08-26-2022, 01:26 PM
(This post was last modified: 08-26-2022, 01:56 PM by Eric the Green.)
(08-26-2022, 10:19 AM)sbarrera Wrote: It's a stretch, I know, to apply Khaldun's ideas to a modern society with its democratic forms of government and complex industrial capitalist economy. But it's hard (for me) to resist given that he speaks of a progression of four generations, and describes a process by which "royal authority," which I equated with institutional authority, is established and subsequently decays. This is obviously similar to S&H theory.
Certainly there's a great hope that by its nature a Constitutional Republic is protected from the effect of the "leadership cycle," where a leader's inheritors end up with lesser qualities than their forefathers. Wasn't that part of the intent of the founders of the United States? To avoid this flaw in monarchical government? But still Khaldun's idea of "group feeling" being a prerequisite for government of any form to have authority seem to apply even to the Good Old US of A.
I'm not sure what to think about this. Cycles run in various ways.
The USA is not a dynasty, but it does have an elected king, and a virtual aristocracy that has been allowed to grow for 40 years of neoliberalism. Although in the Keynesian era it was a much-more equal society, so decisions by the voters rather than inherited power was a factor at times.
I think S&H, especially Strauss, seemed to think the 4 archetypes followed in a sequence of declining competence in the generation coming of age, from the civic heroes down to the nomads. It is plausible, especially in terms of institutional health, national competence and such. But if culture and awakenings are given equal weight as social moments, which they didn't usually do, then from that point of view the cycle starts with prophets and declines to the artists.
Although the Awakening can also be attributed in part to artists as well as prophets, and the Crisis in part to nomads as well as civics. So it may be more complicated than the comparison with dynasties suggests, and the generations at any time they saw as three of them in a particular line-up.
And I don't think dynasties have a history of continual decline, fall, and a new dynasty either. It's more complicated than that too. It held true with Persia, but after all Persia is not a very competent society to begin with. Look what they've got now! In the UK and European dynasties, good and bad rulers came along rather unexpectedly, I think.