None.
It's late and I'm about to go to bed, but here's the issue in a nutshell.
I believe that at the current historical - material moment, there is a particular hegemony built around a mode of individualism we've inherited from the early 19th century. This system of meaning models human beings as their interior 'selves' - inviolable kernels of attributes such as will to work and idleness - and 'hopes' that socio-economic reality will reflect that. In actuality, it's not as simple as that. People's fortunes are shaped by far more, and by chains of causality far larger than the individual.
There are three responses to this. Let's take the test case of inheritance tax. Is it fair for someone to put others' children at a relative disadvantage by bequeathing an estate? The three answers are:
1. Yes. This helps the individual be rewarded for his lack of 'idleness', a part of his inherent characteristics which should be rewarded (the 'right')
2. No. It prevents the individual from being rewarded for his lack of 'idleness', a part of his inherent characteristics which should be rewarded (the 'Left' - note the capital).
3. 2 almost sees the bigger picture, but fails at the last hurdle. He sees an issue with the hegemony, but doesn't see that he's still applying its flawed, corrupt, self-contradictory and historically contingent 'language'. 1 and 2 are simply making manifest the two contradictory implications of the same system of meaning. This suggests it is invalid, as does the fact it seems tied only to our own, specific period of history.
1 is a Conservative. 2 is a Leftist. 3 is a Marxist.
1 hopes the difficulties of the hegemony will go away by themselves.
2 sees difficulties, but hopes to use social engineering (the taxation of unearned incomes, for example) to create a world that matches the Ideology (the 'system of meaning' contained in the prevailing Hegemony).
3 thinks 1 and 2 are simply echoing each other. Their arguments are irresolvable not because the issue is, for whatever reason, too 'hard', but because they are simply bashing out the inherent flaws in a system of meaning that doesn't work in a world where, as I said before, chains of causality extend beyond the individual.
I am probably closest to the third camp.
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Incidentally, this is the only reason we have a 'problem' of free will in our philosophy departments. The 'problem' is 'how can we have Will when we are the products of causal threads far older and larger than ourselves'. We can't attach to people attributes 'beyond the kernel of the self', so we can't get our heads around it. The solution, of course, is to accept that even when our qualities, experiences and personal attributes are the products of 'things bigger' than our own lives, they are nevertheless inalienably ours.
I suspect be at least a century before this 'solution' gets integrated into common sentiment. Of course, that age will have its own self-contradictory paradigm, falling apart at the seams, and the hideous, lurching polka will no doubt start all over again.
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Right. That's it. I'm going to bed. I'm exhausted.
Also, whilst I'm here, just to p*** KM off - the answer was just that the Greeks were terribly obsessed with moments where the boundaries between individuals are broken. See: screaming, mass crying, birthing and ritual eating (food sharing, spectre of cannibalism as per Agamemnon. You didn't think the similarities between an Ox-like King's demise and a crowned cow being led to sacrificial bath were coincidence, did you?).
So, yeah, that was the answer to Tripos. Hope you got it ; )
