Order

Order is the basis of every creative civilisation, because it disciplines man’s anarchistic animal nature through its political and cultural harmonies.

Order is unacceptable if it’s not disciplinary, educative, selective — if it’s purely repressive in service to a frozen elite. Any notion of order needs, though, to be treated with caution, for it can be stimulating or enervating, a source of vigour or of sclerosis. There is no order without a project, without enthusiasm, without a movement. Order is not simply repressive (the American syndrome), but a form of support, an attraction, a disciplined constitution of a common ideal.

An authentic order is found in the community of homogeneous, self-disciplined people, animated by the spirit of Aristotelian philia, friendship, and spontaneous solidarity. Order and harmony go together. In the European tradition, order isn’t a static state, but the organisation of a shared becoming.

(see discipline; liberty)