There is certainly no shortage of homes for spiritual seekers to choose among in this multifaceted world of ours. Conventionally speaking they seem to range from large institutional religions with historically deep traditional roots to contemporary charismatic spiritual movements with leadership who guide their aspiring flocks. In nearly every case, subscribing to a pious preference involves at least two inherent features—a community of like-minded disciples and a systematized doctrine exhibiting a path toward some conception of salvation. To many of the world’s spiritually inclined, these generalized qualities appear to be readily acceptable.

I contend, however, that there are a number of spiritual searchers who prefer a solo quest, the contours of which they construct individually, intentionally, and perhaps idiosyncratically. For them, the journey is every bit as stimulating and motivating as is endorsing any finalized faith or settled belief. It is to this type of explorer, this uncertain but committed pathfinder, that I dedicate the following words. I too desire a fidelity to a conviction of the universe, to a conceivable reality, and to all-there-is which feels at least plausible and hopefully authentic. By taking some time now to assess where I am currently in this effort may add some color to the perspective of others as they contemplate the big questions of God and nature and the metaphysical roles they play.

A significant shift in my spiritual contemplations occurred when I encountered Baruch Spinoza. And no, I am not going in the direction of branding Spinoza as some type of philosophical guru. Instead, I will say that what initially struck me as remarkable about this Portuguese/Dutch Jew from the seventeenth century was his enlightened and novel approach to perceiving God. He endured profound ostracism in order to present us with an idea that God was not a transcendent and distant all-powerful entity manipulating the universe from afar, but rather a living and animating force that pervades and is present in all things always. The suggestion that God is in us and in all things universally, most strikingly in Nature, instantly connected with me.

It is difficult for us humans to not think in terms of all-we-know in spatial and temporal terminology. The metaphysical implications of space and time provide plenty of grist for philosophers to mill, which is as it should be. Given the lack of consensus of the phenomenal vs noumenal role played by space and time ontologically, I accept that my perception of everything, including God, will be for now influenced by my consideration of the positioning and everlastingness of this divine potency. So, Spinoza’s claim becomes more coherent when he locates God universally as opposed to transcendentally. God becomes an inherent and elemental force in all of creation in contrast to a distant overseer of creation for all time. This spatial imagery especially resonates. It makes sense and feels right.

Speaking of imagery, another subjective benefit of this all-pervasive view of God is that the anthropomorphism commonly associated with conventional explanations of a transcendent being does not transfer at all well to an acceptance of God as the inherent essence of all-there-is. I have long been annoyed with the symbolism of God as a Zeus-like figure perched on high dispensing avowals of one sort or another down on His hapless figures scurrying about on the world He created. I have always imagined that this metaphorical style was considered more accessible to an unsophisticated populace. Perhaps, but now the notion of a supreme commanding figure appears to be a monarchical device meant to keep everyone in a holy line. This father God story may work for many as an adequate religious trope, but it does not work for me.

Spinoza’s identifying of a unified, immanent, and monistic reality is known as pantheism. This was not a term coined by Spinoza or by any of his forebearers. The descriptor begins to appear twenty years after Spinoza’s death in 1677. However, the conviction of a universal divine presence expressed in all things has a history that undoubtedly influenced Spinoza in his crafting of a systemized monistic metaphysic. There is evidence that the presocratics, in particular Heraclitus, spoke of the world as infused with an active Logos or natural order manifest in Nature itself. In time, the Stoics continued the sentiment of Logos as the force structuring all of creation. They promoted a view of a universal soul that merged God and Nature. Plotinus of Neoplatonism fame also pointed to a basic monistic power that defines all beings. The Irish philosopher and theologian John Scotus in the ninth century merged Neoplatonism with Christianity such that God was embodied in and of the world blurring a sharp distinction between creator and creation.

During the Renaissance of the fifteenth to seventeenth centuries a natural philosophy began to be developed which involved revisiting ancient philosophical texts, challenging medieval church orthodoxy, and refining views of the natural world. Two names from this period stand out in a discussion of pantheism. Giordano Bruno constructed a system that embraced the growing outlook of an expansive universe populated by numerous worlds that were all expressions of an immeasurable God. He spoke of a world soul that energized a natural universe, and which was not dissociated from God. Tommaso Campanella described nature as a living organism evinced by an all-encompassing awareness directed by God. The notion of an internal and omnipresent Soul or Logos combining God and the natural world became more established during this period.

How directly these western influences impacted Spinoza’s formulation of pantheism is unclear. We do know that his intellectual investigations were rooted in three source domains: Jewish scripture presented rabbinically, the Latin humanist and philosophical canon of his time, and the Jewish-Islamic-Aristotelian philosophical hybrid constructed by the twelfth century Jewish intellectual Maimonides. As a Sephardic Jew living in the Netherlands, he benefited intellectually from availability of a rich Jewish and Latin body of thought with the freedom to scrutinize texts and doctrine while in the context of a liberal and tolerant Dutch scholarly environment. Indeed, it is ironic that it was his fellow Jewish exiles from the Spanish Inquisition who were the ones imposing an excommunication on Baruch Spinoza over the very issue of his pantheistic declaration.

Orthodoxies strikingly similar to pantheism were to be found in other parts of the globe over the past two millennia or so, although transmission of these principles were largely unlikely to have been made aware to Spinoza. Let us take a quick look at some disparate examples. One includes classical Hindu nondualism known as Advaita Vedānta which claims that Brahman is the supreme divine reality. A separate world of appearances, or Maya, is chimerical or deceptive, since in truth it is merely a manifestation of the one Brahman. The parallels of Dao with pantheism is another instance of note. Both spiritual approaches share a belief in the ultimate reality being a living whole, a diffuse harmony here in the world before us, not elsewhere in a distant realm. Both reject a creator-creation dualism, but both embrace following nature as a virtuous path. There can also be identified a kinship between pantheism and Native American spiritual beliefs. The sacred is immanent throughout all existence within many Indigenous cultures, not unlike pantheism’s divinity of Nature. There is no differentiation between being in relationship with Nature and with great spirits or God. The land, rivers, and air are vivacious, alive, hallowed, and in harmony with people. Many other such correlations between pantheism and other spiritual/philosophical customs around the world can be revealed.

One heritage that likely impacted Spinoza’s development of a pantheistic paradigm came from his own education as a Jewish youth in seventeenth century Amsterdam in the form of the Jewish mysticism known as Kabbalah. It is entirely plausible that Spinoza was exposed to Kabbalistic writings, notions, and teachers. Primarily he would have gained from them the observance and liturgical practices associated with an unorthodox monism. This was expressed in Kabbalah as consisting of an infinite God being in communion with its creation of a finite existence. In this mystical view infinite possibilities are imaginable within this relationship of the infinite and the finite. A divine conscious presence is shared between God and God’s creation making all-there-is dependent manifestations of God with nothing existing beyond it. The universe is to be understood as revealing of the sacred reality.

As was Spinoza’s inclination, he did not accept wholesale the Kabbalistic interpretation of theism. He found it too oriented toward a personal God with an imposition of commandments and covenants on the finite world. Spinoza would have found this flavor of theism closer to what today we call panentheism, a pantheistic and transcendence hybrid. Rather Spinoza wanted his pantheism to have a highly rational and mathematical precision, a mechanistic and determinist outlook regarding God and Nature. As influential as Kabbalah mysticism presumably was on Spinoza, the rupture between his highly rational description of the relationship between God and the world and the more deferential Kabbalistic teachings of the faith’s elders led to Spinoza’s banishment from Amsterdam’s Jewish community. Regardless, pantheism now had an established presence in western philosophy and theology.

Spinozian pantheism was not initially well received. Indeed, it was harshly attacked. In general, ideas that disrupt the conventional wisdom, especially if there is institutional calcification defending a prominent position, meet with fierce resistance and obstruction. Many movements succumb to the onslaught. Pantheism did not. To be sure, Spinoza himself was cast out of Amsterdam and the Jewish community by the Jewish upper crust. He retreated to the Dutch city of Leyden where he spent the remainder of his short life working out his highly rational and deterministic philosophical system. In many decades following his death, pantheism and Spinozism were widely seen among the European intellectual elite as terms of derision. Charges of fatalism, moral degradation, and atheism accompanied the memory of Baruch Spinoza. The “civilized” western world was not yet ready to consider a philosophical or theological challenge to the idea of a personal or transcendent deity and the merger of Nature and God.

At this point I will admit to feeling one great hesitancy with Spinoza’s philosophy, which I see as tangential to his pantheism, although I accept that many others may see it as more integral. My reluctance pertains to the immoderation of his rationalism which led to a deterministic and mechanized view of the universe, and by extension to the divine. Therein lies a big problem. If the universe is so pre-programmed as to unfold in an exact and predictable manner, then where does spontaneity, variability and even chaos fit in? Foregone destiny seems too regulated. Free will could not exist within such a highly reasoned and algorithmic paradigm. Nullifying human self-determination is to rob people of an essential feature of their character.

Spinoza’s short life briefly overlapped with the later years of Rene Descartes, the philosopher most credited with the onset of modern philosophy and with the western devotion to rationalism and science. Clearly, Descartes influenced Baruch Spinoza. The excitement to elevate human potential through rational thought and mathematical precision while emerging from the stilted palsy of medieval scholasticism is understandable. That it inspired Spinoza and led to a lasting mark on western philosophy is evident. However, as we have seen, not everyone took readily to pantheism. Many did not easily embrace determinism either. Indeed, over time and due to its ardent rejection by the seventeenth and eighteenth century elites of Europe, pantheism shaped a debate that altered the course of western philosophy.

Gotthold Ephraim Lessing was an influential and well known eighteenth century philosopher, playwright, promoter, and art critic who is today recognized as having significantly impacted German literature. So, it came as a great surprise in the philosophical and literary world when in 1785 the German philosopher Friedrich Heinrich Jacobi disclosed that in his last conversation with Lessing his colleague revealed, “There is no other philosophy than the philosophy of Spinoza.” This revelation incited what is known as the Enlightenment’s “Pantheism Controversy” within what was to be German Idealism. The intellectual world in Europe had not forgiven Spinoza for his blasphemy. His works were still widely banned. Therefore, the sentiment of Lessing was a shock to the refined minds of the elite. What ensued was a vigorous debate that in many ways defined the German Idealism movement.

In my judgment, the resurrection of pantheism in the midst of Enlightenment-era rationality added a greater degree of validity and panache to the notion of God and Nature being one even as the conception underwent intense investigation and criticism. History appears to bear this out. Pantheism’s reemergence generated disputes that remain unresolved to this day. In particular there are the dual conflicts of reason vs. faith and freedom vs. determinism. Jacobi, mentioned above, contended that absolute reason inevitably led to a deterministic universe devoid of freedom, individuality, and a personal and providential God. Faith must have precedence over reason he argued. Pure reason looks upon God-Nature existence as axioms from which deductively arrived upon proven statements are derived. It is difficult to see where human moral responsibility fits into such a universe.

A redefinition of pantheism eventually surfaced which included variations of an acceptance of a vital, spirited, and divine Nature with human agency as a core shaping element of God-Nature. I see this notably in the work of Friedrich Wilhelm Joseph Schelling (1775-1854), one of the principals of German Idealism. As with other German idealists, Schelling attempted to reconcile Spinoza’s divinity of Nature with the unacceptable predestinarianism of Spinoza’s rationalism. Schelling devoted his life and philosophical inquires to refining Spinozian pantheism. The depth and richness of his work is far beyond the scope of this essay, but I will summarize his crucial contribution this way.

Schelling elaborates the sacredness of Nature magnificently in his Naturphilosophie (Nature of Philosophy). He described Nature as infused with and expressive of spirit such that it is ever energetic and changing; always inventive and autonomous; and consistently self-becoming, self-regulating, and self-generating. Nature in Schelling’s world is not inert and listless or the product of a remote God, but rather forever developing organically toward cultivation and improvement. Schelling gives devout texture and definition to the qualities of sanctified Nature. This description clearly aligns with Spinoza’s God and Nature oneness.

With regards to human agency, I am struck by Schelling’s conflating of the ceaseless unfolding of God-Nature with the continual emergence inherent within the human condition. Schelling proposed a radical idea that the one true reality was not, nor ever has been, a finished product but rather an unending process of expansion, evolution, and progress. Fixed laws of nature did not arise from a starting point of time unchanged and left hanging like a framed painting hanging in a gallery. And since we humans are a direct expression of the One, as is all of Nature, we too live our existences in a state of growth and potential with freedom to choose life’s path. Schelling makes clear that the divine condition is a struggle between a chaotic darkness and a liberating light. It is within this cosmic churn that we each craft our lives. Yes, God and Nature are one, and a crucial feature of this unity is how we each flower, how we each flourish, or not. The process of becoming is fundamental to all of existence, including to ourselves.

Pantheism had traversed from chastisement and damning from the time of Spinoza through to the reform attempts during the period of German Idealism. In the years since the early nineteenth century pantheism has refused to expire. Indeed, it lives on as an influence in a number of philosophical and literary approaches. Romanticism writers, artists, and philosophers had an effect of adorning the heavily rationalist approach of Spinoza’s pantheism with odes, poems, hymns, landscapes, and a reverence for Nature as sacred. In their reaction to the Enlightenment’s emphasis on reason the Romantics chose instead to smooth the differences between Nature, God, rational metaphysics, and the self. True reality was expressed in terms of emotions, imagery, and yes, the unity of Nature and the holy. Ordinary people were encouraged to be awe-inspired by Nature, ecstatic before the vastness and intricacies of the natural world, and comforted by the embrace of the world-spirit whose presence was all around them.

In time, pantheism retained varying degrees of relevancy in the philosophical trends of the late nineteenth and twentieth centuries. It was less meaningful in the context of the English speaking world’s immersion into logical analysis with its concentration of language and logic. However, continental philosophy and its tradition of phenomenology turns out to be a more welcoming environment for the monism of pantheism. Theologians unsurprisingly have struggled with any alternative to their theistic model of a transcendent God, but even among the world’s great religions there are those who are less threatened with the divine immanence quality of pantheism. To some it makes sense and it feels right even if the concept is not preached from on high. Today, pantheism lives on in debates about God, Nature, ontology, and reason. Encouragingly, pantheism appears to be more widely accepted and endorsed nowadays than at any other time in modern history.

Speaking of my own spiritual journey, pantheism at my late stage of life is highly relevant and worthy of my continued consideration. As one who has not fit well into dogmatic traditions and their institutions, the view of a God and Nature harmony resonates plainly and warmly. It is not difficult for me to assign faith, that trust inspired conviction which we all settle on in our own very personal ways, to pantheism. May my heart and mind change fundamentally concerning this topic in the future? Possibly it will. However, I do not see this happening soon. Rather, I am content to see my faith in pantheism as rooted in three themes that form the structure of my personal metaphysics.

Call it the One, the Logos, the Word, the Collective Soul, All-There-Is, the Divine, or God the common throughline is the monism of reality. All of what is known to us, from matter and energy detected by us through our five senses to the most rudimentary a priori intuition and cognitive capacities we are born with reveals reality and fundamental truth as springing forth from a single all-powerful and all-inclusive wellspring.

Divinity is not restricted to an external and transcendent deity, but is instead infused throughout all of reality. Separating the divine from the commonplace implies naturally higher and lower orders. This does not feel right. Humans, because of our fallibilities, assume we are unwholesome in a fundamental way. Yet, the whole package of the evil and the sublime throughout the universe are features of the immanent divine.

Nature, including humankind, is not a produced entity manipulated and managed from afar, but is the basic, if not exclusive manifestation of the divine one. The genesis of reality is centered on God’s impulse of self-awareness. Not unlike how consciousness is our way of seeing and knowing ourselves, the divine too expresses itself to itself. Nature is the self-identification of God, inextricably bound and related.

To the seeker, the curious, the wanderer, and the explorer I encourage an examination of pantheism. A faith-based construction comprising the three themes mentioned above provide a starting point for the searcher who is not afraid to step out of the conventional religious models in their quest for a meaningful and subjective spiritual home. May we all find life enhancing revelation and light on our journeys.

There is a vast and deep pool of erudite thought in western philosophy pertaining to process philosophy. I am strangely attracted to it even though I find it maddeningly reality warping. Easily recognizable is that this branch of philosophy is a bold attempt at offering an alternative paradigm to the conventional wisdom of materialist philosophy. Beyond that point however, the ontological and epistemological landscape becomes other worldly. Process philosophy wants to take us on a different kind of phenomenal trail. One that transcends all that was thought and accepted for a lifetime about actuality, about authenticity.

I have been delving seriously into western philosophy for five years now. So, when process philosophy started to take hold of me approximately two years ago I had enough of a developed base to be ready to try to comprehend it. Little did I expect that this was to be the daunting cognizance challenge it had turned out to be. It is fine to accept that committing to understanding process philosophy means for me a lengthy and at times confusing endeavor. Nothing wrong with being a beginner at something new. However, what strikes me most at this early stage of the learning is the mental disruption process philosophy is generating.

Before going further, this might be a good time to explain what I mean by process philosophy. The concept first grabbed my attention during my initial chronological study of the history of western philosophy when I was introduced to Alfred North Whitehead (1861-1947). A mathematician, logician, and physicist during the early part of his career he eventually shifted his attention and scholarship to philosophy and metaphysics. This transformation was much more than a career evolution. Whitehead proposed a radically different ontology to explain the nature of existence. He told us that reality is not formed by discreet elements of matter that exist autonomously, but rather that the fundamentals of all-there-is consists of the interrelationships among processes. Whitehead upset conventional wisdom by telling us in essence that the universe is not a noun, but a verb.

Process philosophy has taken on adherents ever since Whitehead and is today a position taken seriously by many credible philosophers both in and out of academia. It is a notion that is both believable and unbelievable—an enigma that both attracts and repels. A good place to gain a foothold with comprehending process philosophy is with the word “becoming”. Everything we know of is in a state of flux. Change which is both predictable and capricious is universal. A consistent theme within this ubiquitous process is the constant repetition of coming into being. Existence appears and disappears, sometimes simultaneously. What is foundational is that all things and events become over and over again. The universe appears to be, indeed, to subsist, in an ever active and regenerative manner.

Where this story gets very strange for western minds is that process has primacy over materialism both philosophically and scientifically. Physical matter constructed from molecules and atoms; the primordial stuff that keeps reshaping itself into everything there is takes either a secondary role within reality or else this galactic fabric is dismissed entirely as illusory. It is in this sharp distinction, this fundamentally divergent framing of certitude where the cognitive muddle begins. What to make of this contrast? Is there an essential truth supporting actual realism and if so, is this truth cleverly obscured or glaringly obvious? A journey into process philosophy will confront you with questioning all you previously thought and believed about what the world and universe are like.

Philosophical idealism has a lot to say. The mind is an immense and elaborate seat of consciousness. The magnitude of its richness and potential is beyond language to explain. Conscious experience appears to be foundational to all there is. Separating reality from pure subjectivity seems like an unprofitable venture aside from a possible interest in exploring metaphysical dualism. Perhaps Plato and Kant were onto something with their phenomenal and noumenal branches of existence. Maybe there is a realm of existence in which things exist in themselves independent of our perceptions. But how will we ever know? Without a mind we can never know if reality lies both within and without our awareness.

Idealism, the view that experience is elemental to sensing reality, in large part set the stage for process philosophy. In addition to jointly recognizing the primacy of experience, idealism and process philosophy also share a belief in the unceasing and dynamic creation of reality, and in a dismissal of static ontological materialism. To be is immutably linked to thinking and to think is an expression of being. To be and to think are active and not fixed states. To be and to think are always hand in hand leaning forward, always together onto the next thing.

One other core and defining element process philosophy and idealism share is an existential opposition to materialism. What I find most unsettling about this resistance to physicality is that I have always seen myself as living in a concrete and physical world made up of substances that naturally occurred as either solids, liquids, or gases. So, is process philosophy telling me and the rest of the western world that we are getting this perception of universal substance all wrong? To make such a declaration gives my brain pause.

Materialism proposes that existence is based entirely upon matter and its infinite configurations. All phenomena, including the workings of mind, are reducible to the constitution of substances and their interactions. As a result of our sensory abilities to perceive reality we have increasingly relied on sensorial observation. Empiricism came to dictate how we define reality. Science emerged as a discipline targeted toward determining predictable behaviors of materials and their interplay. Laws and causal powers of nature became codified, and a general belief arose that as we refined our observational capacity over time we would eventually be able to discern the underlying elements of matter and thereby peer into the true and immutable essence of everything. The materialist viewpoint became central to the conventional wisdom of western thought during the Enlightenment and remains the dominant sentiment to this day.

Resolving the most definitive and conclusive interpretation of nature’s true character, the process approach or the materialist tradition, will not be determined in this essay. Indeed, it may never be settled throughout the long arc of human history. Of note at this present time, however, is how can thinking people examine this process/material dichotomy in a way that beneficially tests ones assumptions, pushes one to seriously consider never before imagined ideas, and very possibly expand ones outlook on what is authentic and real.

The experience of cognitive dissonance comes to mind when contemplating the inclusion of process philosophy into an established materialist belief framework. This has certainly occurred to me. Like I suspect many people do, I was content thinking that the brain, through synaptic firing, gave view to a physical world that was always there and always would be. My brain miraculously gave me a ticket to sensing a universe that spent its time doing what universes do—transferring energy and reconfiguring matter. Idealism, and by extension process philosophy, shook up that lifelong impression. How am I supposed to now know what to believe?

Cognitive dissonance, the mental distress resulting from believing two contradictory ideas, can be a disagreeable place to be. Disequilibrium can be that way. It is a state of conflicting beliefs that leads to confusion and mystery. It is a disruption of values and attitudes that can be unsettling. Where cognitive dissonance gets really impactful is when one’s identity is aligned with one’s beliefs. Adopting new convictions can imperil one’s self-concept. Fortunately for many, this level of consequence pertains more to political opinions or professional scientific careers than to philosophical views. Nevertheless, selecting a novel way of considering the nature of reality does elicit, at the very least, carefully chosen cognitive modifications.

In my case, integrating process philosophy into my formally rigid materialist outlook is going to be, I suspect, a work in progress for some time to come. This endeavor compels me to humbly accept that I have a lot more to learn. Additionally, though, there is also my growing realization that deep ontological perplexities will most likely never be fully understood or universally decided by all of humankind at any given time. Rational investigation at some point yields to faith; a trust in unverifiable beliefs; a safe harbor for troubled minds. Given the chasm of viewpoints across the spectrum of humanity it is the height of haughtiness to think the one unifying theory of everything will ever be found and even more implausibly ever be widely accepted.

Nevertheless, we continue to try to comprehend; to know as much as we can about the primitive and fundamental source of all-there-is. I take some solace in accepting that the tension existing between a more processual or materialistic approach to metaphysics is a good thing. We gain a greater existential breadth and depth through an open minded exploration of both traditions.

The antidote for cognitive dissonance it turns out is to cultivate an ability to think counterfactually. Possessing an ability to envision alternative explanations and to accept the possibility that there may actually be something of value to consider in variant approaches can lessen cognitive rigidity and expand openness. Counterfactual thinking practice may settle for us an acceptable metaphysical paradigm to envision and accept, albeit a fresh one. And if we are lucky, more fluid thinking may even produce benefits far beyond engagement in philosophical debates.

In a world overflowing with demands, temptations, distractions, and possibilities one of life’s great conflicts is how to choose wisely. We discover at a young age that there will be a lifetime of decisions to make and that when selecting a course of action to satisfy making these decisions there is usually a single right way to act and many more wrong ways to act. Most, if not all of us, are compelled to determine which from among the array of options available to us is that one right way to go. Sometimes resolving which way to opt is easy and at other times agonizingly difficult. This very human predicament is as old as time and as relevant as ever during any era, including our own.

The topic I am attempting to introduce is the fraught notion of morality. When contemplating the very concept of rightness, we are necessarily entering into moral choice. For some people I will assume this is not an excruciating endeavor. I imagine there are those who are comfortable with their virtuous outlook on life and do not struggle with knowing what the right thing is to do each and every time they are confronted with a quandary. However, there are a whole lot of others, me included, for whom upright self-guidance is a frequent struggle. It is for us, the less than perfect, the ethically challenged, that I would like to direct the following exploration.

My initiation to morality as both a concept and as a precept was via the Catholic Church. The flavor of Catholicism I knew was practiced in Massachusetts, where I grew up. Therefore, Irish Catholics heavily influenced it. The people, family, neighbors, faith, and culture I first perceived were largely formulated by second and third generation Irish immigrants. I remember there being strict rules of engagement; hard and fast frontiers between what were acceptable thoughts, feelings, and behaviors and which were not. Morality was serious business. I was left more in fear of it rather than of awe, which meant I was compelled to either push against or to recoil in the face of such fear. My general reaction skewed toward confrontation of what I came to see as an onerous set of commands and controls. From the elders’ point of view, I slipped through the cracks.

My story is but one of literally billions of stories of how people are inculcated with moral principles—approximately 117 billion if we count past generations of people now long gone. Moral themes and values are influenced by the cultural traditions from which they arise and by the aptitude of those who take it upon themselves to pass on chaste lessons to the next generation. Therefore, moral truths are a direct reflection of the cultures from which they spring. Beliefs are disseminated with varying degrees of fine-tuning for the times in which they are expressed. As is to be expected, culturally derived morals will either clash with or integrate with the teachings of other traditions. Congruence can engender peace among disparate groups while discord among moral conventions can and does lead to serious conflicts or war.

I am drawn to wanting to understand the nature of morality. In contemplating morality one thing seems quite obvious at first glance. Morality appears to exist most often in a social context. When identifying common cross-cultural moral themes, they mostly pertain to how people should treat one another. Being caring, fair, loyal, respectful, and courageous are ordinarily accepted creeds of a social moral code. These descriptors serve as guidelines for ethical treatment of our fellow individuals. Perhaps, morality only makes sense within a collective situation. If so, that is fine, but accepting morality as commonly shared standards only makes it akin to a set of laws. Valuable and important, yes, but hardly carrying the weight of a divine or sacred fundamental tenet.

Some would point out that morality does have an internal subjective relevance. Another universal credo calls for each of us to be pure and sanctified. Even looking at this belief though, the directive to be spiritually clean comes from traditionally based sources, such as scripture or philosophical texts prepared by others. Morality as an absolutely intrinsic feature of an individual life would need to be a priori—a self-evident realization each of us is born with. The question then becomes, is morality at its core part of our hard-wiring as human beings or is its origin as cultural doctrine developed by wise elders and passed down from generation to generation?

A view for trying to understand the nature of morality can be gained by looking at how the Prussian philosopher Immanuel Kant (1724-1804) addressed this question. Kant is a towering figure in western philosophy. His sophisticated inquiries of ontology, epistemology, political theory, and aesthetics have been remarkably influential. As too have been his contributions to the philosophy of morals. His speculation and analysis about the significance and sources of morality and its role in what it means to be human was a momentous achievement. It is very hard to imagine considering the nature of morality, especially in the western world, without contemplating Kant’s moral system. Of relevance to this essay is the question of whether Kant’s moral philosophy is merely an interesting Enlightenment-era historical relic or if it retains guidance for modern people seeking to understand morality in their lives today.

It is helpful to know that Immanuel Kant was raised in a pietistic Lutheran family, which was a style of Lutheranism dedicated to religious devotion, Biblical literalism, and personal humility. This upbringing certainly influenced his manner and lifestyle. For example, he was known to live a very ordered and disciplined life. However, he devoted his professional life to philosophy, not to religion. That said, his intricate philosophical system regarding morality has a grounding in fundamentals that appear consistent with religious conviction. Kant believed in the requirement that morality must be defined within a framework of universal principle applicable to all people from all cultures. The concept of universality implies sanctified unity originating from a supreme and all-encompassing source. In Kant’s thinking, allegiance to this source is the foundation of moral canon.

As was typical of Kant’s intellectual style, he peered deeply into the essence of how the human mind, in particular its ability to reason, set the stage for each individual to choose the right path, to know what ought to be done, to realize the actions which are good in themselves. Kant identifies the mind’s a priori knowledge, a knowledge that is innate and not dependent on experience; a knowledge which by its very nature presents the human mind with what he calls pure practical reasoning, the springboard of moral law. Here too, we see the impact of Kant’s religious training—a belief in an essential goodness ingrained into the mind of each individual person. However, unlike the precursors of the Enlightenment, such as Descartes and Spinoza, who credited each person’s capacity to think just so far before claiming further responsibility for human cognition rested with God, Kant is content with asserting the human mind has all the potentiality it needs to derive moral truth.

From this starting point, Kant constructs a paradigm consisting of what he calls the Categorial Imperative—the virtuous obligations to be followed. Kant formulated a deontology or an ethical system in which personal conduct was based on what one ought to do and what one was obliged to do. My initial thought upon learning this centered on the author or originator of moral thought and deed. Surely an external and omnipotent presence must be decreeing moral law from on high. But no. Kant’s claim is that true unadulterated morality springs forth from the mind’s pure reasoning, the capacity we each have to exercise our free will such that the right thing should naturally be done. The things which ought to be done are self-generated and internally driven. This is an extraordinary claim and a stark departure from the scholastic theological tradition that dominated Europe since Aquinas. Human reason, the capability to think, draw conclusions, and form judgments are the source of our virtue.

Kant envisioned that collectively we could create a righteous society in which we could ethically monitor ourselves and each other. A community where people would not exploit one another for selfish reasons and where the dignity of each individual was to be respected. Kant’s Categorical Imperative strongly emphasized universality, the notion that human derived rational moral rules applied to all people equitably. A hallmark of the Enlightenment in general was the introduction of individual rights and egalitarianism. Kant contributed to this social advancement as one of the Enlightenment’s most profound thinkers when he implemented universality as a key feature to his morality project. Universality explicitly states that moral treatment of all must be more highly valued than the achievement of personalized consequences such as individual goals or desired outcomes. Respect for all of humanity and all individuals as an end in itself superseding private needs and appetites is a major attribute of the Categorical Imperative.

Another key element of the Categorical Imperative has to do with consistency meaning that moral choice must not contradict rational thought. The standards Kant used to measure rational consistency refer to logical congruity; universality; satisfaction of “perfect duty”; and respect for oneself and for others. I have previously mentioned the roles played by universality and mutual respect in Kant’s moral system, so I will turn my attention to logical congruity and perfect duty.

Logical congruity is my term for what Kant is talking about when he says “contradiction”. Kant cautions against a moral decision that negates reasoned thought. Take the behavior of deception, an example Kant uses in one of his works. He imagines an individual who intends to take a loan he does not plan to pay back. Deception is not moral because if this practice were universalized, then no one would lend money anymore knowing they would not be paid back. The behavior of deception contradicts the action of borrowing. This would be an immoral detriment to society because lending is an economically viable procedure. The same could be said of lying. If lying became a universal custom, then we would not believe one another leading to a serious social inefficiency, if not flaw, in the use of language. Practical language usage would be contradicted. Hence, lying is immoral. Similar examples can be imagined regarding theft, violence, infidelity, etc.

Perfect duty according to Kant refers to strict adherence by each individual (and collections of individuals) to consistently follow moral truths that feature universality, avoidance of contradiction, and reciprocal respect. To be a moral person means to guide oneself into choosing perfect duties at all times. We should fully realize the necessity of exercising perfect duties. A mind that is focused on pure practical reason, as Kant calls it, will naturally be a moral mind. It will do what it ought to do because the mind is pure in its intention. Moral systems are deontological in that they prescribe proper conduct. Religious constructs base their deontology on God’s wishes. Kant bases his deontology on the pure practical reason of individuals.

I return to the question I posed earlier, is Kant’s elaborate morality framework merely an interesting esoteric exploration or does it have practical benefits for people looking to lead a more intentional moral life? I would like to share my impressions in an attempt to arrive at an answer. I would also like to begin by noting why morality matters in our lives. Its significance can be assessed both at an individual spiritual and psychological level and also at a social level.

To state the obvious, mental health is necessary for a flourishing life. To a large extent our mental health, if we are fortunate to experience it, is a result of luck and fortitude. We are born who we are—an amalgamation of ancestral influences and environmental conditions. Given the rational capacity most of us have we forge lives of idiosyncrasy and uniqueness in what become our personal spaces. To flourish as individuals, we require degrees of cognitive astuteness and emotional solace. These can manifest in a variety of contexts one of which involves our moral resolutions. Developing and refining moral character into lives of integrity give us strength and means to fulfill lives of purpose. Survival may be our base necessity, but keeping our heads above the torrent of all life’s problems is not enough. Light has to shine to cultivate our souls. Moral endurance can illuminate our existence.

Development of personal soundness can bring a sense of peace and reassurance. However, to think of morality as solely a personal pursuit seems exceedingly incomplete. Morality plays its largest role in how it enhances the quality of interpersonal interactions. Living life can have profound joys, but it also has weighty challenges. Finding delights and meeting difficulties alone can be unfathomable. Reliance on one another to greater and lesser degrees is crucial. Trust and relative certitude about the nature and intentions of our fellow human beings is what we crave, what we require in order to endure and to blossom. It is here, in the deep connections with others; here where we give and receive; here where sustaining our individual and collective lives is the ultimate goal to which morality is fundamental.

At a practical level among the vast collection of all people the Categorical Imperative can and is seen as a high bar, as a strict standard to be practiced by each and every individual. It requires a universal deontological acceptance of right and wrong with no tolerable exceptions to the moral order. However, as we all know, there are people doing wrong all of the time and it is done because we each play a mental game with ourselves that allows us to make an exception to moral rules. For example, there could be a time when we take something that does not belong to us. We know that we do not want a world where everyone takes things that do not belong to them, but we justify to ourselves that our reasons for breaking the rule this time is warranted. We know that driving a car under the influence is wrong and dangerous. We want roads that are safe to drive our families on. Yet, even after drinking too much we get behind the wheel of our car telling ourselves that we can do it this time and that we will be careful. If we think about it, we can identify within our own behaviors instances of personal wrongdoing based on a greater desire to satisfy our wants, needs, and passions over the universality of what is morally proper.

Therefore, can a more than two-hundred-year-old moral philosophy formulated by a Prussian academic assist twenty-first century humanity in trying to find its way in this world? In my judgment, yes it can. Now it could be said that Kant’s morality construct is fanciful and utopian and not grounded in the cutthroat reality we see all around us. This a reasonable attitude to have. We can make claim that to always do what we ought to do is too difficult and impractical in all situations. But in assessing the utility of the Categorical Imperative I am not going to succumb to these perceived weaknesses. I will instead recognize and appreciate the elegance and spiritual nature of the model. Rather, I will allow myself to be attracted to the key aspects of the Categorical Imperative. Features such as morality originating from the mind’s capacity for pure practical reasoning; the universality of moral potential across all of humankind; respect for the personhood of others; and valuing moral rules that make perfect sense without contradiction for everyone are characteristics that give Kant’s framework both a metaphysical greatness and a practical usefulness. For anyone seeking to ground or reestablish moral direction in their life, Kant’s Categorical Imperative provides fruitful guidance and direction.

North American and European democracies are on the defensive. Electoral events, especially of the past decade, have forced a reckoning and a review of the alleged benefits of democratic rule—economically, politically, and culturally. Many residents of these countries have vociferously expressed a dissatisfaction with the outcomes produced by democratic leadership. Reversion back to more authoritarian styles of governance is competing for recognition and legitimacy.

The most obvious example for an American these days is the transformation of the Republican Party with its adopted dictatorial traits such as amplified executive control, erosion of institutional checks and balances, politicizing of formally independent institutions and agencies, manipulation of election processes, intolerance of dissent, and the spread of tainted information. This playbook or something similar to it is being duplicated in the forms of Hungary’s Fidsesz Party; Poland’s PiS Party; the PVV in The Netherlands; Vox in Spain; AfD in Germany; the RN in France; and others in Belgium, Croatia, Finland, Slovakia, and Sweden.

In the US, the election contest between Barack Obama and Mitt Romney, only thirteen years ago, seems like a quaint old electoral match in comparison to what elections look like now. The western world appears to be a different place than the relatively placid days of 2012. How did this transformation happen? How did this right-wing revolution come about? Why are we having to contend with this wild cultural swing?

Liberals, the left, and pro-democracy adherents are wracking their brains to try to understand this phenomenon and to know how to best confront it. The churn of perspectives, pieces of advice, and admonitions are fascinating to behold and will likely meld into a unified political counterweight at some point. However, my primary interest in assessing the liberal post-mortem is to see if there exists a fundamental causation triggering this political mutation. I want to know the nature of this right-wing antecedent.

(Note, my forthcoming argument will be specific to the American experience, which is my most reliable frame of reference. Whether my claim of philosophical dissonance carries the same weight in Europe and elsewhere is not a claim I am prepared to definitively make. However, I suspect there is a narrative arc.)

In an attempt to better understand the roots of the American right’s appeal I am going to play out a thought I have recently had. I have been hypothesizing that a significant motivator energizing far-right authoritarian movements may be that it is a reaction against the philosophical underpinning of liberalism’s adherence to analytic philosophy. What follows is my case for why the current analytic philosophy movement plays a causative role in today’s politics and a harmful one in part for today’s political left.

I need to give some contextual background to support my thought process leading to this speculative theory. To begin with I would like to be factually descriptive of the type of citizens who are drawn to the MAGA/authoritarian governance style. Secondly, I would like to examine the fundamental philosophical foundation that adherents to this movement both accept and reject. Thirdly, I must unpack in some detail what analytic philosophy is and how it holds such influence with the political left, particularly in the United States. From this review a better understanding may emerge that can assist liberals in assessing how their messaging is detrimental and in need of reform.

A start, therefore, is to take a look at the type of people who find Trumpism or the MAGA movement favorably. One of my favorite summaries of this cohort was written by the New York Times columnist David French on October 5, 2023, in a piece entitled How MAGA Corrupts the Culture of the White Working Class. In it French writes, “What are these working-class values, in the best sense? I don’t want to oversimplify a complex culture, but there are some common themes—directness in speech, a respect for traditional family structures and roles, a more instrumentalist view of work (your job is what you do, not who you are), adeptness at practical learning, a tough protective ethos centered on family and community, and a deep sense of honor and loyalty.”

I find this a charitable description of a group that has upended French’s conservative world. Regardless, using this description we can see how a large component of the MAGA coalition, namely the white working class, reveres simplicity, tradition, and pragmatism. They see themselves as the forgotten ones—the ones by-passed by the well-educated elite who are too busy conjuring ways of creating and stockpiling wealth than to concern themselves with people who concretely and sensibly engage with the harsh world set before them. The combination of economic resentment and cultural pride sparks a motivation to fight back against what is seen as a fundamental unfairness in our society.

To be sure, the MAGA coalition is comprised of more than just the white working class. However, it is this group specifically who best personify the MAGA ideology at its core. Let us examine their perspective. The elite are seen as riding the wave of rapid economic expansion into the new and highly energized areas defined by technological development and globalized interconnectivity. Many in MAGA world are not attracted to this way of life. Sure, the money yielded would be nice to have, but not at the cost of constructing such a lifestyle. Time tested and honorable customs aligned with patriotism, religion, and regional mores are seen as more admirable. Change is something to be wary and suspicious of—and the quicker the change occurs the more defensive one gets.

Threats to a life of tradition abound. Increased immigration dilutes the demographic and ethnic mix of communities. Minority groups or integrative collectives tied together by racial, gender, and other civilizing traits, are outsiders who must be managed in order to protect the integrity of the tribe. Attempts by the elite to advance equality by promoting and practicing tolerance of distorted and abnormal causes such as gender equality, sexual adventurism, climate engagement, substituting philosophy for religion, free trade, and other “progressive” campaigns prompt resistance. Government institutions also have become corrupted by a tendency to officiate movements away from heritage and towards leniency and change management.

Retaining cultural conventions for the long term is difficult to do. One’s guard must not be let down. A strongman who sings from your hymnbook looks like an appealing figure to have marshalling the challenge. Indeed, loyalty to an authoritarian who can best disrupt and parry the elite’s misguided actions is exactly what is needed. It is even worth considering that the presence of a powerful protector is heaven sent and consistent with natural law. MAGA is not looking for a compromiser, but rather a belligerent and antagonistic adversary to justifiably confront their political enemies.

Strategies, approaches, and leaders aside I contend there is something more rudimentary afoot in what stimulates and incites the MAGA crusade. I believe the MAGA pushback against the left and liberals is in part a reaction to the way the left thinks and reasons—a style of viewing the world that is in some key ways opposing the perspective of no nonsense plainness and customary prudence embraced by today’s right. The gap between the right and the left is not just about stances on issues or policy positions but is philosophical in nature.

One could be justified in thinking that philosophical contemplation is not what consumes the considerations of everyday people going about their lives. Rather, we are faced with more immediate concerns of trying to engender for ourselves the most comfortable, secure, and fruitful lives possible given all of the headwinds modern existence throws at us. However, philosophy is present behind the scenes in influencing and shaping the choices we face and the decisions we make leading to how successful or not our attempts are in crafting the best lives possible.

Our chosen political persuasions are also philosophically based. We align with like-minded individuals to form coalitions that have throughlines of similar values, perspectives, and beliefs. Expectedly, tensions arise when political philosophies come into conflict with other worldviews. This is natural, even within communities within which there is much to unite us despite our differences. Unfortunately, times occur when the dissonance between political factions threatens to unravel societies as we are now witnessing with the rise of right-wing populism. So, how did this happen? Here is what I propose to explain what we see playing out in America.

During the twentieth century philosophy as a discipline in the United States and the United Kingdom became entrenched by a school of thought known as analytic philosophy. Historically speaking in the US, analytic philosophy supplanted a philosophical system known as American pragmatism, which was dominant from the late nineteenth century to the mid twentieth century. Simultaneously, analytic philosophy eclipsed a longstanding and extensive European philosophical outlook known as continental philosophy, which had a degree of influence among American public and academic intellectuals in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, albeit limited. Analytic philosophy remains the commanding philosophical school in the US to this day.

Analytic philosophy gained a foothold in higher education where its methodological emphasis on precision, argumentation, and linguistic analysis found a natural home. There is not a lot of daylight between the practice of science and the practice of analytic philosophy. Scientific exactitude and measurability directed toward reduction of phenomena to fundamental elements leading to predictions of phenomenal actions permeates our modern world. This is most evident in the enterprises that fuel our economy. Innovation, research & development, and technical advancement are vital forces necessary to remain sustainable and competitive in business. These forces rely on logical consistency, clarity of definitions, and argumentative thoroughness. We value scientific scrupulousness and therefore educated people feel it is instinctive to apply a similar style of preciseness to our philosophy.

However, I contend that there is a price to pay for such a strong reliance on analytic philosophy. Although most Americans will never have heard of analytic philosophy it nevertheless has influenced the manner of thinking practiced by elites, including politicians, policymakers, and the media. On the one hand, this implies that elites are thorough, rigorous, and meticulous in how they conduct their businesses, but on the other hand, Americans who do not see themselves as elite see instead a highly educated aristocracy using detailed and sophisticated language to describe abstract ideas and priorities which do not relate to the hardships of their lives.

Climate change is a pertinent example. There is plenty of data showing that manufactured climate degradation is a serious problem. But for many conservatives, it is a liberal problem, not one that helps pay the high cost of getting ahead in America. Closely related to climate change is the liberal concern over a clean energy transition to more sustainable and renewable sources, such as wind and solar. MAGA world views the introduction of alternative sources of energy as economically risky or irrelevant to their daily lives. Economic inequality is another liberal priority that befuddles conservatives. To them it is liberal elites who appear to be hoarding wealth with little concern for the needs of working class people. Voting rights and the preservation of democracy is viewed as a another sky-is-falling leftist battle cry attempting to make a catastrophe where there is none. LGBTQ+ rights to Trumpism just show how out of touch liberals have become with their ill-advised ideas by trying to engender an unnatural world.

I could go on but suffice it to say citizens who align with today’s Republican Party see the educated purveyors of liberal causes as steeped in misguided priorities and policy positions that are far removed from the important and meaningful matters of the common person. Beyond stances on specific policy and political issues what appears to most irritate the right about the educated left is the perceived attitude that leftists are superior sounding snobs who know better than the rest of us. Nobody likes a know-it-all and that impression has grafted itself upon the brand of Democrats and the left.

About 35% to 40% of Americans hold at least a college bachelor’s degree. These degrees range from fashion to finance and engineering to English and a whole lot more in between. We would be hard pressed indeed to find any college major field of study today that is not heavily impacted by analytic philosophy. As a result, those of us with college educations think and talk like people shaped by analytic philosophy—because we are! Perhaps the time has come for the educated left to ponder how analytic thinking contributes to a perception of being out of touch. And while we are on the subject, what is it in our philosophical outlook that is being left out or not adequately considered?

American cultural thinking and discourse has lost something important with its adherence to analytical conceptualizing and its relative abandonment of the influences of American pragmatism and continental philosophy. Together pragmatism and the continental approach do not feel the compulsion toward essentialism as does analytic philosophy. Boiling all experience down to rudimentary elements in search of the theory of everything steers our thought toward scientific clarity, logical principles, and precise language. This is fine and necessary for solving problems requiring technical and medical solutions, but not for assisting us in navigating the complexities of life with all of its subjective and objective calibrations.

There is a huge difference between abstract analysis inquiry and lived experience not unlike the gap between our cognitive selves and our emotional selves. Making meaning and adopting values are rich life endeavors both at a personal and at social levels. We are all faced with trying to make sense of life and how to best flourish given all of the opportunities and challenges we encounter. We are enmeshed simultaneously in wonderful potential but also with profound hazards. A politics that brackets and ignores the fundamentals of lived experience risks irrelevance. I think this may have happened with the left.

The philosophical traditions that have been sidelined in favor of analytic philosophy were not afraid to tackle these phenomenological layers of life. They saw history as helping to tell the story of their people. The peculiarities of culture and how traditions evolved were worth contemplating. How personal impressions of the world defined externalities, including other people, were to be examined. Literature and art aided us and enriched us as we tried to anchor some sense out of this fluid and messy existence. This approach to thought, as uncertain as it can be, is to be embraced and celebrated. Might this attitude be finding a home in populism? I think it may be.

I see ways in which the current brand of American populism overlaps with the existential approach of continental philosophy and American pragmatism. A huge connection pertains to this notion of lived or ordinary experience. Populism is defined as centering on the common affairs and issues of everyday people. Populism values being grounded in the real world. They do not dig too deeply into the ontological structure of existence beyond the story religion tells. To use the all too trite phrase these days regarding the world—it is what it is. It is in the American spirit that we find practical solutions to confronting the problems that we share. Ten-point plans of action usually do not cut it. And when the time comes to celebrate we try to remember to rejoice in simple ways despite our current technologically complex existence.

Populism is not as anti-change as it appears at first. Experience presents us with countless situations that require us to revise our ideas and practices. However, in doing so we are reminded of a heuristic presented to us by the fourteenth century Franciscan friar William of Occam who instructed western thinkers to debate competing reactions to similar phenomena by selecting the simplest approach, the one with fewer twists and turns and plots and schemes. Subjective experience keeps us in touch with how we feel and think. We face the world internally with various degrees of abstraction in our attempts to make meaning. It is necessary for those who engage in high levels of rational absorption while trying to pin down reality to realize that for many others a plainer and more straightforward process is preferred.

This uncomplicated preference for unsophisticated and unadorned answers over theoretical constructs sets the stage for populism’s attack on the analytically educated elite. Historic institutions run largely by the educated and privileged have served as the glue which holds society together. Nevertheless, they are now seen as entities entrenched in formalism and over-rumination. They have become a waste of fiscal resources and a danger to the status quo by imposing unwanted social transformations on traditional thought and practice.

Also, the populist view on the nature of change may mean that they are not as much of a threat to democracy as is commonly assumed. Democracy requires measured amounts of modification in order to keep government relevant and the citizenry cohesive. Thomas Jefferson told us as much. Pragmatism as a philosophy proposes that democracy requires continual reform and reconstitution. Combined with continental philosophy’s emphasis on community engagement and a willingness to question authority and we are left with an apparent acceptance of the general principles of citizen rule. I realize that can be obscured by the openness to authoritarianism, which is a serious contradiction, but peel back some layers and I am willing to bet that we can find that democracy still beats in there.

Enlightenment era democratic traditions will always undergo upheavals. It is conceptually innate to a system spawned by the maxim of rule by the people. We will necessarily wrangle with competing visions and rival notions of truth and reality forever. So what?! This does not have to be an existential crisis for our country. Hope does not need to be unceremoniously thrown overboard. Common ground can be found.

Speaking as a center-left liberal, lifelong Democrat, and hopeless political junkie I encourage adding an, uh, well, analysis of the impact analytic philosophy is having on political discourse, partisan relevance, and socially divisive engagement. Liberals are picking their way through the woods, looking for the trail they stumbled off of, so that they can find their way back to power. I therefore offer consideration of philosophical dissonance as a contributing factor in finding our way out of the wilderness.

It is interesting to ponder how an economic system can come to exist. Afterall, it is completely a human made invention with the lofty intention of improving the lives of humans. Economics as a discipline cannot pin its origins to naturally occurring phenomena such as biology, physics, and chemistry. Also, there was no stone tablet handed down from an omnipotent being with economic principles etched upon it. Rather, as we humans evolved individually and collectively we developed concepts, beliefs, and speculations about how to work with the environment we found ourselves in—with all its resource limitations and abundances—to craft a system leading to the best lives possible.

To better understand how economic systems such as the market economy of capitalism or the command economy of socialism were formed historically it is useful to look at the role played by philosophy. Philosophy has endeavored to discern the human condition and state of mind of a person at its most basic levels, giving insight into the roots of political and economic motivations. A philosophical strategy to determine the reason an economy becomes what it is involves knowing as much as possible the fundamental urges of discreet individuals regarding survival and flourishing. It is there, at the source of human self-awareness, a state of nature if you will, where the scrutiny needs to begin.

The Chinese philosopher Mozi (c. 470-391 BCE) depicted a state of nature in which individuals determined and followed their own “moral” rules. Not surprisingly, he recognized this led to social disorder. The remedy according to Mozi was to establish and apply a single moral order enforced by a powerful ruler. A generation later and in another part of the world the Greek philosopher Aristotle (384-322 BCE) alleged that “man is by nature a political animal”. This obvious but simplified observation however does not tell us enough about people’s intrinsic pre-political nature. It took the Italian expert interpreter of Aristotle, Thomas Aquinas (c. 1225-1274), to develop Aristotle’s remark within a state of nature context.

Thomas Aquinas agreed that humans are instinctively social and political. Even so, Aquinas delved deeper by articulating what he saw as natural law or practical and rational standards that incline people toward moral goodness. It is natural, according to Aquinas, that people innately want to accept that “good is to be done and evil avoided”. Natural law was the path to divine or eternal law or God’s way. Being teleological, Aquinas saw proper collective action as an extension of the ethical purposiveness of the person. Since humans are fundamentally social, then natural law lays the rational and moral groundwork for how people are to conduct both their individual lives and their communal or political lives.

Centuries later, during the years leading up to and including the Enlightenment there transpired a more widespread attempt to identify the raw pre-political state of mind of humans. The impetus for this effort was embedded in the political philosophy of the time to settle on a humane and functional theory of social contract. The need for a more just, humanitarian, and functional set of rules, laws, and habits to guide society and government took on an increased urgency beginning in the sixteenth century. Philosophers held that by better understanding the natural state of humans as a starting point a superior social contract better binding the members of a social collective could come about.

Prominent at the outset of this trend was the Englishman Thomas Hobbes (1588-1679). Known among many as the philosopher who famously claimed the life of man was “solitary, poor, nasty, brutish, and short” and who saw human nature as entrenched intrinsically in self-preservation. Such hard wiring meant humans, if left to their impulsive selves, would be perpetually at war and conflict. A social contract that emphasized curtailing some individual freedom in return for order and security was crucial for a society to survive and to thrive.

John Locke (1632-1704), also from England, had a more a charitable view of the human state of nature than did Hobbes. Locke speculated that humans fundamentally viewed themselves as grounded in equality and freedom. He nevertheless recognized that disputes do arise among people and that a social contract codifying basic human rights of life, liberty, and property was necessary. The Frenchman Charles-Louis de Secondat, also known as Montesquieu (1698-1755), attributed self-preservation as the primary motivation of humanity. Community and society were fashioned out of fear that without fellowship among all people the lives of individuals would not be sustainable.

Also from France, Jean-Jacques Rouseau (1712-1778) maintained a favorable view of people as essentially a good and peaceful lot who enjoyed their freedom. Where he differed from the other thinkers I have mentioned is that he saw society, and particularly the institution of private property, as degrading influences on the core purity of the individual. The necessary social contract according to Rousseau was one aimed at restoring the authentic equality and freedom of people.

In the twentieth century the American political philosopher John Rawls (1921-2002) reformatted the state of nature concept to one he called the “original position”, a pre-political position in which individual people live behind a “veil of ignorance” regarding the needs, desires, and statuses of others. He did not concern himself with what natural proclivities were possessed by people in a natural state as did Hobbes et al. Rather Rawls was trying to get at what would constitute a universal system of societal justice. For Rawls, the original position ensured a greater degree of fairness and objectivity free of prejudices necessary for the formation of a social contract leading to a just collective.

Historically, social contract theory has been fundamental in the formation of advanced moral, political, legal, and economic structures. The history of thought highlights the types of social contracts exercised by communal and collective groups whether of traditional cultures or of modern nation states. What has persevered is a set of constructs accentuating the most pertinent values defining social life. Ethical principles such as consent of the governed, rule of law, natural rights, limits of power, codification of constitutions, social order, welfare of all citizens, and obligations of the individual among others lead to a civic virtue sustaining the common good.

From this political and philosophical churn appears economics, the modern versions of which can be said to be an outgrowth from social contract theory. There exist standards of reciprocal responsibilities between individuals and the collective which delineate the rights of each, identify regulations of goods and services, specify methods of production, and stipulate means of resource distribution that together make up an economy. To view the economy of a society is to regard the way the people think of themselves and each other. A moral code is in part reflected by the economic practices and conditions exhibited within a wider community.

The most common economic models in the developed world at present are the market economy, the command economy, and the mixed economy. The market economy, also popularly referred to a capitalism, emphasizes encouraging private interests and business to control production and the distribution of resources. The calibration between the supply of goods and services relative to consumer demand for those goods and services determines prices and distribution with minimal influence from government. Voluntary consumer and producer choice, competition, profit motive, and private ownership are key features of the market economy.

The command economy, generally thought of as socialism, places significant control of the economy with government as a centralized authority. Resources, production, consumer choice, prices, distribution, and economic planning are state controlled. The mixed economy blends parts of the market economy and the command economy and is the most common economic style of the developed world. Government and private enterprises interact to greater and lesser degrees of collaboration resulting in a hybrid economy.

At this point, I am interested in examining one particular feature of the market economy that has intrigued me for a few years now. That is the phenomenon of scarcity. Why would an economic system like capitalism tolerate scarcity of a good or service that is in demand? And if only a segment of the population experiences scarcity while another segment does not, why is that permitted? There seems something fishy about scarcity to me—as if it is a flaw of either the economic system or of the people accepting such a system. So, I decided to look into the matter.

To be clear, I am not talking about what I guess we could call natural scarcity. If I am sitting at home in New Hampshire during the month of December craving fresh New Hampshire strawberries, the kind that are only available in late June or early July, well no economic system is going to provide those to me. Similarly for fresh surface water in the middle of the Sahara Desert or clean air in downtown Bangkok. Falling short of having availability of desired resources at a wished for time in a limited location is often the way life is. We may not like it, but we have to either accept it or try to move heaven and earth to satisfy our sought-after desires.

Rather, the scarcity I am questioning can best be illustrated using some examples. There are obviously people around the world who need food. However, in a capitalist system governments or agribusiness will sometimes intentionally destroy or limit access to food in order to maintain a particular price for the food products, instead of getting unsold foods to people who need them. Another example involves the current housing shortage. Construction and sales of new housing are curtailed through stringent zoning laws in order to keep property values and rents high and to restrict population growth in a desirable location. There can actually be homelessness and vacant properties within a short distance of one another. Finally, within the electronics industry planned obsolescence of popular devices and appliances cause them to fail sooner fostering purchases of replacements more frequently than is technologically necessary.

The above examples are known in economics as artificial scarcity. This is a purposely planned for scarcity designed to inhibit market abundance and preserve the highest prices possible. It turns out that artificial scarcity is a major feature of a market economy. So, how did that happen? To find the answer we need again to take another peek back into history.

Starting as early as the twelfth century, but most significantly from the fifteenth century on, there occurred in England a practice known as the Enclosures. In pre-capitalist agriculture arable land was common land. A relatively informal utilization of the land’s use was self-managed among the populace. Private ownership was not yet a dominating force. However, as privatization became a more accepted practice land owners forcefully expelled peasants in effect creating land scarcity. The argument from ownership was that this new system was more efficient, a claim that remains to this day although the language has changed to terms like price control stability.

Capitalist thinking largely rests on the notion of supply and demand. Price is determined as a function of determining the level of demand for a given supply of goods and services. If demand is high, but supply scarce, then the result is a higher price per unit of supply. The inverse of low unit prices for weak demand and abundant supply is of course true also. Therefore, it is rational for consumers to make purchasing decisions based on what is perceived as a fair price and for suppliers to set prices based on demand. A supplier will want to have enough supply to meet demand, but at the highest price possible.

It helps to view artificial scarcity as manipulated or controlled scarcity. This often means suppliers manipulating or “optimizing” supply in order to set the highest price possible. We can think of this practice as profit incentive. There are a variety of means used by business to achieve optimal profits. In general, a supplier is motivated because they believe they can offer a good or service that is in demand at what is for them is the best price. This motivation finds expression in a number of actions.

Intellectual property laws, such as patents, copyrights, and digital rights management, are used to earn a return for creators’ insights and toil. Another effect is to constrain access of production to only those willing to pay a high price. Issuing limited editions and marketing exclusive brands can have a similar restraining effect. In the realm of commodities or more basic and common products actions like price supports are often used. Typically, a government practice, price supports such as production quotas, subsidies, and price floors help to structure scarcity by bypassing a more natural competitive balance.

Sometimes scarcity management can get extreme. Destroying unsold inventory, including even food, to engender shortages. Paying farmers to keep fields fallow to prevent over-supply. Stockpiling and hoarding “surpluses” to control item prices. As mentioned earlier, limiting housing construction by local governments or by property developers to maintain high property values and rents or to curb population growth. Also, designing planned obsolescence into a manufacturing process to ensure customers keep coming back for more. There are a lot of tricks to induce scarcity.

And this leads us to the obvious morality-related criticisms of artificial scarcity. The common good suffers from intentional impediments being placed on the availability of food, housing, and other goods and services required for everyone to have a chance at living a flourishing life. Reduced supply and artificially set high prices essentially is a restriction of inventory to a portion of the population. Additionally, resources are squandered when manufactured goods are destroyed, housing not constructed, and food left to rot. This leads to negative environmental results with wasted reserves and to economic consequences that sustain poverty. It can also be argued that intellectual property protections actually slow the rate of innovation and stifle competitiveness monopolistically.

At its essence, the dispute between a pro-capitalist rationale for artificial scarcity and a more cautionary perspective on this aspect of capitalism can be described as a lack of agreement regarding the meaning of equality. As I see it, the pro-artificial scarcity side sees allowing for individual economic initiative in the form of inventiveness and hard work as equal opportunity for all, which is as egalitarian as society needs to be. The con-artificial scarcity side would claim that an ethical obstacle emerges when society is bifurcated between those with market might and those who are less economically influential, in other words between the rich and the less affluent or poor.

I cognitively see both arguments but find that emotionally and spiritually I side with the capitalist skeptics who question this ethically weak facet of capitalism. To be clear, I am sympathetic to the equal opportunity position and in many cases realize that guaranteeing equal outcomes is not feasible. I also am not going to lose sleep over price fixing for luxury items that are not necessary for the wellbeing of low-income people. However, when it comes to essentials, such as food, housing, medicines, and care services, artificial scarcity has no justification. There is no such thing as surplus when there are people whose welfare is being threatened due to a lack of essentials.

Artificial scarcity intensifies inequality. The extreme inequities between the richest Americans and everyone else is now accepted fact in the US. This threatens democracy and has in large part given rise to the demagoguery of Trump and the MAGA movement. Most importantly, institutionalized inequality is contrary to a key tenet of the Declaration of Independence, one of the founding documents of the United States and one of the most direct links between the origination of the US and the Enlightenment. It was in the writing of the Declaration that the principles of individual rights, freedom, and equality became beacons of light for the new country.

Capitalism has undeniably provided great abundance and a higher quality of living for many millions of people than would have been possible under previous economic systems. Nevertheless, unfettered capitalism can lead to a number of social ills, including erosion of community solidarity, unfair treatment of labor, environmental degeneration, and over-commercialization of basic goods and services, among other misfortunes. An appropriate degree of governmental and internal industrial regulation is required in order to check the troubling consequences of pure capitalism. Controlling for the more harmful varieties of artificial scarcity is among the justifiable actions to be taken.