Sages, merchants, and warriors
Many societies across the world – and across history – organized themselves into social castes.
Hindus came up with 4 varnas. The caste of priests (Brahmins), the caste of warriors and secular leaders (Kshatriyas), the caste of merchants (Vaishyas), and the caste of labourers (Shudras).
Similarly, Plato in his Republic justified the existence of 3 castes, dividing the ideal city into three classes: philosopher-rulers guided by reason (logos), warriors that embody spirit (thymos), and workers that represent the appetites of the soul.
Even Mencius Moldbug came up with his own goddamn taxonomy of American castes.
I have a friend who, in the best tradition of Julius Evola, René Guénon, and Indo-European traditionalism, entertains himself by classifying everyone around according to the ancient system of castes. On the one hand, it’s sensible. In terms of activities they cover, the four varnas represent pretty much all archetypes (and types of endeavours) available to man: a wiseman (knowledge, wisdom), a warrior (changing the world, political action), a merchant (making money, entrepreneurship), and a dutiful labourer (doing well what ought to be done).
Say, the criterion for classification is not the status assigned by birth but the natural talents and predispositions of every particular man. Disagreeable types are natural-born warriors who can channel their innate passion, flamboyance, and capacity for justified anger toward noble ends. Those who gravitate towards abstract thought and score high on openness to ideas are better off as thinkers and priests. Those who prefer to occupy themselves with practical matters rather than the abstract and theoretical are good merchants. After all, Benjamin Franklin listed industriousness as a virtue in his catalogue of American bourgeois ethics.
This theory amused me too, until I realized I struggle to classify people who have seeds of everything in them: logos, thymos, industriousness, and general conscientiousness in equal measure.
Such as myself.
Now, I have a new theory. I think a man, a truly great man, should strive to be well-rounded across all axes – good at both theory and practice, conscientious and agentic. A truly well-rounded man shouldn’t limit himself to one activity. He should pursue all four kinds of endeavours.
***
The caste of Brahmins
We should all strive to be sages. Brahmins. Wisemen. Philosopher-kings.
This is the logos in man.
Truth is the terminal value, and the search for it is among the noblest pursuits available to man.
Empirical knowledge is best pursued through the scientific method. Yet the scientific method belongs to the realm of descriptive matters. Hume’s ‘Is-ought’ gap. Science cannot answer the questions what the meaning of life is, what’s good and bad; what should we all strive for; what’s the best political regime, etc. This is the realm of normative matters – of wisdom and philosophy.
True wisdom essentially culminates in a well-structured, consistent and non-contradictory view of the world, as well as the ability to answer important normative questions about morality from above. I think wisdom is very much achievable by certain age. Buddha achieved enlightenment the age of 35. Mahavira discovered the cosmic laws of dharma at 42. Jesus began his public ministry (preaching and teaching) at about 30 years old. As long as you think hard, study a lot, and expose yourself to all sorts of life experiences, wisdom is not hard to achieve. The world is finite in term of what it can offer.
Now, since we’re talking about Brahmins, let me talk about religion a bit.
Before modernity, and throughout the longest part of human history, human wisdom and philosophy were mostly inseparable from religious thought.
Frankly speaking, I find many atheists a bit superficial. Just like people not perceptible to poetry. To become wise, one needs to actively engage with ideas that lie beyond the realm of descriptive knowledge. This is hard to do on one’s own, unless one is particularly passionate about philosophy, or unless one belongs to a living tradition (Hinduism, Taoism, Christianity, Islam, etc.) that transmits knowledge across centuries. In this sense, those who belong to a religious tradition, however outdated it may be, are often better off than those who don’t – at least on the scale of wisdom.
Religions – though what they claim about metaphysics is almost certainly not true – are more like systems of metaphors and symbols that represent thousands of years of human thought. First, people who completely ignore this sphere of human culture deliberately cut themselves off from this immense archive of thought, discussion and debate about normative matters. Second, the most interesting thing about any religion is what its system of values tells us about the people who invented it. The fact that humans invented a ‘God of love’ tells us far more about humans than about God and what he’s up to, or the physical order of the universe.
Third, if the ‘soul’ is a metaphor for higher-order mental sensibilities, then those who are not receptive to such systems of thought – religion, poetry, and the like – do not have a soul. Metaphorically speaking. Although…
When it comes to the acquisition of knowledge and the pursuit of truth, the extent of sensibilities and perceptibility to various sources of knowledge is important. Wittgenstein famously said that language has limits and what cannot be talked about rationally should be expressed by other means. Being blind to the poetic and symbolic discourse is the sin of the modern middle class, the petty bourgeoisie, and jobholder society. Focused on the pragmatic, utilitarian, and practical side of things, they neglect the more subtle kinds of human endeavours.
As Hannah Arendt pointed out: ‘Homo faber will be left with meaninglessness in the midst of usefulness; utilitarianism never can find the answer to the question Lessing once put to the utilitarian philosophers of his time: ’And what, if you please, is the use of use?’’
The path of a sage has its perils, too.
First, those who focus exclusively on philosophical or religious traditions risk neglecting the active side of life. They become the ‘spiritual bypassers’ from the chart below. Sadhus in Hinduism, ascetics.
Second, the pursuit of logos has limits, in my experience. After all questions are pondered, all books read, and sufficient wisdom is acquired – when everything becomes clear – there’s not much left to pursue. And when philosophy is all clear, how about the next step – which is: imposing your own will on reality.
This leads me to Kshatriyas.
***
The caste of Kshatriyas
We should all strive to be warriors.
To exercise our thymos, or spiritedness.
We should be Kshatriyas. Agentic Sages. We should be like Sikhs who worship sables and swords. The noble warriors, active in intellectual battles and in social and political life.
This is the noble aristocracy. Enacting change, improving the world, creating things, participating in public life. It is what Hannah Arendt called Action, the third and most noble part of Vita Activa. Mahatma Gandhi embodied it. Using spiritual strength and the power of thought to achieve goals in this world.
Hegel (especially as Alexandre Kojève interpreted him) understood the aristocracy, from its origins, as a warrior class. In his view, nobility earned its status by risking life in a struggle for something higher than mere self-preservation. Those unwilling to take such risks for a noble cause, by contrast, couldn’t claim the same honor or recognition. The lower classes remained attached to self-preservation, and so they couldn’t rise into the rank of noble warriors.
Why fight?
First, all men have spiritedness within them. Plato called it thymos, the desire for honor and recognition. Aristotle called it magnanimity, or the greatness of the soul.
Second, indifference is a sin, and a truly virtuous man should treat the whole world as a matter of his personal business.
The more concentric circles of care you have around you – people, things, and matters – the better it characterizes you as a person.
It’s likely to bring more happiness too.
In The Conquest of Happiness (1930), Bertrand Russell argues that a big cause of modern unhappiness is the excessive self-absorption, especially among educated and reflective people. He advises to cultivate interests directed outward, toward what he calls ‘external matters’, such as work, knowledge, art, relationships, and causes larger than oneself. Happiness arises when the self becomes just one object among many in the world, rather than the constant center of attention.
Similarly, Viktor Frankl in Man’s Search for Meaning (1946) postulates that self-absorption is pathological, while meaning arises from commitment to tasks, values, or people. Self-actualization is possible only as a side-effect of self-transcendence. Likewise, Hannah Arendt in The Human Condition (1958) claims that meaningful life requires action in a shared public world. Withdrawal into pure inwardness leads to worldlessness. The ‘cause’ is the common world and political action.
Commitment to bigger causes is an integral part of the ethics of duty, where man is understood as a creature that has duties to those around him. Duties to one’s country, to one’s parents and ancestors, to one’s nation, civilization – and ultimately, the duty to make the whole world a better place. The idea of duty comes naturally to those who are 1) innately conscientious; 2) those born in Asian societies.
On the other hand, in the modern Western world as of 21st century, man is obsessed with his rights but thinks little about his duties. Hence the self-absorption, never-ending introspection, and general unhappiness. See the points by Russell and Frankl above.
The extent of duty is a function of one’s talents. I believe that those who are blessed with many things in this life – intelligence, talents, skills, and so on – also have a much greater responsibility for what they use these talents for. Noblesse oblige. Luke 12:48. ‘From everyone who has been given much, much will be demanded; and from the one who has been entrusted with much, much more will be asked’.
When it comes to warriors – and especially Agentic Sages – the figures that come to mind are Mahatma Gandhi and Bertrand Russell. The first was a lawyer who applied his knowledge of law and the principles of Hindu philosophy to political change. The second was a logician who combined analytic philosophy with active political engagement, corresponding with world leaders about the World Wars, the Cuban Missile Crisis, the Korean War, and more. We should all strive to be like them.
The downside of thymos in man, in my experience, is that it tends to be fleeting. We are drawn to great causes, but this attraction is often driven by emotion, which invariably fades. This leads me to the next path, which is about an activity that never loses its attractiveness.
***
The caste of Vaishyas
There’s nothing wrong in being merchants. Tradesmen. Vaishyas. Members of guilds.
I simply refuse to label businessmen and entrepreneurs as vile. *
There are people in this world who love problem-solving and are motivated by profit. In a market economy, those who solve customers’ problems are rewarded – even if those problems are not as pressing as others. For example, producing beautiful furniture may be less noble than fighting for the independence of Kurdistan. Still, it’s not bad.
Think of it as an indirect way of attaining the good.
Man lives in a world made of material objects – objects of use. Man is homo faber, creating the physical world around him according to his taste. Transforming the world around us, and making it more beautiful and efficient through business enterprises, is a good endeavor.
When everything and everyone fails you, money is the only thing that remains: a medium of exchange, and therefore an object of universal value. People may hurt you, but money never will. This always gives me a certain consolation.
And although money is a purely instrumental good, and striving merely for instrumental values is futile and unwise, it can still greatly facilitate our progress toward ultimate goods and the acquisition of other things of value.
Money can buy freedom. It can be done on many levels – from personal freedom, through geographic mobility and financial independence, to collective freedom. It can help liberate people from suffering and disease through investment in science and medical research. It can liberate people from oppression through supporting political movements with a greater agenda (Open Society Foundations, etc).
To a certain degree, money can buy truth – through investment in science and research, and through sponsoring academic initiatives.
And finally, money can buy beauty. It can spread it and multiply it. The villas of Frank Lloyd Wright and Ludwig Mies van der Rohe were not built for free. The chairs by Marcel Breuer, or by Charles and Ray Eames, exist and continue to be produced, because someone is willing to buy them. Yohji Yamamoto and Rick Owens keep creating garments on the verge of fine art because their collections sell out to people who find it fair to financially compensate designers for the creative work of their ateliers.
Money is good, as long as it is directed toward good causes.
***
The caste of Shudras
And when it comes to the fourth caste, the Shudras – there’s nothing wrong with being conscientious, obedient workers too.
Even if we fail to attain wisdom, fail to change the world, see our political crusades collapse, and watch our enterprises go bankrupt, a person can still achieve excellence in what remains: the small, ordinary things that must be done regardless. There is dignity in humility. We can hold on to the handrails of mundane customs, habits, and institutions – and learn to honor what is given, rather than chasing what is potential.
The social roles we are assigned, depending on age and status: to be a dutiful daughter and call our parents weekly; to be a loyal partner, a good parent; to be a conscientious employee who fulfills tasks on time. To follow up on requests, keep promises. To be a decent human being who makes the bed in the morning, fights entropy, and maintains order in the small lot of space entrusted to us. Genesis 2:15: ‘Then the Lord God took the man and put him in the garden of Eden to tend and keep it.’
***
How can all four activities be combined?
Should human pursuits be arranged in a linear, age-based sequence? For example: become a Silicon Valley Web 3.0 founder at 40, sell the business, and then turn into a thinker – a founder-to-theorist pathway. Think of Ray Dalio, Naval Ravikant, Paul Graham, or Ben Horowitz. It is even more compelling if the theories reach beyond business: think of George Soros, Peter Thiel, or even Bryan Johnson with Project Blueprint.
Many ‘merchants’ move directly into politics (Michael Bloomberg, Andrej Babiš, or Mikhail Khodorkovsky) or into philanthropy (Bill Gates, etc). One can become an Agentic Sage without any merchant background at all – Aaron Swartz and Julian Assange come to mind. And one can also reject possessions altogether, withdraw into the forest, and live as a sadhu.
In my experience, these four kinds of endeavors can also run on a short rotation. One month, you may feel excited by a business idea that must be urgently tried and tested; the next, you might fall into a contemplative mood and prefer reading books and reflecting on theories; the next, you may be provoked by outrageous political news and feel the urge to fight. Each cycle accumulates progress and spirals upward. Then the circle starts all over, rotating again and again, until our allotted time on earth runs out.
The classical caste system probably doesn’t make sense anymore. Rather, we may carry many seeds within us, so we should let them all flourish. ‘What a man can be, he must be.’ We can strive to be at once Brahmins, Kshatriyas, and Vaishyas: to be wise and to be good – through either direct and indirect action – and to fulfill our ambitions through contemplation, political engagement, and entrepreneurship. This way, one can become a truly well-rounded man, someone in whom different pursuits can coexist together, without conflict.
Notes:
* Nassim Taleb: ‘My experience is that money and transactions purify relations… Commerce, business, Levantine souks (though not large-scale markets and corporations) are activities and places that bring out the best in people, making most of them forgiving, honest, loving, trusting, and open-minded. As a member of the Christian minority in the Near East, I can vouch that commerce, particularly small commerce, is the door to tolerance—the only door, in my opinion, to any form of tolerance.’