On Politics Part Three — On Civilization

The word “civilization” originally meant life behind city walls. This definition is accurate enough for common parlance, because, due to the nature of human life on Earth, tilling and reaping the soil in fixed locations and retreating behind walled fortifications during times of raid and assault is a natural if not inevitable outgrowth of social cooperation on a scale larger than tribal operations. There are disadvantages to forsaking the life of wandering shepherds or nomadic horsemen, but the advantage of having a settled seat of power is that it naturally lends itself to the invention and diffusion of writing, calculation, astronomy, the erection of walls, towers, canals and monuments, and other civilized arts.

However for the purposes of this essay, “civilization” here shall mean the customary and habitual submission to the rule of law, whose purpose is to mitigate the ills which follow the natural anarchy to which the passions and self interest of men incline them. There is nothing innate in the nature of nomadic life or life in a band of hunter-gatherers which prevents the elder or patriarch from establishing clear albeit unwritten rules, to be chanted or recited and strictly obeyed by successive generations.

The primary civilized art, and the one which allows all others to exist, is the art of law, which is the reduction of the ineffable organic complexity of those customs and practices seeking justice, peace, and civil order to a few simple or stereotyped commandments, written or recited without redaction, enforced by recognized formalities of court.

Law, in other words, is the attempt to reduce the operation of justice to ritual. The purpose of this reduction is manyfold.

Read the rest of this entry »

Originally published at John C. Wright's Journal. Please leave any comments there.