Two Visions of Politics and Two Visions of Man

Abstract

When looking for the sources of modern political disputes, Thomas Sowell suggests that we focus on “social visions,” which he refers to as “the foundations on which theories are built.” They represent a pre-analytical cognitive act which is the foundation of political action. His goal is therefore to discover what we believe or feel even before we engage in systematic inference, and what reflects our most deeply held convictions about how the world works. Social visions are important because, as he emphasizes, they fill in the unavoidable gaps in individual knowledge, setting out the trajectories for thought and action. Moreover, they spread easily across societies and their impact extends over generations. By unearthing the visions which are at the very core of metapolitics, we may find the key to understanding the dynamics of modernity, which Sowell believes to have been forged—as mentioned above—in the fire of two political revolutions, reflecting two different social visions: the “constrained” (the case of America) and the “unconstrained” (the case of France).