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.World wars aresyntactic structures, so is globalization, as well as weights, measures, andprices, which bind people into commercial communities.The variouspolitical regimes are categorial wholes that define countries.So are phil-osophical and literary works, which have their own way of governing orliberating (as the case may be); they hold sway over minds instead ofbodies, and they too can extend their influence over large reaches of spaceand time.Machiavelli is an author who understands reason to be a powerof ruling, not theorizing, and he may even have declared himself as doingso; as Harvey C.Mansfield, Jr., observes in his commentary on Machiavelli sDiscourses on the First Ten Books of Livy,  Massimo is the last word in theDiscourses.Io ( I ) was the first. 1413There are different levels of syntax in historical events.On the basic level, there is thepractical syntax of the agents, who understand themselves and their situations in a certainway and carry out their actions.There is next the interpretative syntax of those who recordwhat was done or those who try to evaluate the events historically and provide a narrativethat covers them, taking into account the intentions of the agents.Third, there is the kindof philosophical reflection we are now carrying out, which theorizes the events as well asthe reflective understanding of those who narrate them, and attempts to bring out thestructures of manifestation that are at work in both.14Harvey C.Mansfield, Jr., Machiavelli s New Modes and Orders: A Study of the  Discourses on Livy(Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1979), 441.Francis Slade says that Machiavelliinitiated the modern idea of reason as rule and not as understanding.See  Rule asDeclaring Our Wishes and Choices 267FriendshipThere is yet one more dimension in the syntax that is woven into humanactions.Let us return to our example of Jim digging a hole.We havespoken about the action itself, with its internal end, and the purposes Jimmight have in doing it.The purposes we have described have beensomewhat pragmatic, such as earning money to support his family.Butthere is still another way in which Jim could explain what he is doing.Hemight say,  I am digging to help repair the plumbing in this house, andI m doing it because the people who live here are friends of mine. In thiscase, Jim would be doing the action not to support his family, but toperform an act of friendship.Friendship is reciprocal benevolence that ismutually recognized.Friends wish well to each other, and wishing, as wehave insisted, is not mere velleity but the readiness to act.In this case, Jimhas acted; he is doing something helpful to his friends, and his friendshipsyntactically informs his action.His benevolence is being both expressedand effected in the bodily action he is performing.What is the categorial or syntactic formation of his act of friendship? Heis doing this action because it is a good for his friends.Having theplumbing fixed is something they need; it is a good for them.He is doingit precisely as such.That is, it is a good for him precisely and formally asa good for his friends.This is a concentrated and thoughtful practicalachievement.To do something as an act of friendship is a highly rationalaction; it is charged with practical intelligence.Moreover, it is charged withmorally good intelligence, not just with mathematical cleverness.To dosomething as good for ourselves might exhibit rational syntax, since weneed to shake out means and ends and purposes, but to do something asgood for others expands our rational agency and demands that we bemore thoughtful than we are when we serve our own purposes.We are veryintelligent when we act benevolently in friendship.Justice itself is a variation on friendship.It is friendship minus one of itsfeatures.To act justly is to give each person what is due to him.There isa kind of benevolence in this, not merely a mathematical calculation,because in it we strive to give each person what he decently deserves, butour  wishing well is impersonal.We do not tailor the good to this personin particular, but to anyone who would fall under the category in question,and of course the benevolence need not be reciprocal.I want to claim thatSovereignty: The Universal and Homogeneous State, in John J.Drummond and James G.Hart, eds., The Truthful and the Good: Essays in Honor of Robert Sokolowski (Boston: Kluwer,1996), 180:  Sovereignty is not just the assertion of the supremacy of a ruler, but of theabsoluteness of rule based on the claim made on its behalf by philosophy, and on thisground asserting its supremacy as that of reason.The State is rule that includes philosophywithin itself, but philosophy transformed by the erasure of the distinction between theoriaand praxis.Mind defined by this erasure is mind the defining activity of which is rule.268 The Body and Human Actionjustice, as well as the other moral virtues, participate in friendship, which isthe telos of human practical activity and the paradigm for the others.Theother virtues are not friendship pure and simple  they only participate init  but their moral goodness comes from what they have of friendship,whether with others or with ourselves.Friendship stands at the focal pointof moral conduct.I cannot explore this topic here, but I have tried toargue it at length in other places.15Friendship provides an especially appropriate setting for declaratives.Friendship is mutual benevolence mutually recognized, whether involvingtwo persons or more.The individual persons, therefore, come to the fore;they are not replaceable by anyone else.The singularity proper to a ratio-nal agent is conspicuous in this setting.Both attachment and loss areparticularly significant.The force of such declaratives is especially visible inexpressions of love, in which each speaker recognizes that he (or she)would not be what he is had the other not  granted him his status [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]