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Government and empire frequently curb freedom, either internally or externally. While men may be enriched by government and empire, they may be impoverished by freedom. Of course there is freedom from government and empire, as well as freedom to create government and empire. These objectives are naturally in conflict with each other. These objectives are then quite questionable.
The phrase "freedom and government or empire" is an echo of Herodotus' and Xenophon's description of what Cyrus promises. "Freedom" would seem to mean autonomy, free to rule oneself, and "government and empire" would mean the domination of others. The political as political seeks both. The non-philosophic life seeks freedom and empire and political philosophy is the closest philosophy comes to that libido dominandi which is also identified as human life. Such an interpretation would make the theme of political philosophy and the holy city one and the same, since the holy city stands for the non-philosophic life. Nowhere else but in Jerusalem, one has to interpret the first sentence, has the non-philosophic life been taken more seriously.
Can the non-philosophic life be other than one which seeks freedom and empire? Is there a non-philosophic life that can be said to be analogous to the philosophic life? What is the status of a zeal for justice? Is the moral life, as Aristotle suggests, a political life and therefore necessarily one which looks to freedom and empire? What is the status of one's own, of the love of one's own, i.e., one's own holy city, in the light of the natural city?
We do not know whether there is a holy city or no - We do not know whether there is some kind of Jerusalem configured in heaven or no. For all we know, there is no natural city. It may be that man by nature must live with others; however, that necessity does not mean there is a natural city in which he may live. All cities are the creations of men and all cities of necessity must restrict men's freedom and they do so by what we might call "mind control." Thus, the so-called holy city is only by holy because men make it so. Men, perhaps naturally, make a prison to house themselves in and they love it because they made it--and they call it morality. Socrates is free, because he doesn't live imprisoned by the conventions others have made. As for empire, men makes empires because they want to conquer others and enslave them. That, too, the empire-builders like the monotheists call morality.
Furthermore, if there were a natural city, then there is no reason to assume that there has to be empire as a city would then be the natural end of man. An empire would violate the city's natural character, which is that the best political order that enables men to achieve their own natural ends as individuals. The city is for the sake of the individual, especially the individual who knows what it is to be an individual. The desire for empire is, while intrinsic to man not natural to man. This desire is socially instilled in him by others and its origin are the passions that inspire man to covet, to hate, to kill, to steal, and so on, as well as the passion that desires to impose morality on others. This insatiability has no limits, and its promise cannot be fulfilled unless it is imposed universally. When men build empires, the individual exists solely for the sake of the empire and thus is no longer an individual.
Nevertheless, the best city is the one that ruled by wisdom and where this wisdom rules without law and without morality, etc.. The philosopher who is free is never impoverished by his freedom. Men who believe in empire and a political life are always poor, as what they seek is the luxury of a mentally-constructed class rather than the enrichment of each individual who allegedly comprises up that class. To live for the sake of the city is to be completely poor because then one has no freedom and what freedom there may be is usurped by the one or few who rule the rest. A tricky dilemma.... The philosopher's rule benefits all the individuals within his rule, because he is the richest man alive. The philosopher is interested in benefiting individual beings, not mental classes that artificially are used to unite and enslave them.
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