Questions of political philosophy are moral questions. In our time and especially on the radical right, there are people who think they can skip over this fact and answer fundamental questions of political philosophy in a value neutral or “realist” way. They think that by just describing relations like a dispassionate scientist, they can arrive at prescriptions. The irony is that this mode of thought which is typically found among self-described reactionaries is actually a very modern way of looking at politics. I reject this approach and subscribe to the approach of classical political philosophy.

More specifically, I am a Platonist. I reject the naturalist or materialist explanation of the world which is the popular metaphysics of our age. Instead, I am a philosophical monist, and believe the world is an emanation of supersensual ultimate reality, with man’s ultimate end being to transcend his egocentric and partial view of reality and draw closer to ultimate reality in wisdom and love.

I believe the world evolves with an intrinsic drive toward greater unity and integration and I believe man’s primary means of drawing closer to the real is by moral action, love, wisdom, and religious and mystical experience. Universal love is an ideal, but for all but a few mystics the means of expanding our capacity for love and care comes through our particular relationships, through our family and our folk.

The purpose of the state, as I see it, is for a people to secure their existence and allow for the flourishing of these relationships of growth. It is also to foster freedom; not the “negative liberty” cherished by libertarians, but the positive freedom from the internal restraints of ignorance, greed and selfishness. On this Platonic conception of freedom, I cannot do a better job of presenting it than this passage from D. C. Schindler.

Since I believe the purpose of the state is the good life and the collective flourishing of a people, this takes us to the question of man’s nature. These are philosophical questions, but man is a rational animal, and before we sketch out any ideals we must begin with an understanding man’s animal nature. So many of the bad ideas and conflict of our time come from ignoring this and trying to bend human nature to fit political ideals. Part of that nature is to be a tribal, territorial creature with a deep need for community and belonging, and I believe this collective sense is central to politics, since the political is always informed by groups and their interests, friends and enemies.