The first part of this essay attempted to portray an extraordinary, though often overlooked continuity in the history of social philosophy. Understood as an attempt to dissolve intrigue through the clearing of occluded horizons, we compared the social-philosophical attempts of ancient Athens and turn-of-the-century Vienna by describing the affinities between reflection and reduction.
In both cases, we cited the crucial moment of an individual’s philosophical conversion over against his inherited conscious horizon. The aura of the received is dimmed when the imagination assumes a critical, higher standpoint, and in this movement social philosophy proceeds as an irreverent response to illegitimate authority, opportunistic distraction and nomological chatter. As Socrates put it, one is to stand in the same relationship to the law as the legislator who wrote it. Pseudo-necessity, along with the myopia and injustice that it supports, is to be overcome by the education of possibility – which is to say by the transition from passive to active intellect.
