The Dreamer, a member of the Vro-Hi species:
"'...was working further on the philosophical basis which the Second Empire must have.'" (pp. 211-212)
In our history, no one worked out the philosophical basis for a civilization, then built the civilization! Plato and Hegel understandably but mistakenly thought that ideas preceded realities. In reality, people worked to survive, then produced a surplus which supported more complex societies in which a minority had the leisure to philosophize. Thales and the other pre-Socratics theorized about the constituents of matter and nature but Socrates preferred to analyze concepts and his disciple, Plato, made the mistake of thinking that concepts or "Ideas" were primary whereas the manual labour of slaves which fed Greek aristocrats and philosophers was secondary.
Later theorists analyzed, rationalized and criticized the material/economic basis of their society, e.g., Adam Smith and Karl Marx. Maybe a Vro-Hi philosopher can conceptualize in advance of the building of a new society but, if so, he can do this only on the basis of all that has gone before on Earth and elsewhere.
3 comments:
Well, civilizations need a bit of elaboration on "my tribe good, your tribe bad, kill-kill-kill". Not that that changes things fundamentally, but it's comforting to people who think about it.
And of course the longer civilization lasts, the more elaborate the philosophical basis gets.
Kaor, Mr. Stirling!
Exactly, which is why I am always going to remain skeptical/distrustful of attempts at working out the "philosophical" basis of a civilization. The most I'll allow is that some realistic, hardheaded philosophers like Adam Smith and Edmund Burke made OBSERVATIONS of how human beings behaved and formulated broadly accurate explanations of their behavior. Including explanations of types of activities which are broadly beneficial. And what made them beneficial.
Ad astra! Sean
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