Politics - 6 - [Draft]**

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§ 9 Anthropological Foundations of Politics — Language and the Human Political Animal

The Social Nature of Language, the Human Mind, and Man as Influence-Seeker

At the deepest levels of humanity — language, communication and self-conciousness — man is a social being, as opposed to a pure individual. He is affected by the perspectives and responses of other individuals and the constraints that emerge in the process of coordinating several human action. His identity is tied to relations with other individuals and the institutions and effects on him of human interaction. He is a relational being, not an owner of monadic qualities — such as exclusively personal rights — that are falsely supposed to ensure a natural and absolute autonomy of the individual.

There is no such thing as self-ownership — any possessive status, indeed any right, must be (a) fought out or (b) negotiated with other human claimants, or (c) accepted or (d) endured on account of results brought about by the action of other humans. There are no rights other than those commanding temporary social acceptance subject to contestation by other members of the community and eventual withdrawal. In short: social relationships are all-pervasive in defining the individual's scope; they make up the texture of sanctioned and forbidden relations that stake out latitude and limits of individual self-expression.

In order to manage his identity, and the attendant personal interests, he must relate to others, engage in and handle relationships that feed back into the profile and the limits of his individuality. 

Man is bound to be the target of influence exerted by other agents. He can deal with these influences  and his own needs only by becoming an influence-seeker himself, trying to affect what affects him, impacting back what seeks to impact him, or initiating acts of influencing to advance his interests. 

Political Conduct Is Built Into Human Nature

Therefore, in his most fundamentally human condition, man is a political animal, a political agent, the source of political designs. True, gradually politics becomes a specialised branch of the division of labour among human beings, boasting a dedicated infrastructure, institutions—royal courts, parties, parliaments etc—and a political order—aristocracy, monarchy, democracy etc.

However, this should not make us forget that eventually politics becomes a special practice, even a profession, only because the fundamental force of politics is inherent in the human condition as it inevitably makes itself felt in the ordinary conduct of human life. We have always been political, even before we specialised in politics as a distinct form of art and artisanship, craft and wizardry, pastime and profession. To be human is to be political.

Diversity and conflict, the capacity and need to exert and balance influence among human beings, inhere in the most basic of all human characteristics: the ability to employ the human language, to speak as only a human does. Everything specifically human flows from this crucial competence, which is naturally social, conflict-inducing but also conflicting-resolving.

 

The Political Nature of Language and Human Intelligence

Animals do not negotiate. They do not alter what is fixed by instinct. Man transcends instinct. He does things that nature would not allow him to do. He flies, he is cosy and warm in the winter, he sees things that nature does not allow him to see. He acts against what are settled issues, as far as nature is concerned. Man changes the framework that conditions him. He does so thanks to a language that allows him to expand his intelligence beyond its innate scope, and he pursues this project not only as a private agent but by linking up the entire species in an incessant pursuit of enhancing and transforming the knowledge by which he is guided through life.

The practice of language creates objectivity among human beings. It makes (parts of) our innermost experiencing—something incommunicable in other animals—accessible to examination by alien minds. Human objectivity—the exposure of private thought to public scrutiny—means that our minds interpenetrate. We admit another person to our thoughts, even in stating something as trivial as "It's a lovely day". The pronouncement has invited another person to share what is going on in my mind, to take possession—in a sense—of my thoughts by co-experiencing, empathising, evaluating, doubting, challenging, correcting, denying the part of my inner that gets released to the outside world through language. 

The use of human language is a public act. Naturally interpersonal, it lifts the veil of privacy from our thoughts. The use of human language is a social act, a practice whereby we engage in social relationships, an event whereby we relate to one another by entering into the minds of other people. Language is intensely social. It creates relations between people—relations of mutual influencing. What I say affects the listener; what I say or write, for that matter, is an influence on her, however minute or banal. It adds at least an accent to our relationship. Such as when my chattering causes a silent stranger at the neighbouring table in a café to think "Can't he just shut up!"

The urge to actively alter or to react to the way another person behaves comes in the same package that gives us language and with it insight into the intimate world of another person's experience, advanced learning skills, a supple and rich imagination, and access—by written documents and hearsay—to the dead and the millions that we do not and will never know in person. Language makes us position ourselves vis-à-vis other people whose utterances stimulate and mould our dispositions, as expressed when we say or think: "what a boring thing to say!", "careful, she does not understand that ...", "I will not tolerate this!", "I think he likes me",  "oh, I see! That's how it works", "good thing, he does not realise x, I can go ahead as planned".

An Unending Supply of Political Scarcity, the Productive Power of Dissent, and the Politicising Logic of Liberty

By default, language makes us mutually attentive, connected to one another, and with varying degrees socially invasive. While it makes us intrude and quarrel and disagree and multiply the rivalry of views and interests dispersed among humans, it is at the same time a competitive force imposing on us discipline and severe evolutionary pressure to enlist cooperative strategies in our struggle for survival.

Both conflict and cooperation are the outcome of human learning, our language-based ability to adapt to new insights and possibilities. 

The human capacity to differ on the kinds of social practices deemed desirable is infinite, and so is the range of options to exercise influence in favour of old and new social regularities. For that reason, ultimately, politics is indeterminate in its directions and outcomes. Which is one of the reasons why we do not know the future, and one of the reasons that politics will always be supreme over principles. Not that principles are necessarily undesirable; but first, they can never cover all circumstances, not even some of the important ones; and second, they are subject to interpretation owing to man's language-based capacity for diverse views and the necessity for men to assert divergent interests; and third, they need to adjust and change, while such alteration can be accomplished only by external ingress, that is by political influence-taking. 

Observance of certain principles will tend to improve politics. Yet, politics cannot be fully determined by principles, for politics—efforts at influencing what counts as valid in a human community—is the force that translates human learning into social change and inexorably erodes and renews principles.

Insistence on principles is sure to be specious if it insinuates the possibility of guiding action unmediated by politics and thus uncoupled from the expression of different views and interests that is as ubiquitous as human individuality.

Freedom's aims—admission and defence of the rights of the individual—necessitate the democratising spread of politics in society. Liberty therefore means that more people have more scope and options to participate in the political game by which we try to influence one another so as to see our views and interests reflected in the values and mores, the rules, and collectively tenable decisions that shape the face of the community in which we live.

This implies the admission of an equal right to participate in contentious politics and a consequential diffusion of dissent in unprecedented multiplicity and unreservedness throughout society—to the purpose that none of the information is suppressed which is needed for the members of society to understand each other and balance their views and interests.

Freedom is the exit from a state of society that has prevailed for the longest period in human history, a repressive and impoverishing state of imprisonment that has been preventing the equal participation of all human beings in politics and the fullest unfolding of the inherently human desire to influence one another.

We now turn to the historical transition from repressive closed access societies to the open access society of modern freedom, whose signature is the double politicisation of society, firstly by including all members of society in the political process, and secondly by broadening politics to embrace the newly created latitudes for influencing society and its members that are opened up to the individual by but greater privacy and personal autonomy.

Continued here.