I. The Atlantic Perspective and the emergence of a Concrete West
What is a “Perspective”? Paradigm, Perspective, Ideology
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What is a “Perspective”? Paradigm, Perspective, IdeologyA perspective is a view of the future, connected to a view of the past and present, held by a conscious moral agent. Every conscious moral agent, whether individual or collective, has to have a perspective, even if the perspective itself is only half-conscious. It is necessary for the functioning of the mind and for the action of the body; and for the identity and self-affirmation of the agent. There is, then, necessarily an Atlantic Perspective. It aspires to serve as a perspective for the entire Atlantic world as a collective moral agent. Meanwhile the supporters of a united Atlantic world are the moral agents who hold it, plus or minus a few points, as a perspective. It is embedded in the institutions of the Concrete West as their original perspective from their founders and founding programs, and in varying degrees of semi-consciousness, as their continuing or implied perspective. An envisaged future is sometimes predicted antiseptically, sometimes with desire. If antiseptic, then it provides a basis for expectations positive or negative, and for plans of action or counteraction. If desired, it serves more consistently as an orientation for an agent’s efforts. This is the characteristic of perspectives. The view of the past and present provides as a basis for the view of the plausible future. Desired futures in turn provide a basis for selecting features to emphasize from the past. This creates a self-reinforcing cycle of thought that is not too dangerous as long as it is viewed in a normal way, as one of many selective views of past and future, but viciously circular when viewed as exclusive -- as the essence of all past history and as foretelling the inevitable future (as in the famous doctrine that “all history is the history of class struggle”, and the class struggle inevitably comes to a final revolution and an end in Communism). The Atlantic Perspective has elements of both description and prescription. In its descriptive form, it draws upon the facts and tendencies of the past growth of the Atlantic space and its unity and role in the world, in order to project a future, or a plausible range of potential futures, of that space and of its unity and role. In its prescriptive form, it draws lessons from the past and for supporting choices among the potential futures that go in the direction of further unity and continued large roles. The lessons of the past provide reasons for desiring the more Atlanticist of the future scenarios; they justify an effort to facilitate the arrival of that future. This can be readily seen in our original set of propositions. Perspective and Paradigm. A paradigm differs in a subtle yet central way from a perspective. A perspective is a framework for relating thought to action, meant for a moral agent or rational agent; all such agents have perspectives, conscious or not. A paradigm is a framework for theorization, prediction, and research, not a synoptic view of past-present-future with a view to embedding and guiding an actor’s choices; it is meant for debate and study, and as such, is more prevalent in the academic world. However, there is an overlap. Paradigms and perspectives inform one another. Moreover: Academics are moral agents, not just researchers. They necessarily have a perspective, and more often than not their perspective is intimately bound up with their paradigm. This is a source of much confusion. We will untangle some of the resultant misunderstandings in Part III. An ideology is a comprehensive doctrine or perspective that claims too much for itself. An ideology often proclaims the essence of the past and an inevitable future; it poses as an objective factual doctrine, or as an incontestable paradigm for thinking, rather than acknowledging its subjective aspect as a perspective that serves to orient not purely objective scientists but ordinary subjective agents. Incidentally, Marx, despite being highly ideological by our definition, himself defined ideology as “false consciousness”, meaning a particular interest or subjective viewpoint that pretends to be of universal interest or objective validity, and imposes itself on the public mind for the benefit of its particular interest. It is equivalent to Niebuhr’s definition of sin, in which selfish interest puts itself ahead of the universal interest of God, and goes on to create vicious circularities by claiming to speak on behalf of God. In a more lax definition, used by later Marxists who admitted having an ideology of their own, an ideology is any doctrine that is connected with a group, exalts it, and serves its interest. Socialism is thus the ideology of advocates of a state- or socially-planned economy (supposedly it belongs to the working class), political liberalism is an ideology of the chattering classes, nationalism is an ideology of a nation. This is a fair usage in the sense of being tolerant, acknowledging that everyone sins, every doctrine has its sin of bias, and that this sin needs to be watched but need not be assumed fatal or counted as disproving the doctrine. By this definition, it would be fair to call Atlanticism an ideology of the Atlantic world, if enough people in the Atlantic world were familiar with it; as things stand, it can at most be called an intended ideology of the Atlantic world, or of the Atlantic institutions. However, the lax definition misses the reasons why “ideology” is considered a harsher appellation than “doctrine”. Among those reasons are: the systematic character of ideology, its invasion of realms of knowledge where it is not competent, its pretensions to exclusive virtue and exclusive hold on truth, its blurring of Fact with Value, treating the universally valid Ought as deducible from its depiction of the Is, its speaking in the name of God or History, its absolute praise of its side and absolute damnation of critics, its expurgations and sending of deviationists to hell, its creation of vicious circles in the mind -- both the individual minds of adherents and the collective mind of the group that has a sense of ownership of it as “its” ideology. In this sense of the word, which is probably the closest to the intended meaning in ordinary usage, Marxism is a quintessential ideology; so is fascism; so are the political religions or fundamentalisms. Monarchism, liberalism, conservatism are not ideologies, at least not in their main streams; they are ideologies only peripherally, among minority subcultures within them. In this more precise and damning sense of “ideology”, the Atlantic Perspective is not an ideology. Its pretensions are few. It sticks to a specialized area. It acknowledges itself as a perspective and as a doctrine with an “ought”, perhaps because the Is-Ought distinction is, as we noted earlier, native to the Atlantic area and is pervasive in the political culture of Western liberalism; it does not pretend to be solely a paradigm of the “is”, or deny the fact-value distinction. It is concerned with overcoming the vicious circles of nationalist reasoning. To be sure, it uses facts, values, praise, and blame; and any such combination creates an opening for circularity, even if it is short on the social support networks that would give rise to a collective circularity of reasoning. Where circularity does exist in the discourse of Atlantic institutions, it is on specific matters of their work (such as the circularities that used to exist in NATO on the Soviet Union, branding all friendly overtures from it as a plot to divide NATO; or the circularities in international economic institutions of hastily branding alternative policies as protectionist); they rarely discuss Atlantic doctrine at all. All institutions praise support for their policies and condemn a bit unfairly any opposition to it; they are all susceptible to group-think circularities; that is the nature of institutions, and should not be assumed the fault of their specific doctrines. All doctrines, no matter how honest, have a potential for being used as ideologies; all perspectives have their cultures or milieus, within which some subcultures are extreme, viciously circular, and ideological. The Atlantic Perspective necessarily also has such a potential for misuse by subcultures among its supporters. But in its main stream, it cannot be counted as an ideology. Directory: gifiles -> attach attach -> British Forces – Akrioti, Greece Griffin Fighter Squadron (84 Squadron raf) MoD announced possible Typhoon and Tornado arrivals to the base France attach -> Russia 110204 Basic Political Developments attach -> Unclassified//for official use only attach -> Adaptability Sustainment attach -> Pop-up 1 ("C" Chechnya) Header Text: Emir of the Caucasus Emirate Doku Umarov Image attach -> Russia and Islam are not Separate attach -> Chapter 13: The Northern Caucasus attach -> Russia 100209 Basic Political Developments attach -> The evolution attach -> The devolution Download 370.03 Kb. Share with your friends:
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