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Thelemic Politics: ISONOMY

To: thelema93-l@HOLLYFELD.ORG (Thelema93-Listserv)
From: tyagi@HOUSEOFKAOS.ABYSS.COM (xiwangmu)
Subject: Thelemic Politics: ISONOMY (Was Re: OZzy Speaks...)
Date: Sun, 2 Jun 1996 01:53:51 -0700 (PDT)

49960602 (4 days before the Aeon of the Adversary)

Do as you please, for that is my Law.


|From: Jeffrey Smith 
|Date: Sat, 1 Jun 1996 23:13:57 -0400 (EDT)

|"no-rule" should properly be "anomy"
|"Iso" is a prefix with meaning of even or balanced or symmetric (as in 
|isometrics or isoseceles triangles);  so  isonomy *ought* to mean 
|something like "ruled balanced out among the parts"--i.e, a society 
|where all people really are equals, in fact as well as in theory, and the 
|government is on all their shoulders.

I was likely unclear and/or mistaken, being relatively new to the book by
Arendt and the concept.  Let me quote a little from _On Revolution_ and
also from my Bible:

	Freedom as a political phenomenon was coeval with the rise
	of the Greek city-states.  Since Herodotus, it was understood
	as a form of political organization in which the citizens
	lived together under the conditions of no-rule, without
	division between rulers and ruled.*  This notion of no-rule
	was expressed by the word isonomy, whose outstanding
	characteristic among the forms of government, as the ancients
	had enumerated them, was that the notion of rule (the "-archy"
	from [Greek text omitted] in monarchy and oligarchy, or the
	"-cracy" from [more omitted] in democracy) was entirely
	absent from it.  The polis was supposed to be an isonomy, not
	a democracy.  The word "democracy," expressing even then
	majority rule, the rule of the many, was originally coined by
	those who were opposed to isonomy and who meant to say: What
	you say is "no-rule" is in fact only another kind of rulership;
	it is the worst form of government, rule by the demos.**

		* - I am following the famous paragraphs in
		which Herodotus defines - it seems for the
		first time - the chief three forms of govern-
		ment, rule by one, rule by the few, rule by
		the many, and discusses their merits (Book III,
		80-82).  There the spokesman for Athenian
		democracy, which, however, is called isonomy,
		declines the kingdom which is offered him and
		gives as his reason: "I want neither to rule
		nor to be ruled."  Whereupon Herodotus states
		that his house became the only free house in
		the whole Persian Empire.

		** - For the meaning of isonomy and its use in
		political thought, see Victor Ehrenberg, 
		"Isonomia", in Pauly-Wissowa, *Realenzyklopa:die 
		des klassischen Altertums, Supplement*, vol. VII.
		Especially telling seems a remark of Thucydides
		(III, 82, 8), who by "fair-sounding names," some
		preferring to invoke isonomy and some moderate
		aristocracy, while, as Thucydides implies, the
		former stood for democracy and the latter for
		oligarchy....  

_On Revolution_, by Hannah Arendt, Viking Press, 1969; pp. 22-3
		 as well as notes from p. 289.
________________________________________________________________


	isonomy... *n.* equality of political rights [Gk. *isonomia*...]

Webster's New Universal Unabridged Dictionary, Barnes and Noble, 1992.
______________________________________________________________________

[most of the balance of Jeffrey's letter included below - mu]

|I was intrigued by all your comments.  You did skip over the best 
|argument for laws against drug use, sexual commerce, etc.;  namely, that 
|they protect those who are unable to properly decide whether or not to 
|act in a certain way--in Ozzic terms, they protect the slaves from their 
|own bad choices;  but the Law is unable  to distinguish between kings and 
|slaves and therefore binds the kings as well....

|If you want to expand on this onlist, please do so, but please cc me 
|privately, ....

|Yours in luxocentric antiterranism...

|  Jeffrey Smith       f901030k@bcfreenet.seflin.lib.fl.us
|Ten Sefirot Ineffable: Their end is in their beginning, their beginning 
|is in their end, as the fire and the fuel.  For the Master is singular,
|He has no second.  And before One, what is counted?--Sefer Yetzirah 1:7

Free love, right now!

mu
tyagi@houseofkaos.abyss.com


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