Reflections on the Political Mentalization of British Elites: A Political and Psychological Essay (Part 2)

Abstract

In this article’s second part, the authors consider the results of the activities of the predecessor of English (insular) Protestantism, the theologian and philosopher William Ockham, who at the beginning of the 14th century formulated the basic postulates of a political phenomenon later to be called British imperialism. Occamism gave rise to individualistic liberalism as the foundation of bourgeois law; the idea of “human rights”; voluntarism as the primacy of will over reason; and the emphasis on empirical knowledge as a belief in progress and as a principle of utilitarianism. The authors describe the programming infl uence of Occamism on the formation of the mental foundations of the ruling estates and demonstrate the mental and political dynamics of British elites in the period of national history before the Reformation of 1534. The sustaining mental references of the British elites — including individualism, voluntarism, pluralism, skepticism, relativism, messianism, political expansionism — are also discussed. Finally, the structure of the mental-evaluational resource base of the elites is presented, featuring nominalism, imperial-patriotic liberalism and liberal law, conservatism, traditionalism, the law of the strong, hegemonism and the awareness of exclusiveness.

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