Plato ’ s Cave to Unite Americans
lightener dedicated to education that would enable a republic serving the common good and freedom for all . His participation in a plan for an insurrection in Normandy to establish such a republic led him to the gallows .
Doubts by some of the electorate about others in the electorate surfaced in 2016 with the surprising result of the election of Donald Trump to the office of the President of the United States . Education efforts to improve understanding of reality and voter participation in the electoral process pursued by research and development of knowledge and in the sense of translational science , commonly referred to in medicine as “ from bench to bed ,” is an innovation not an insurrection .
Societal Structures
Spinoza was part of a coterie of Radical Enlighteners driving the ideas of the individuals as the source of authority . The moderates were still dealing with Providence , but the radicals , including deists , were still looking to the individuals as the source of authority rather than royalty or church . The Scottish Enlightenment took a moderate approach and joined Britain receiving some legislative representation . There was a substantial comprise in Britain with the authority of the royalty .
France went to the extreme , starting with the French Revolution and continuing with more revolutionary discontinuities in political structure . The 13 British colonies had a long list of grievances about the treatment by King George III . The American Revolution was inspired by the lack of justice . The Declaration of Independence listed the specifications in some detail . However , the Declaration went on beyond declaring reasons and presenting facts . It made pledges in pursuit of independence based on what was claimed as unalienable rights .
The ideals were stated in the Declaration of Independence . They were ideals not reality . It took a couple of centuries of pursuing justice to get a lot closer to reality . Getting closer to the reality expressed in the values of the Declaration requires morality as well as knowledge . Indeed , the contribution of Smith with his book on what became known as The Wealth of Nations was built on his philosophical roots including morality . That book included his concept of the invisible hand , which he used in his first book , ( 2011 ) The Theory of Moral Sentiments .
The societal structure of the thirteen colonies after the Declaration of Independence was a confederation . Late in the following decade , the confederation became a federation , a federal government . The structure evolved to that great transition in order to deal with some issues that could not have been dealt with adequately at the time of the Declaration . The extent of understanding and the ability to adapt to the reality makes a significant difference .
Invisible Hands
The misunderstanding of Smith ’ s concept of the Invisible Hand has impeded the advancement of America ’ s pursuit of the ideals articulated in the Declaration of Independence . The concept was misunderstood going back to his ( 1904 ) An Inquiry Into the Nature and Causes of The Wealth of Nations .
Sheehan and Wahrman ( 2015 ) discuss a variety of misconceptions of the invisible hand at the time of the Enlightenment is presented in a book titled Invisible Hands : Self-Organization and the Eighteenth Century . According to the authors , the primary view of 18th century European thought transitioned from a mechanical and providential worldview to a more modern worl-
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