nothing more than an object to be used. It is why he wished to overthrow such a system. In a society where the very essence of all things is not the thing itself but an abstraction of that very thing, then no thing inherently has meaning because all is but what one man or one society determines value to be. Aristotle’s principle of non-contradiction has now been overturned. All is everything else, defined through mind. Narcissism turns into solipsism, and taste – whether personal or collective – rules the day. It is but a step from here to totalitarianism, where men and pots are objects to be destroyed and not subjects to be accorded respect.
It is, in fact, with the rise of totalitarianism, that it soon became apparent that as logos became more fully determined society soon came to displace the rule of the idea with the rule of the logical process itself. It was this concern that
prompted Hannah Arendt, the first thinker to really explore in detail the nature of totalitarianism, to re-label the totalitarianism as a logocracy, where rule was determined not by the idea but of “the logical process itself which is deduced from the idea as its logical
premise.”18 What a disturbing notion. In its drive to become justifiable, a totalitarian system must destroy all the substantive foundations of ideas to allow for the free movement of logic itself wherein anything can be justified. Invoking terror to break the ties between ideas and reason, the totalitarian can rationalize the irrational and thereby accomplish anything, including the control and, if need be, the destruction of bodies. It is all about nothing but process, about logic run wild. It is both radical in the sense of being no longer tethered to the world (the etymology suggests ‘being torn up by the roots’) and banal (it is not only common but commonplace). Interestingly enough, two sides the same evil coin.
If it were necessary to suggest a contemporary philosophical trend of which this particular social orientation becomes a reflection, it would be deconstructionism, particularly as it becomes expressed through the writings of Derrida (the deconstruction of meaning), Foucault (the deconstruction of power), and Lacan (the deconstruction of self). All meaning is to be found in deconstructed texts: words, the placement of words, the relation of words, etc. A sad commentary on a tradition that began with Socrates, who, recognizing we knew so very little, respected all.
Salvaging the Shards
There seems to be two ways of salvaging the shards: 1) to reconfigure the tripartite mind in hope of recapturing the initial spirit of Socrates; and 2) to attempt to reconfigure the pot, using the cultures of the Cochiti and Santo Domingo pueblos to testify for a more inclusive approach.
Things Best Left Alone
It is possible to establish a means for reconfiguring the tripartite mind, if that is one’s goal. A person would simply have to identify the one characteristic that truly captures the essence of each exercise, and then institutionalize that characteristic across the society. For example, the essence of nous would be captured through a developed sense of wonder; the essence of aletheuein would be captured through environments that passionately promote participatory conversations about individual moral visions; and the essence of logos would be captured through imaginative prescriptions based upon proper judgments that enhance individual growth but also temper extremism. All have direct implications for political and educational environments, as well as for how museums should be administered and how exhibits should be presented. But given what we know now about western civilization, is that really what anyone would want to do? Do we really wish to reside only in logic, only in language?
Make no mistake: one cannot emphasize enough the importance of preserving languages in their numerous forms. According to Will Kymlicka and Wayne Norman, writing in Citizenship in Diverse Societies,19 there are/were some 5,000 to 8,000 ethno-cultural groups in the world spread across some 200
20