• A. The education of children

  • 1. Overlooked (catastrophically) by Locke in his discussion of the relation between rationality and freedom (and a fortiori between rationality and authority)2

  • 2. Rousseau

    • a) Sees the relation between education, rationality and freedom

    • b) But misses (or rather rejects) the role of authority in the growth of reason

  • 3. Something on Anscombe again here perhaps on ‘the practices of reason’?

  • 4. Mainly of course Wittgenstein: On Certainty

    • a) and, trailing behind, my ‘Certainty and Authority’!

• B. The continuing role of authority in adult life

  • 1. On Certainty

  • 2. ‘Certainty and Authority’

  • 3. The political dimension of this to be further explored in next chapter

[Recall Hobbes in the Behemoth [I.A.]]

You may perhaps think a man has need of nothing else to know the duty he owes his governor, and what right he has to order him, but a good natural wit; but it is otherwise. For it is a science2, and built upon sure and clear principles, and to be learned by deep and careful study, or from masters that have deeply studied it. And who was there in the Parliament or in the nation, that could find out those evident principles, and derive from them the necessary rules of justice, and the necessary connection of justice and peace?

Hobbes is trying to persuade his readers. But what sort of ‘persuasion’? (Is he giving them reasons for actions, or trying to cause them to behave differently?) Are reasons causes?

The promiscuous uses of ‘reason’: e.g. [I.B.]

[The first] concerns an inanimate object, [the second] a human being. But (1) and (2) are similar in form when contrasted with (3), which we can re-express: ‘her reason for not coming’. This, in the present context, is one of the most important distinctions we have to keep our eye on.

The twentieth century was a particularly bad time to belong to the esoteric and mystical side of Islam. In a rapidly changing world faced with the challenge posed by industrial modernity, Islam came under severe criticism from within the Muslim society for being the principal cause of backwardness of Muslims. As Muslim societies began to modernise, however, many were inclined to argue that Islam per se was not incompatible with modernity and that it was merely the esoteric and mystical approach to Islam – commonly referred to as Sufism – that made its practitioners unmindful of this world and inclined more towards the concerns for the other world. Most often, the critique of Sufism from within the Muslim societies focused upon the supposed quiescence that Sufis were said to have encouraged, which was believed to have turned Muslims away from the path of material progress.

Needless to say, Sufism was never intended to encourage the kind of quiet¬ism that it has been associated with, which was arguably the result of a kind of ‘drift’ that happened to pervade the Muslim world at the onset of modernity. Just like traditional, revivalist, and modernist readings of Islam, the mystical and the esoteric dimensions of Islam was also capable of a reading completely at variance with the dominant understanding of Sufi Islam. Far from the disinterest in temporal matters that it is often believed to be characterised by, Sufi approach frequently proved strong enough even to galvanise political opposition to political dispensations of the day, including the modern state – running at odds with the idea that Sufis have little or no interest in politics.

In an interview given to The Chronicle at the Exhibition of the Arts and Crafts of India held in Madras (now Chennai) in 1921, James Henry Cousins (1873–1956) not only applauded the Bengal School of Painting spearheaded by Abanindranath Tagore (1871–1951) and Gaganendranath Tagore (1867–1938) and followed by others such as Asit Kumar Haldar (1890–1964), but also came down heavily on the European views of Indian art. Describing Cousins as a ‘friend of India’ and ‘an enthusiastic admirer of the Bengal School’, the interviewer drew out of him some of the seminal ideas of the school's art. Asked how he distinguished Indian from Western art, Cousins replied that Western art ‘represents things as they are viewed from the out¬side’. Eastern art (including the Bengal School), Cousins submitted, ‘interprets things from the inside’. Cousins's view could be interpreted as an orientalist view of Indian art by a Westerner, but his case was different, as the following pages would attempt to show. Led on into more contentious questions such as whether the Bengal School bears any ‘stamp’ of ‘national characteristics’, Cousins replied sharply:

Lecture 1

…The dialogue form. Why? At issue are the terms in which human life can be, and is best, discussed. The dialogue represents different approaches to such discussion in action. The Gorgias is not a philosophical treatise as is, say Hume's Enquiry or Kant's Grundlegung.

The ways of arguing are given embodiment in actual characters, which are expressed in the arguments used. Gorgias, Polus, Callicles – and, of course, Socrates. These characters are represented as in a dialectical struggle, a struggle to persuade. And the subject at issue in the dialogue is at first, and in a sense remains, the nature of persuasion and its different forms.

Lecture 2

‘Persuasion’

Gorgias, when pressed as to the nature of his ‘art’ (rhetoric, oratory) would like to content himself with saying it's persuasion: i.e. the art of getting other people to change their opinion in a direction which suits you. Socrates keeps insisting that this isn't enough, since many forms of talk do this. Hence Gorgias's definition doesn't differentiate rhetoric; doesn't show that it is indeed a distinctive art. He gets Gorgias to admit that different kinds of discourse are distinguished by their subject matter. Gorgias submits but (understandably) with reluctance, since this seems to rob rhetoric of its predominant splendour over other forms of discourse. He says that the subject matter of the sophist's art is ‘right and wrong’. (He is thinking of advocacy in law courts and politics.)

One might at this point expect that Socrates would want to say that the kind of discourse he admires and engages in (‘philosophy’) is not a matter or persuasion at all, but is simply a concern with discovering truth. But interestingly, he doesn't do this.

(454 C–455A) Let's consider this. ‘Two kinds of persuasion’: one leading to belief, the other to knowledge. What difference is Socrates pointing to here? Incidentally, the issue isn't of merely antiquarian interest. Cf. Rorty.

The current focus on the effects of climate change and the future quality of urban landscape access is evolving rapidly in many regions, locally and glob¬ally. With the need to produce positive strategies for the management of cli¬mate change and urban livability, cities and towns are articulating strategies focused on climate responses and equitable access as urban enhancements. Cities have begun to apply their strategies with the intention of producing outcomes that respond to climate and equity issues. Some communities rec¬ognized the climate and equity issues several years ago, while other com¬munities have more recently included climate change in their planning and design agendas. With the scientific estimate of climate change and its effects and the current need for regions to quickly respond to climate issues, many cities are committed to producing immediate priorities and potential strate¬gies for the benefit of future livability in their respective locations.

Urban Landscape Priorities, Strategies, and Prospect presents an investigation of urban priorities and strategies dedicated to climate change, including enhancements and equitable access in cities and towns. Three themes—time, resources, and livability—occur in the seven chapters. Time refers to cur-rent and future issues of climate change within the next 10 to 20 years, while resources include the support communities will need to maintain positive ecological and cultural responses to climate change. The quality of livability includes equitable access to enhancements as cities and towns respond to the current and future demands of climate change. Each theme ultimately reflects the goals and objectives of individual communities, including the require¬ments for maintaining livability within their urban settings. For example, community resources depend on economic factors and public support needed to effectively respond to unpredictable climate conditions from year to year.

Esotericism, Mysticism, and Global Religious History: A Conceptual Manifesto

If there is one common central feature, a fulcrum if you will, amidst the diverse approaches to or methods and points of emphasis in postcolonial studies of religion, that is an overarching commitment to unravel the complicity of a preponderantly Eurocentric epistemology of religion with colonial agendas. Religion, with its epistemic provenance in European societies, would be thus symptomatically constructed, deployed, and redeployed in the vast stretches of the colonial world. Thus, as Richard King comments, the very ‘category of “religion” is a social construction, forged in a specifically Christian and post-Christian (‘Enlightenment’) European context’, with its triumphalist journeys in colonial India through the vehicle of ‘European colonialism and of western military and political expansionism’.1 King's observation is par¬ticularly focused on Hinduism. However, one may argue, the global import of European episteme and its hegemonic deployment bolstered by colonial objectives and methods, directly or indirectly through informal channels, remains a key issue in conceptualising ‘religion’ and its cognates or even con¬testing categories in vast parts of the non-West. Yet, were ideas about religion, its cognates, and contending categories well-formed to the extent that they were devoid of any inner tensions? In Europe, one would arguably see an emerging ambivalence towards the mystical, and perhaps a more pronounced disparagement of the esoteric (derived from the Greek esōterikós, referring to those belonging to an inner circle), and the occult (from Latin occultus, i.e. hidden or secret) since especially the Enlightenment moment. As opposed to the organised religions, there emerged a site of religious experience of the mystical variety, frequently associated with the inward-looking esoteric, and typically seen as individualist projects devoid of any broader social commit¬ments and responsibilities – a thesis that, curiously, had its own challengers right in Europe since at least the early twentieth century.

Elite Quality is ‘Macro-level Sustainability’

• Elites are conceptualized as the business models that generate the most income—as such they leverage human, financial, and knowledge resources to provide the necessary coordination ca-pacity that realizes the full development potential of an economy.

• High-quality elite systems are sustainable and their leading business models rely on Value Creation, delivering more value for society than they appropriate; low-quality elites increase political and economic risk by operating rent-seeking Value Extraction models based on value transfers.

What are the Main Findings of the EQx2025?

• 1. Singapore continues to hold the #1 spot in the EQx2025, but thereafter there has been a momentous change, with the US leaping from #16 to #2 overall, ahead of Switzerland, now down one place to #3. This radical reset has been great-ly influenced by the addition of five new AI indicators. China also benefits from its technological leadership in AI and moves up two spots to #19, an incredible achievement for a middle-income country. India is also advancing, now reach-ing #60 (up 3 places from 2024 and a major advance on its 2021 ranking of #118).

  2. Asian economies continue to do well in the EQx. Japan retains its position at #4 overall, while Korea is now close behind, hav-ing risen to #5. On the other hand, Israel has fallen 7 places to #14, while some European countries also experienced signifi-cant falls: the Netherlands is now at #9 (down 6 places); Den-mark is now at #15 (down 5 places); and Finland has dropped to #18 (down 3 places). Two surprising big winners are from the Middle East: Qatar has shot up 12 places to #6, and the same advance has been made by the UAE, now up to #20.

Introduction

Generally, historians are obsessed with studying the political role of M. K. Gandhi in the context of India's struggle for freedom. At times, there is some discussion on his social role, his concept of justice or notion of rural recon¬struction. Occasionally, social scientists have focused on Gandhi's approaches to religion. However, Gandhi's serious and prolonged engagement with Islam and popular Hinduism in general and Bhakti and Sufism in particular are less trodden areas. Much earlier, I have partly focused on Gandhi's engage¬ment with Islam. This chapter aims at arguing that Gandhi's concept of freedom, composite nationalism, and satyagraha (commitment to truth as a principal weapon in the non-violent struggle) could not be properly under¬stood if his interactions with Bhakti (Gandhi's mother was a Kabir-Panthi and a devotee of the Pranami sect of Vaishnavas) and Sufism are left outside the ambit of our investigation. Gandhi perceived India's engagement with Islam at three levels – that is, political and military levels, legal levels, and through Sufism. He was interested only in the third or mystical level which enabled him to justify the acceptability of his satyagraha in Muslim society and to challenge the divisive ‘Two Nation Theory’ propagated by the Muslim League. Majority of the sufis trace their origin from the fourth caliph Ali who was portrayed by Gandhi as an ideal satyagrahi (truth seeker) in the model of a mystical leader. Satyagrahi Gandhi projected himself as a salik (Sufi spiritual traveller). Gandhi's mother was a Kabirpanthi (follower of saint Kabir) so like Kabir and other saints belonging to the Sant tradition and also the Sufis, he understood the utility of communicating with the non-literate masses through music and poetry, which facilitated oral transmission. Like the Sufis, Gandhi also understood the symbolic significance of the spinning wheel (Bhakt Kabir was also a weaver) to mobilise the marginalized including women.

Priorities and Strategies

Urban landscapes continue to be a prime element in the quality of livability and experience in city contexts. Since the earliest permanent settlements appeared in the Near East several thousands of years ago, urban landscapes have evolved as an interplay between physical and cultural factors and included viable responses to environmental conditions and cultural prefer¬ences. With effective responses to climate and equity issues, current cities and regions have opportunities to enhance livable urban contexts, including connections and places. The results would be cities with a range of urban landscapes available to a broader range of inhabitants, including residents in current under-enhanced locations. Current recommended standards for achieving positive results are a matter of community priorities and available resources in support of livability and are a function of climate mitigation and adaptation commitments, local and global.

Time, resources, and livability are three themes related to the potential prospect of urban landscapes in cities and towns. The three themes express the common points of focus for cities and towns as they attempt to begin responding to future climate change. The first theme is the quality of com¬munity responses to climate change in current and future urban landscapes, within a defined time frame. Until the recent climate events of 2023, responses to climate change were essentially the production of climate action plans and heat action plans for cities and towns to eventually utilize during current and future climate change. Actual physical and cultural responses to the recent plans are yet to occur in many community locations, though some cities and towns have made the effort to begin producing adaptations to mitigate local climate change.

This analysis is structured into three parts. The first part discusses eight ‘uto¬pian visionaries’ who proposed fully developed urban utopias, ranging from the Linear City in Spain to the Socialist City in the Soviet Union. Next is a set of authors who sought ways to improve existing cities. These are divided into ‘rational functionalists’ (15 authors) and ‘romantic archaists’ (three authors) – after Schorske's (1981) terminology with reference to fin-de-siècle Vienna and its ideologically and emotionally charged struggle between modernism and anti-modernism (Cortjaens 2011). Within each part, authors are listed chron¬ologically by birth date.

The Utopian Visionaries

These planners sought to visualise the ideal – either retrospective or futuristic – rather than perpetuate the quotidian.

Arturo Soria y Mata's Ciudad Lineal

Arturo Soria y Mata (1844–1920), trained as an engineer in Madrid, was a capitalistic entrepreneur and inventor. He also held posts in public adminis¬tration in Spain and its colonies – despite being a radical republican who was often at odds with Spanish monarchists. As an outspoken advocate of techno¬logical innovation, particularly in the field of transport, he insisted that circulation is the key organising factor of the modern city (Collins 1959a,b). As a social critic, he was quite concerned by the unsanitary housing conditions of Madrid workers, which he thought led to moral decay:

Urban Climate Priorities and Challenges

The intention of the third and fourth chapters of the text is the articula¬tion of the future quality of planning and design outcomes relative to the climate change strategies and resources cities and towns are attempting to achieve within the current decade and beyond. The content represents the first phase of climate change and its transition into the second and third phases of urban responses to climate effects. Communities have managed to function during the first and second phases of climate change from 2000 to the extreme climate events beginning in 2021. Now, communities are in the beginning of the transition to the third phase of climate change in urban contexts, with distinct requirements for urban strategies and enhancements for providing equitable access and livability. The strategies consist of the application of positive climate change alternatives, includ¬ing the use of existing bottom-up ecological and cultural qualities, with the potential to preserve and enhance urban locations for the benefit of the livability within the contexts of current and future urban landscapes. The challenge for communities is to utilize sustainable strategies with the potential to enhance the existing and future quality of their respective urban contexts, including urban connections and landscapes. At best, the outcomes would be for the benefit of all residents within the contexts of existing cities and towns.

The potential outcomes related to sustaining outcomes in urban contexts, including urban landscape connections and places, will include applying concepts to urban landscapes in communities with the potential to estab¬lish long-term, sustainable enhancements in their urban contexts. Currently, communities are attempting to utilize existing, bottom-up urban qualities as sources for sustainable urban enhancements with the potential for function¬ing in the long-term existence of cities and towns.

INTRODUCTION

• 1. REASONS FOR BELIEF/ACTION

• Wittgenstein, On Certainty

• P. Winch, ‘Certainty and Authority’

• 2. THE PHILOSOPHICAL TRADITION OF THE ‘AUTHORITATIVE INDIVIDUAL’

• 3. HOW IS POLITICAL AUTHORITY POSSIBLE

MAIN SECTION

• 4. REASONS FOR ACTION

  • 4.1 BELIEF AND ACTION

    • 4.11 FOUNDATIONALISM

      • (1) NO GROUNDS FOR BELIEF

      • (2) EXCEPT ACTION

      • R. Rorty, The Linguistic Turn, ‘Introduction’

      • R. Rorty, Philosophy and the Mirror of Nature

  • 4.12 HOLISM

    • (1) A SYSTEM OF THOUGHT,

    • (2) AS A FRAMEWORK

    • D. Davidson, Inquiries into Truth and Interpretation

    • ‘Radical interpretation’

    • ‘The Very Idea of a Conceptual Scheme’

  • 4.2 RULES AND ACTION

    • 4.21 INDETERMINACY OF RULES

    • 4.22 SYSTEM OF JUDGEMENTS, NOT RULES

    • 4.23 THE NOTION OF A MISTAKE

    • 4.24 BEING BOUND BY A COMMUNITY

  • 4.3 WILL AND ACTION

    • 4.31 WILL AS PHENOMENON AND AS TRANSCENDENTAL EGO

    • 4.32 ETHICS IS EXTERNAL TO THE WORLD

    • 4.33 WILL AS ACTION ITSELF

      • Wittgenstein, Notebooks 1914–1916, 4 November 1916

      • Wittgenstein, Tractatus 6.373, 6.4–6.5

      • Wittgenstein, ‘A Lecture on Ethics’, The Phil Rev, 74 ( Jan 65)

      • Wittgenstein, Philosophical Investigations §630–[ff.]

      • P. Winch, ‘Wittgenstein's Treatment of the Will’, Ethics and Action

      • R. Bernstein, Praxis and Action, pp. 245–247, 254–[ff.]

CONCLUSION

• 5. QUESTIONS

  • 5.1 REASON?

  • 5.2 INDIVIDUALISM?

  • 5.3 AUTHORITY?