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Running through the tradition of the unconstrained vision is the conviction that foolish or immoral choices explain the evils of the world—and that wiser or more moral and humane social policies are the solution.
A Conflict of Visions
Thomas Sowell
The French revolution operated on assumptions much closer to those of the vision of the anointed. Where the American revolution deliberately created a government of elaborate checks and balances, to constrain the evils inherent in human beings, the French revolution concentrated vast powers in its leadership, so as to allow those who were presumably wise and benevolent to effect sweeping changes with little hindrance. Condorcet, as an intellectual supporter of the French revolution, could see no reason for the American system of checks and balances, in which society was to be “jostled between opposing powers” or to be held back by the “inertia” of its constitution. Indeed, even after the revolutionaries turned against him and threw him into prison, Condorcet still seemed not to understand the reason for limitations on government power.
The Vision of the Anointed
Thomas Sowell
The goals were power and wealth; the cultural capital that could secure those goals was courtly elegance or refinement (miyabi). The more elegant the person, the more desirable. An expression of that courtly elegance was an enhanced sensitivity called aware, later commonly expressed more fully as mono no aware. Deriving from a common exclamation meaning “ah!,” it signals coming across something striking. Mixed with attentiveness to the ephemeral, aware transformed the traditional Buddhist resignation toward impermanence into an aesthetic of poignancy. The cherry blossoms, for example, are all the more stunning because they bloom for such a short time.
Engaging Japanese Philosophy – A Short History
Thomas P. Kasulis
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