do to bring about the necessary revolution in the mind to meet the challenge yet again of reimagining society including a new idea of international society as the real ideal and legal self constituting of humanity well I've offered an answer in eunomia new order for a new world and perhaps more accessibly elsewhere humanity is the new many and the new one Nietzsche in the birth of tragedy suggested the characteristically peculiar but interesting idea that Plato in the dialogues created a new art form the novel I am now following distantly in that track with a novel comprising three novellas with extensive self explaining appendices in an effort to get through to people who may not normally relax with a nice book of philosophy a novel is or can be imagination in the service of reason I'm going to quote a formula Camus a philosophy put into the form of images in philosophy mise en image that was in the review of his assertions La Nose in the Algeria Biblica in 1938 well the title of my novel is invisible power invisible power is softer than soft power but more powerful so what is the conclusion to all this tragedy is in an awful mental mess self harming is a capacity of the human mind but so are self knowing self healing, self redeeming self surpassing and self perfecting they are also capacities of the human mind the possible is possible and so is the impossible