ABSTRACT
The first axiom of the historical imagination is that we need to examine the patterns of our behaviour in the light of all that we ought to know and can know. There is more at stake than a willingness to look at evidence, important as that is. Equally important is our willingness to create the conditions for learning, and the vantage point from which we examine the evidence. Advances in human welfare attributable to scientific rationality have been undermined by an inadequate understanding of human nature, of democracy, and of the manifold sources of economic creativity; some of the structural biases typical of ancient societies have become a part of Western modernity. The counterstrategy is to delve more deeply into our religious and philosophical heritage in search of a clearer understanding of political and economic processes, using Simone Weil’s principle, ‘Only he who knows the empire of might and knows how not to respect it is capable of love and justice.’ As a first step, we need to clarify the structural factors that are changing the nature of multilateral diplomacy and to identify the main ‘global’ phenomena – in nature, the virtual world, and the public sphere – that deserve urgent attention. A globalising process unmoored from the claims of justice or any workable philosophy will have potentially catastrophic consequences.
