Introduction

The Universe and the Light: A New View of the Universe and Reality

(1993)

The Universe and the Light has three parts:

In ‘The Nature of Light’, Nicholas Hagger reunifies knowledge in terms of the One Fire or Light. Mysticism, religion, cosmology, nature studies, the workings of the universe, physics, astronomy, metaphysics, science are all shown to be inspired by the same experienceable reality.

In ‘What is Universalism?’ Nicholas Hagger defines his philosophy of Universalism, which focuses on an energy that permeates all things/the universe and the soul/the universal being of all mankind, with great universality. Just as universalist religion and history concern every human being in mankind, so Universalist philosophy focuses on the power that links every human being with the Being of the universe. It therefore penetrates into mysticism, cosmology and science, and focuses on a new interactive view of man and the universe that has practical applications.

In ‘Reductionism, Holism and Universalism’, Nicholas Hagger considers reductionism, a form of scientific materialism, and distinguishes holism (which seeks a materialistic whole) and Universalism which explores the universal, metaphysical Whole and its universal energy which flows into the universal being of all organisms. He brings about Bergson’s “much-desired union of science and metaphysics” and effects a Metaphysical Revolution.

Appendix 1 offers a television treatment of Nicholas Hagger’s view of the rise and fall of civilizations and of the Fire in six religions; and traces the progress of ten religions in relation to their civilizations. Appendix 2 states Nicholas Hagger’s “Form from Movement Theory” which accounts for the origin and creation of the universe. Appendix 3 challenges the Darwinist, materialist view of the brain’s neurons and proposes transmissive consciousness.

Universalism returns philosophy to its pre-Socratic roots in the thinking of Heracleitus and Parmenides (c.500BC) and follows the empirical metaphysical tradition of Plato, Leibniz and Kant, who attempted to create models of reality in terms of which every element of human experience can be interpreted.  This tradition was kept alive in the early 20th century by Bergson (the philosopher of Vitalism), Whitehead, Husserl, T.E.Hulme and others before being curtailed by the Vienna Circle whose philosophers arbitrarily disqualified metaphysics in favour of linguistic analysis and logical positivism. They were not interested in revealing the Reality behind the universe.

The Universe and the Light defines a new philosophy. It retrieves the Vitalist tradition in philosophy by explaining the nature of the metaphysical Fire or Light and the origin of the Universe. It challenges the sceptical and materialist scientific philosophy of Stephen Hawking and presents Reality in terms of an infinite, self-aware, moving first principle which explains everything. The book’s unitive vision linked the individual to the greater Whole and was hailed as an important antidote to the bleak reductionism of modern philosophical thought.

In our time, materialists (cosmologists such as Hawking, neo-Darwinian biologists such as Dawkins and deconstructionist philosophers such as Derrida) have excluded the spiritual and divine as mysticism. Their view reduces man to an accidental and futile collection of atoms, cells and neurons. A bleak reductionism holds sway in the universities and primacy in physics, cosmology, biology, physiology, psychology and philosophy. Nicholas Hagger’s revolutionary approach liberates these disciplines and unites them with mysticism, metaphysics, religion and history. Advocating (with Bergson) a new metaphysical science, he achieves a marriage between physics and metaphysics that restores man’s uniqueness and purpose and undoes the reduction of man.

Nicholas Hagger has launched a Metaphysical Revolution in all the sciences and philosophy. Here is a challenge to 150 years of reductionist materialism in many disciplines and to 90 years of analytic and linguistic philosophy. When the universe is seen in terms of the Light, a true Theory of Everything becomes possible, a metaphysical holistic approach which includes the influx of divine wisdom, understanding, love and healing. Here is a revolutionary view of man, the universe and everything from a new philosopher who has replaced Existentialism with Universalism, a new philosophy which asserts that the universal energy of the Light manifests into the universe and guides man’s soul or universal being with great universality, an experience which is central to all religions.

The One and the Many: Universalism and the Vision of Unity

(1999)

In The One and the Many Nicholas Hagger presents a Universalist view of Western culture for the 21st century, and advocates a renewal of the metaphysical vision that inspired our civilization. Calling for a revolution in thought and culture, he shows how secular humanism has led to intellectual stagnation and the loss of mankind’s high designs.

This work questions the tradition of philosophy since 1910, when promising developments were obliterated by damaging materialistic philosophy, and through Universalism offers an exciting way forward for contemporary philosophy.

In The Universe and the Light Nicholas Hagger defined a new philosophy of Universalism, explaining the nature of the metaphysical Light and the origin of the Universe. The work’s unitive vision linked the individual to the greater Whole, and was hailed as a welcome antidote to the reductionist science of Stephen Hawking and the materialist philosophy of the twentieth century.

In The One and the Many Hagger expounds the One metaphysical reality which governs and reveals the underlying unity of Everything (the Many) in the context of culture, history, philosophy and religion. In doing so he makes an impassioned plea for a civilization inspired by a renewed vision of the divine Fire or Light. He demonstrates how secular humanism has led to a dead-end in all the disciplines, and outlines his hopes and fears for future world government which will operate either on Universalist benevolent principles or as an anarchic global empire run by big business.

The New Philosophy of Universalism: The Infinite and the Law of Order

(2009)

This book is Nicholas Hagger’s main work of philosophy. It develops the thinking in his earlier philosophical works into a comprehensive philosophy of the universe.

It describes the world/universe in terms of One Reality, in terms of which every element of our experience can be interpreted. (Whitehead said that the metaphysical philosopher endeavours to “frame a coherent, logical, necessary system of general ideas in terms of every element of our experience can be interpreted”.)

The book reconnects philosophy with the universe/Nature and will present the philosophy of Universalism as arising from the orderly universe of cosmology, physics, biology and metaphysical philosophy. Universalist thinking has applications in the environmental movement, political world government, religion, history and culture.

The book restates, and redefines, the metaphysical principle in our time as an experienceable ordering reality and as a system of ideas. It states the philosophy of Universalism in an accessible form. It is a book for the general reader and seeks to integrate all the disciplines – history, philosophy, religion, literature, science and the study of consciousness – into a single vision.

 The New Philosophy of Universalism challenges the Dawkins-neoDarwinist view of a random universe in favour of an ordered bio-friendly one.

At the origin of Western civilization, philosophy reflected the One universe and man’s position in it. In the 20th century, philosophy preferred to focus on logic and language and has become increasingly irrelevant. Universalism takes philosophy back to its original aim: focus on the universe – the universe known to contemporary cosmologists, astrophysicists, physicists, biologists and geologists, who identify systems of order as well as randomness. A systematic philosophy o the expanding universe, Nature and man, Universalism identifies a Law of Order that counterbalances a Law of Randomness and offers a new philosophy that has global applications. Excitingly, it reconnects philosophy to Nature and the thinking of the pre-Socratic Greeks and reunifies the universe and the scientific disciplines so philosophy can once again consider the whole of reality.

“The scope of Hagger’s book is immense. Universalism is a call to a philosopher to abandon the specialisms (in particular logic and language) and to attempt, once again, the kind of Grand Unified Theory of Everything that has marked the discipline from the beginning. Universalism has the potentiality to be as potent a movement in the 21st century as Existentialism was in the post-war world….Universalism is the most important movement in thought and art since Existentialism.”

Universal World State

(2010)

Author of The Rise and Fall of Civilizations, Nicholas Hagger examines the alternatives, including global governance, and offers an ideal model, structure and vision for a supranational body of administrators and enforcers supported by experts in international law, and an elected Senate and lower house based on the General Assembly of the United Nations. Together they would operate as a higher tier of government than existing bodies, including nation-states and the UN. He explains how this tier could come into being.

This is an accessible and innovative work of modern statecraft that offers a blueprint for a democratic world state with legal authority to end wars, famines, disease and poverty while allowing civilizations to continue their development with local, regional autonomy. Motivated by philanthropic and humanitarian considerations, Nicholas Hagger is concerned to set precise and realistic goals to maximise the world state’s effectiveness and to criminalise the plundering of resources by behind-the-scenes organisations run by self-interested élites. A challenging philosophical vision of a better future for all in the tradition of Plato’s Republic and Kant’s Perpetual Peace.

In The New Philosophy of Universalism Nicholas Hagger outlined a new philosophy that focuses on the oneness of the universe and humankind, and its applications for many disciplines, including international relations.

In this work of political Universalism Nicholas Hagger presents the long-yearned-for human dream of world government. In the hands of conquerors or self-interested élites concerned to loot the Earth’s resources to enrich themselves, this could be disastrous. But in the hands of a philanthropic body of experts and elected representatives this could benefit humankind by legislating to abolish war, famine, disease and poverty. A challenging philosophical vision of a better future in the tradition of Plato and Kant, this is required reading for all interested in improving the structures of global governance.

My Universalism and World State

Abstract

Introduction to my works to demonstrate common ground with the WPF. How I came to Universalism, my vision of unity. My dialectical thinking. My Universalism in seven disciplines. Historical Universalism. My conception of a World State. The reunification of world culture. My appeal to the UN.

‘I never stopped thinking how things might be improved and the constitution reformed.... Finally I came to the conclusion that all existing states were badly governed, and that their constitutions were incapable of reform without drastic treatment and a great deal of good luck. I was forced, in fact, to the belief that the only hope of finding justice for society or for the individual lay in true philosophy, and that mankind will have no respite from trouble until either real philosophers gain political power or politicians become by some miracle true philosophers.’

Plato, letter VII, stating the theme of The Republic, c.353/2BC

It’s a pleasure to be addressing fellow Universalists in the cradle of Greek democracy, which was founded during the reforms of Solon in c.594/3BC and established by Cleisthenes in c.508/7BC. We are in the heart of the Athenian political empire of Themistocles and Pericles, and near the prison where Socrates was put to death in 399BC and near Plato’s Academy, the school for statesmen Plato founded in 386BC. Plato’s philosophical dialogues established Socrates’ dialectical thinking, and his Republic associated philosophers with an ideal political state and the practice of statecraft. Plato’s pupil Aristotle set out the constitution of the Athenians, the political system of ancient Athens, in Athenaion Politeia, c.329/8BC, a further example of a philosopher practising statecraft.

Ancient Greek political philosophy and statecraft devised a new system of universal government by free citizens for Athens, and now we modern political philosophers and practisers of statecraft are following in the footsteps of Plato and Aristotle as we devise a new system of universal government by free citizens for the world, which I call Universalism.

    How I came to Universalism

I’d like to tell you how I came to Universalism. In the early 1960s I was a British-Council-sponsored lecturer at the University of Baghdad in Iraq and I then spent four years as Visiting Professor at three universities in Tokyo, Japan, where I also wrote speeches on world banking for the Governor of the Bank of Japan and tutored Emperor Hirohito’s second son in world history. I was asked to teach a postgraduate course at one of my universities on ‘The decline of the West’, which I based on Gibbon, Spengler and Toynbee, and while doing this I saw a fourth way of understanding history, which led to my study of 25 rising and falling civilizations, The Fire and the Stones (1991). In that work of historical Universalism, which sees all world history as an indivisible unity, I saw civilizations as rising following a mystic’s vision of metaphysical Fire or Light that passed into their religions.

I titled the Preface ‘Introduction to the New Universalism’ and in January 1991, nearly 25 years ago, wrote that ‘an Age of Universalism is ahead’. I developed the philosophical implications of Universalism in The Universe and the Light (1993), which contained three essays. In the middle one, titled ‘What is Universalism?’, I pointed out that the word ‘Universalism’ incorporates the words ‘universe’, ‘universal’ and ‘universality’. Universalism sees each discipline from the perspective of the whole of humankind. A Universalist sees the universe as a unity – sees the oneness of the universe, of humankind and of all world history.

I led a group of a dozen British Universalist philosophers in London from 1993 to 1994. Like the Existentialists who had different shades of Existentialism we all had different shades of Universalism but were able to call ourselves Universalists. I went on to have 43 books published in seven disciplines, all from a Universalist perspective. I reflected the oneness of the universe in my philosophical work, The One and the Many (1999). I set out philosophical Universalism in The New Philosophy of Universalism (2009), which sees the philosophical universe as an indivisible unity and the traditions of philosophy within a whole; and literary Universalism in A New Philosophy of Literature (2012), which presents the fundamental theme of world literature. I’ve described all this in two autobiographical works published earlier in 2015, My Double Life 1: This Dark Wood and My Double Life 2: A Rainbow over the Hills, which was subtitled ‘The Vision of Unity’.

    My vision of unity

I arrived at my vision of unity in Japan. I visited Zen Buddhist temples and meditated, and found myself on a Mystic Way outside denominational religion: I underwent an awakening, then purgation, then illumination (which I experienced in Japan and more profoundly in London) and eventually, after ordeals, a centre-shift that left me permanently perceiving unity. I came to see the world and the universe as a unity instinctively. I reflected the vision of unity in my literary work: in over 1,500 poems, more than 300 classical odes, two epic poems, five verse plays, a masque and over 1,000 short stories.

I don’t exclude the rational approach but I’m aware that the reason, the rational faculty I used in my university teaching, analyses and makes distinctions and seeks differences within separate disciplines, and fragments. I discovered from my experience that there is also an intuitive faculty that perceives unity, that pieces together the fragmented disciplines and restores their wholeness and unity. My Universalist approach to the world’s problems combines these two faculties. The vision of unity draws strength from science’s rational recognition of the order in the universe and from the intuitive perception of the oneness of the universe and of humankind.

    Philosophical Universalism and the metaphysical perspective

My philosophical Universalism sees the universe and humankind as a whole. It reflects the oneness of the universe and includes the metaphysical view of manifestation: the universe manifests from Nothingness to Non-Being, to Being and (with the Big Bang) Existence – through four levels or tiers of metaphysical Reality. My philosophical Universalism restores the metaphysical perspective of the universe which in the 1920s and 1930s was stripped aside by the sceptical, secular Vienna Circle who were more interested in logic and language than in the universe.

I have set out the metaphysical philosophical tradition in my books, for example in chapters 1 and 2 of The New Philosophy of Universalism (‘The Origins of Western Philosophy’ and ‘The Decline of Western Philosophy and the Way Forward’). I have also set out the scientific, more empirical tradition which co-existed with it. The two traditions arguably began with Plato and Aristotle and co-existed at the Academy not far from here.

My philosophical Universalism reconciles the two traditions. The universe manifested before the Big Bang from the infinite, which the Presocratic Anaximander of Miletus called ‘the boundless’ (to apeiron), an eternally moving Reality, c.570BC. The universe has been expanding since the first whoosh of inflation in the first second, and is now shaped like a shuttlecock (the ‘ball’ with a ring of feathers batted in badminton) and surrounded by the infinite from which it manifested. I have a picture of a surfer on the front cover of The New Philosophy of Universalism. His feet are in space-time on the edge of the expanding universe, but his head, arms and body are in the infinite, the ‘boundless’. The surfer is a symbol of Universalism’s reconciliation of the metaphysical and scientific/social perspectives and traditions.

    My dialectical thinking: +A + –A = 0

Dialectical thinking can be found in all my books. Junzaburo Nishiwaki, Japan’s T.S. Eliot, introduced me to it in 1964, 51 years ago. In a restaurant with sawdust on the floor, just him and me drinking saké, I asked him, ‘What is the wisdom of the East?’ He wrote down: ‘+A + –A = 0.’ Above 0 he wrote ‘Great Nothing’. I immediately grasped what he meant. All the opposites – day and night, life and death, time and eternity, finite and infinite, every thesis and antithesis – are reconciled within a synthesis, an underlying unity. This synthesis is the Universalist reconciliation. He said, ‘The Absolute is where there is no difference.’ Metaphysics + the scientific, social perspective = underlying order within the universe on which the philosophy of Universalism is based.

This dialectical thinking goes back to the symposia (‘drinkings together’) in the elegies of the Greek lyric poet Theognis of Megara (6th century BC) and in the Socratic dialogues of Plato’s The Symposium (c.385–370BC) and Xenophon’s The Symposium (late 360s BC). ‘Dialectic’ was explained by Plato in The Republic, book 7 (c.380BC) as a method which challenges its own assumptions, and dialectical thinking may look back beyond Plato’s Socratic dialogues to Heracleitus. The dialectic of Marxism, taken from Hegel, is well-known: +A (thesis, workers) + –A (antithesis, employers) = 0 (synthesis, the Communist State which allegedly kept them in balance). I arrived at my dialectic not through social thinking but, as I have said, through the ultimate vision of unity of mysticism and metaphysics. My dialectic now includes social thinking: +A (the metaphysical perspective) + –A (the secular, social perspective) = 0, the Universalist vision of unity and its expression in statecraft.

    My Universalism – and seven disciplines

My Universalism, which is similar to secular Transuniversalism in some respects, has applications in a number of disciplines. In My Double Life 2: A Rainbow over the Hills I set out seven disciplines and describe them as bands in a rainbow. Universalism has applications in mysticism, literature, philosophy and science, history, comparative religion, international politics and statecraft, and world culture. (It also has applications on the environment, but we’ll leave that aside as environmental Universalism is an aspect of scientific Universalism.) My works reflect all these disciplines and have Universalism at their core. It can be said that there are seven Universalisms like bands of a rainbow: mystical Universalism; literary Universalism; philosophical and scientific Universalism – I treat them as one as I see the two as enmeshed and scientists such as Hawking have claimed (wrongly) that science has replaced philosophy; historical Universalism; religious Universalism; political Universalism; and cultural Universalism. But there is in actual fact just one Universalism which, like an overarching rainbow, includes these seven bands.

My Universalism sees each discipline as a unified whole – thus my work on literary Universalism, A New Philosophy of Literature, sees all world literature as a whole and presents the fundamental theme of world literature – and sees all disciplines as a unified whole. In my works Universalism reconciles all opposites, including classical and Romantic styles in literature, rational and intuitional approaches in philosophy, metaphysical and secular perspectives in the seven disciplines – and nation-states and federalism in international politics.

    Historical Universalism and my World State

I now want to dwell on historical Universalism, which sees world history as a whole. I have said that according to my study of civilizations in The Fire and the Stones (revised and brought up to date in The Light of Civilization and The Rise and Fall of Civilizations), each of 25 civilizations rose following a metaphysical vision which passed into its religion, and declined when it turned secular and lost contact with its original metaphysical vision. After passing through 61 similar stages each civilization passes into another civilization (just as the Egyptian and Mesopotamian civilizations passed into the Arab civilization in 642 and their own gods were abandoned for Allah).

The goal of historical Universalism is to create a partial World State within this pattern, a partly federal supranational state that would abolish war, nuclear weapons, famine, disease and poverty and run the world for humanity on the principle of universality. If such a World State comes into being within the rising-and-falling pattern, it will last for a while like the Roman Empire, not forever. Eventually the rising-and-falling pattern of civilizations will resume, but the world will have benefited from the abolition of war, nuclear weapons, famine, disease and poverty while the World State lasts.

This World State would be formed within a civilization, and of the 25 civilizations in my study the North-American civilization is the youngest and most energetic living civilization, in stage 15 of its 61 stages (an expanding stage), whereas the European civilization is in stage 43 (a stage in which a civilization passes into a conglomerate, in Europe’s case the European Union) and the Byzantine-Russian civilization has just left stage 43 (the USSR) and entered stage 46 (federalism, the Russian Federation). In historical terms as the only superpower the North-American civilization is well placed to set up a World State as it is in the same stage the Roman Empire was in before 218BC when it expanded its Republican Empire in Carthage, Macedonia, Greece and Spain as a result of the two Punic Wars; and the UN’s headquarters is within its borders.

I have set out details of a democratic World State in The World Government (2010) and in the second volume of my American trilogy (written for the American market), The Secret American Dream (2011). The third volume, out in 2016, The Secret American Destiny, repeats my calls for the US to encourage the UN, which is inter-nationalist and between nation-states, to begin discussions on creating a supranational partly federal World State within the stages of the 14 living civilizations. The 14 living civilizations are the North-American, European, Byzantine-Russian, Andean, Meso-American, Arab, African, South-East-Asian, Japanese, Oceanian, Chinese, Tibetan and Central-Asian civilizations. I have set out 850 global constituencies and the structure of the World State in these books.

Initially the nation-states would empower a partly federal supranational authority (a World Commission, World Parliamentary Assembly and World Senate) to deliver seven goals:

1.   bringing peace between nation-states, and disarmament;

2.   sharing natural resources and energy so that all humankind can have a raised standard of living;

3.   solving environmental problems such as global warming, which seem to be beyond self-interested nation-states;

4.   ending disease;

5.   ending famine;

6.   solving the world’s financial crisis; and

7.   redistributing wealth to eliminate poverty.

The partial supranational authority would make progress on the world’s most critical problems covered by these seven goals. Otherwise civilizations and nation-states would continue as they are. Nation-states would be giving up some power in these seven areas to improve the world but would retain internal power. A more absolute World State may emerge at a later stage after everyone has got used to a limited supranational authority.

The practical way my World State would be set up is as follows. Discussing a partial supranational authority at the UN General Assembly would come under the UN’s global education policy. Encouraged by the US, the UN General Assembly of nation-states would discuss the implications of approving a World Constitutional Convention after agreeing all the safeguards in all the world’s regions. It would eventually act to join the new supranational World State. The 14 living civilizations’ rise-and-fall pattern within their separate civilizations would be suspended in the areas of the seven goals (but would continue at the local regional level), and they would enter a form of federalism for a while. Five living civilizations – the European, Japanese, Oceanian, Chinese and Tibetan civilizations – are in stage 43, the union stage, and their unions would pass into the new federation. Eight living civilizations – the Byzantine-Russian, Andean, Meso-American, Arab, African, Indian, South-East-Asian and Central-Asian civilizations – are in stage 46, a federalism stage and their federalism would pass into the new World Federation.

The only superpower, the expanding North-American civilization, would preside over the World Federation in its stage 15 just as the Roman civilization presided over the states in the Republican Roman Empire’s Mediterranean states before 218BC. My World State is akin to the WPF’s ‘Universal Earth State’ and the WPF’s vision of the self-government of humanity as a whole. Calls for such a World State have been made by President Truman, Einstein, Churchill, Gandhi, Bertrand Russell, Eisenhower, John F. Kennedy and Gorbachev.

I emphasize that the World State or World Federation would be partly federal in limiting itself to the seven goals: bringing peace and disarmament between nation-states; sharing resources and energy; solving environmental problems such as global warming; ending famine; solving the world’s financial crisis; and redistributing wealth to eliminate poverty. Nation-states and civilizations would continue at local regional level outside these seven areas.

A World State will only last as long as the expansionist phase of the North-American civilization, which began with stage 15. The Roman civilization’s expansionist phase after the beginning of stage 15 lasted from 341BC until Rome was sacked in 410, then in 455 and again in 476, between 700 and 800 years. The European civilization’s expansionist phase after the beginning of stage 15 (which included the Crusades) lasted from 951 to 1914, nearly a thousand years. When the North-American expansionist phase ends the World State will break up and all 14 living civilizations will leave the World Federation and return to their rise-and-fall pattern. Apart from the seven federal areas they will have continued in this pattern at local regional level, and their return from the World State through the pattern of stages will therefore be seamless. The rise-and-fall pattern of the dead civilizations can be found in The Fire and the Stones (revised as The Light of Civilization and The Rise and Fall of Civilizations).

    Reunification of world culture

To achieve the formation of a World State there must be a reunification of our fractured world culture. The seven disciplines of world culture are divided between metaphysical and secular approaches, and Universalism can reconcile these and reconcile world culture, as I show in my next book, The Secret American Destiny, which is out in October 2016. It must not be forgotten that of the world population of 7.33 billion in July 2015, 4.6 billion – 63% – regard themselves as religious believers, i.e. as having some sort of metaphysical outlook and perspective. The WPF’s Transuniversalism is secular, and although it does not reject the traditional religion of the 4.6 billion, the WPF focuses on the universal and scientific principles followed by 37% of humankind.

My Universalism seeks to combine within the seven disciplines of world culture the secular outlook the WPF has and the metaphysical outlook, to prepare the ground for a Universalism in which everyone – all world citizens, including the 63% who are religious – can have a stake, and therefore for a coming World State.

    My appeal to the UN

I’ve told you about my Universalism and World State. We have been working in the same area for several years, and it would be good to join forces. Ultimately I would like to see a debate between the nation-states on the benefits of setting up a World Constitutional Convention in New York to found a World State, the WPF’s ‘Universal Earth State’ whose constitution we are inaugurating this week. Igor Kondrashin has kindly suggested that I might become a special envoy of the WPF to lobby the UN.

To carry the momentum forward I now want to make an appeal to the UN, under whose umbrella – through UNESCO – we are now meeting. And so I appeal to the UN and to Ban Ki-moon, please take on board what I have said. Please timetable a presentation within the General Assembly to the assembled nation-states about the benefits of forming a partially federal supranational World State that can declare war, nuclear weapons, famine, disease and poverty illegal and bring in universal order for all humankind. I am prepared to address the UN General Assembly and give this presentation, if invited. I also appeal to the incumbent American President Obama, recipient of the Nobel Peace Prize in 2009 and believer in a World State, and to the next American President to lend their support for such a debate.

Not far from here Plato, practising statecraft for his school for statesmen, devised his ideal republic in The Republic, in book 6 of which he showed Socrates associating the philosopher with practical government through his conception of the ‘philosopher-king’ or ‘philosopher-ruler’. We modern practisers of philosophical statecraft who are creating a World State look back to Plato’s ideal society in which it is essential (Plato says in letter VII) that “real philosophers gain political power or politicians become by some miracle true philosophers”, and to Socrates’ association of philosophers with practical government.

I appeal to the UN and to the US President of the day: please, continue the spirit of this long tradition of statecraft. Please consider the merits of an ideal democratic, partly federal World State – a new supranational ‘republic’ – that can solve the world’s problems (war, refugees, nuclear weapons, famine, disease and poverty) on the basis of Universalist reconciliation.