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Sounds like bunk! Religion has pre-historic origin, it is older than agriculture and hence older than aristocracy as a class. Pre-christian rulers did have inte

by olavk 11y ago

Sounds like bunk! Religion has pre-historic origin, it is older than agriculture and hence older than aristocracy as a class. Pre-christian rulers did have interest in how commoners worshiped - for example the Romans (though otherwise tolerant of various religious beliefs) insisted that all citizens took part in the emperor cult, which lead to problems for the first Christians. The rule of law is certainly older than Gutenberg - for example the pre-christian Icelanders held public recitals of the laws, so literacy was not required for laws to be public knowledge.

vinceguidry 11y ago
The rule of law, as we call it, is a specific term meaning that leaders are to held accountable to laws just as subjects are. It is rule by laws, and not people. It was pretty much invented by the English. A variety of factors, primarily geographical, prevented it from being adopted in continental Europe for a long time after it was already pretty-well-settled in Britain. The rule of law was one of the most important building blocks of the British Empire. Laws themselves, of course, are as old as civilization. Religion is, as you say, older than civilization, but it is worth examining how religion worked pre-historically and after the rise of civilization, as they are very different. You can learn about prehistoric religion in the aforementioned Fields of Blood. Essentially humans have three brains, the basal ganglia, the limbic system, and the neocortex, all of which gives us various drives. Religion is the child of the neocortex and serves to make sense of the other two drive us to do.
- vagelim 11y ago
  The rule of law was most certainly not invented by the English. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rule_of_law https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rule_of_law
  - vinceguidry 11y ago
    "Invention" is somewhat arbitrary when discussing topics as these. You have to draw a line somewhere, and the English were the first to actually subjugate the head of state to their system of laws. Therefore I say the English invented rule of law. They may not have been the first to think that the king needs to follow the law, but they were the first to successfully demand it. Obviously you can look back through history and find isolated examples of things that kind-of look like rule of law, but the English were the first to do it right. A fun thing to do is to go through different countries you're interested in and analyze how much of the rule of law each of them actually implements, rather than just professes to have. Laws and justice are such appealing notions that even tyrants feel the need to put the people they want to execute on "trial". Plenty of totalitarian governments have nominal "constitutions" that aren't worth the paper they're printed on. I personally consider it a measure of how advanced and robust a society is. One should not think of democracy as "people having elections", but rather as a collection of different principles which society forces the people that would want to rule it to follow. Is there a functioning legal system? Is there a system for transfer of power? Is there a working constitution? The rule of law is an emergent property that rests on all of these things.
    - dragonwriter 11y ago
      > You have to draw a line somewhere, and the English were the first to actually subjugate the head of state to their system of laws. I can't think of any reasonable standard where England actually has subjugated the head of state to their laws and is also the first to have done so by that standard. I mean, surely we aren't holding up the military purge of Parliament that produced the Rump Parliament and that Rump Parliament's creation of the "High Court of Justice" and its prosecution of the King as an example of the rule of law... At best, that would give the English credit for the creation of the revolutionary kangaroo court (and, even at that, it probably wasn't original.) And, even if you were to credit that as establishing the rule of law (and certainly, a lot of the language popularly used -- e.g., in the US's own revolution -- about the relationship between the monarch and the law stems from that prosecution and the propaganda around it), you'd have to recognize that that was hardly a durable principle established in England, having been somewhat forcibly repudiated when everyone who participated it that was caught by the post-Restoration government having been executed for their participation in it.
      - vinceguidry 11y ago
        > you'd have to recognize that that was hardly a durable principle established in England, having been somewhat forcibly repudiated when everyone who participated it that was caught by the post-Restoration government having been executed for their participation in it. It was tenuous when it was first established. It became less so over time. Nothing happens all at once. If the North Koreans suddenly decided they wanted to ape the rule of law and passed a whole bunch of laws and killed a bunch of people French Revolution style, I would hesitate to say that the new nation has rule of law for at least a hundred years, unless I lived there and could observe the process directly so I could ascertain whether they're moving overall towards robust rule of law or more towards modern Russian oligarchy.
        dragonwriter 11y ago
        > It was tenuous when it was first established. It became less so over time. From the Restoration to now the complete immunity of the monarch to civil and criminal law has been given; and its only in the mid-20th century that British law recognized some claims against the monarch's government being of-right rather than by-license. The idea of the monarch being subject to the law was more of a momentary, fleeting, and swiftly violently repressed concept in English law that had already been generally repudiated in England itself when the idea got raised as part of the Revolutionary propaganda in some of England's American colonies a century later, rather than something that was tenuous when first proposed in England but which later became firmly established. (To the extent Britain has made progress in the rule of law, accountability of the chief of state to the law is pretty much the worst place to look for examples; the bloodshed on both sides of that issue has led to most subsequent progress in the direction of rule of law focusing on making the monarch irrelevant to the law in anything other than a symbolic sense rather than accountable to it.)
- olavk 11y ago
  > It was pretty much invented by the English. Let me guess... you are English? Seriously, the English did not invent the notion that leaders are to be held accountable to laws just as subjects. Just take the roman republic.
  - vinceguidry 11y ago
    The Romans tried, and got close, to actually implementing rule of law. But they failed. It was an idea before its time. As I said before, it's not hard to dream up the idea and to try to implement it. What makes the difference is follow-through. Now, the Romans implemented a great deal of political reforms aimed at democratizing power and, most impressively, provided for peaceful transfer of power. But the descent into tyranny renders all that moot. The world just wasn't ready for rule of law anywhere, I think very few citizens actually trusted law even though they were excited by the possibilities. They could pass laws dividing up power, but that doesn't mean that the people holding that power would respect the law just because it was passed. When the English implemented it, they stuck to it and never went back. The English respect laws in ways that few do today, except perhaps Germany. Pre-WWII Germany is a great example of what rule of law isn't. If your elected leaders can significantly alter those laws such as to allow a dictatorship to take over, you don't have full rule of law. It's not just the written laws on the books. If they get ignored and nobody can enforce them, it's not rule of law. The whole society has to participate in protecting it. It's why we say Edison invented the light bulb even though he wasn't the first to come up with the idea. Having an idea isn't enough. And no, I'm American.
    - olavk 11y ago
      So at what point in time do you believe that the English implemented rule of law fully and never went back? Honestly your argument seem quite hand-wavy. How would you precisely define rule-of-law in such a way that you can decide if a particular system is rule-of-law or not? Why is England rule-of-law and say pre-christian Iceland not?
      - vinceguidry 11y ago

by olavk 11y ago

vinceguidry 11y ago

The rule of law, as we call it, is a specific term meaning that leaders are to held accountable to laws just as subjects are. It is rule by laws, and not people. It was pretty much invented by the English. A variety of factors, primarily geographical, prevented it from being adopted in continental Europe for a long time after it was already pretty-well-settled in Britain. The rule of law was one of the most important building blocks of the British Empire. Laws themselves, of course, are as old as civilization. Religion is, as you say, older than civilization, but it is worth examining how religion worked pre-historically and after the rise of civilization, as they are very different. You can learn about prehistoric religion in the aforementioned Fields of Blood. Essentially humans have three brains, the basal ganglia, the limbic system, and the neocortex, all of which gives us various drives. Religion is the child of the neocortex and serves to make sense of the other two drive us to do.

vagelim 11y ago
The rule of law was most certainly not invented by the English. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rule_of_law https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rule_of_law
- vinceguidry 11y ago
  "Invention" is somewhat arbitrary when discussing topics as these. You have to draw a line somewhere, and the English were the first to actually subjugate the head of state to their system of laws. Therefore I say the English invented rule of law. They may not have been the first to think that the king needs to follow the law, but they were the first to successfully demand it. Obviously you can look back through history and find isolated examples of things that kind-of look like rule of law, but the English were the first to do it right. A fun thing to do is to go through different countries you're interested in and analyze how much of the rule of law each of them actually implements, rather than just professes to have. Laws and justice are such appealing notions that even tyrants feel the need to put the people they want to execute on "trial". Plenty of totalitarian governments have nominal "constitutions" that aren't worth the paper they're printed on. I personally consider it a measure of how advanced and robust a society is. One should not think of democracy as "people having elections", but rather as a collection of different principles which society forces the people that would want to rule it to follow. Is there a functioning legal system? Is there a system for transfer of power? Is there a working constitution? The rule of law is an emergent property that rests on all of these things.
  - dragonwriter 11y ago
    > You have to draw a line somewhere, and the English were the first to actually subjugate the head of state to their system of laws. I can't think of any reasonable standard where England actually has subjugated the head of state to their laws and is also the first to have done so by that standard. I mean, surely we aren't holding up the military purge of Parliament that produced the Rump Parliament and that Rump Parliament's creation of the "High Court of Justice" and its prosecution of the King as an example of the rule of law... At best, that would give the English credit for the creation of the revolutionary kangaroo court (and, even at that, it probably wasn't original.) And, even if you were to credit that as establishing the rule of law (and certainly, a lot of the language popularly used -- e.g., in the US's own revolution -- about the relationship between the monarch and the law stems from that prosecution and the propaganda around it), you'd have to recognize that that was hardly a durable principle established in England, having been somewhat forcibly repudiated when everyone who participated it that was caught by the post-Restoration government having been executed for their participation in it.
    - vinceguidry 11y ago
      > you'd have to recognize that that was hardly a durable principle established in England, having been somewhat forcibly repudiated when everyone who participated it that was caught by the post-Restoration government having been executed for their participation in it. It was tenuous when it was first established. It became less so over time. Nothing happens all at once. If the North Koreans suddenly decided they wanted to ape the rule of law and passed a whole bunch of laws and killed a bunch of people French Revolution style, I would hesitate to say that the new nation has rule of law for at least a hundred years, unless I lived there and could observe the process directly so I could ascertain whether they're moving overall towards robust rule of law or more towards modern Russian oligarchy.
      - dragonwriter 11y ago
        > It was tenuous when it was first established. It became less so over time. From the Restoration to now the complete immunity of the monarch to civil and criminal law has been given; and its only in the mid-20th century that British law recognized some claims against the monarch's government being of-right rather than by-license. The idea of the monarch being subject to the law was more of a momentary, fleeting, and swiftly violently repressed concept in English law that had already been generally repudiated in England itself when the idea got raised as part of the Revolutionary propaganda in some of England's American colonies a century later, rather than something that was tenuous when first proposed in England but which later became firmly established. (To the extent Britain has made progress in the rule of law, accountability of the chief of state to the law is pretty much the worst place to look for examples; the bloodshed on both sides of that issue has led to most subsequent progress in the direction of rule of law focusing on making the monarch irrelevant to the law in anything other than a symbolic sense rather than accountable to it.)
olavk 11y ago
> It was pretty much invented by the English. Let me guess... you are English? Seriously, the English did not invent the notion that leaders are to be held accountable to laws just as subjects. Just take the roman republic.
- vinceguidry 11y ago
  The Romans tried, and got close, to actually implementing rule of law. But they failed. It was an idea before its time. As I said before, it's not hard to dream up the idea and to try to implement it. What makes the difference is follow-through. Now, the Romans implemented a great deal of political reforms aimed at democratizing power and, most impressively, provided for peaceful transfer of power. But the descent into tyranny renders all that moot. The world just wasn't ready for rule of law anywhere, I think very few citizens actually trusted law even though they were excited by the possibilities. They could pass laws dividing up power, but that doesn't mean that the people holding that power would respect the law just because it was passed. When the English implemented it, they stuck to it and never went back. The English respect laws in ways that few do today, except perhaps Germany. Pre-WWII Germany is a great example of what rule of law isn't. If your elected leaders can significantly alter those laws such as to allow a dictatorship to take over, you don't have full rule of law. It's not just the written laws on the books. If they get ignored and nobody can enforce them, it's not rule of law. The whole society has to participate in protecting it. It's why we say Edison invented the light bulb even though he wasn't the first to come up with the idea. Having an idea isn't enough. And no, I'm American.
  - olavk 11y ago
    So at what point in time do you believe that the English implemented rule of law fully and never went back? Honestly your argument seem quite hand-wavy. How would you precisely define rule-of-law in such a way that you can decide if a particular system is rule-of-law or not? Why is England rule-of-law and say pre-christian Iceland not?
    - vinceguidry 11y ago