01 Mar On Liberalism

Alastair Beattie

Liberalism is an English word that is understood internationally. It always signifies a movement away from the kingdom or republic as an ideal to the use of physical force. In this paper we are going to see why it is that in China, India, Africa, Europe and North America we use English as both a trade language and as the language of science. As a trade language the intention is to improve commerce as a collective activity. It is not used as rhetoric, that is as a means of legal persuasion, or as academic argument.

Introduction

Liberalism cannot produce political freedom because by definition participation in any political system demands compliance to the rules of that system. The leaders of the system must be obeyed, but this is not necessarily a passive obedience. Rather than passivity and the masochistic attitude which is its formidable result, the position is that of active confrontation.

The word for this confrontation is prosopon, adopted from the Greek. It is a military term and literally means the style of confrontation used to approach the enemy; a phalanx (dividing the enemy into two parts) or else a cavalry charge, or artillery bombardment (usually the catapult) but today would include the deployment of tanks and aircraft along with submarine torpedos, as well as exploratory space ships heading out beyond our solar system in order to extend a chain of military bases.

Part 1

As we have seen, liberalism moves away from the ideal line; which mathematically or geometrically may be considered as a series of points united by the impetus of the geometer archetype. This is the type or principle of the lover of knowledge as an individual, or as a collective, such as is the Kingdom, the Republic, or the City in the Sky; the Acropolis. Most venerable of archetypes is the City of the Sun, Heliopolis, source of light, and also center to which all photons return.

Inasmuch as the resistance to the materialist tyrant is of a military character it is not involved with gender dispute, or even gender mention, let alone sexual quirks. English is gender free and has been so since before the Renaissance. What is important in a military situation is rank. The soldier obeys the superior male or female since both are serving together and must maintain combat readiness.

To return to the language of science that is mathematics; once on this ground, gender consists only of the gender assigned to rational and irrrational numbers. Rational numbers, or surds, are used to measure straight lines, and the plane sufaces, which are their extension, are considered to be masculine. The irrational or feminine numbers used to measure circles and cones are not motivated by reason, but by feeling.

In regard to the geometer archetype, we know that the geometer is not interested in the figure or form  which emerges from the lines and their extension as surfaces. And if we take the square root of the area of the form we have the continuously increasing space of the growing universe. Vice versa, in the other scenario, we see a space that is ever diminishing. However, this space is never completely lost.

It is in the polarity of rational and irrational numbers that an ancient mystery lies; we can never know the area of a circle, but in the expanding or growing universe it is always increasing. On the other hand, if the energy within the circle is decreasing, we have entropy, which is the loss of energy in a system. This is true not only of physical systems, but also of political systems. Liberalism, in that it is in conflict with totalitarianism, loses the energy of the dictatorship. We can count on our fingers the despots of the recent past who ranted on the existence of tyranny and the slavish obedience which it demanded.

The classical prosopon paradigm is that of Athena’s resistance to her father Zeus. In the action of liberals today, we see it in the continuous struggle against tyranny. If we understand the archetypal father as creator it is clear that creative imagination is necessary on every front. In respect to circles as symbols of archetypal principles; for instance the sun as the source, or the planet Mars as conflict, these circular bodies emerge as symbols.

We have seen that a growing circle is one scenario, and that a diminishing circle is another. In the case of diminishment, the final point is a single atom; but it is an atom that never disappears, it is never completely lost. The entity which the atom represents, whether it is conflict, or whether it is love, never disappears. This is part of the mystery of both mathematical figures and the figures that represent idea forms.

Conclusion

To sum up: we see that the object of our investigation here, which is the term liberalism, without elaborating the multiple facets of its manifestation in history or in any anticipated future development, is not limited to politics. Liberalism has resonances in philosophy of every kind, and in psychology, both clinical and philosophical.

Alastair Beattie

Professor of Education

University of The Andes, Venezuela

Author, Cambridge Books

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Referencias

Imagen: Obra «Escribiendo una letra», de William Hemsley