The life of Rights is the Middle Sphere of the Threefold Social Organism. It's the section that regulates the tendencies that come from the other two spheres. It's made up of contracts that determine the acceptability of actions, and that conform to our sense of justice and human decency.
For Plato, the essence of justice is the impulse toward self-regulation. Justice, for Plato, comes down to minding your own business and not interfering with other people. Plato thinks this impulse is regulated in the heart through something called thumos or thumoiedes, which resides in the chest and which is variously interpreted as 'self-respect,' 'self-assertion,' 'pugnacity,' indignation,' and 'anger.' It is also sometimes rendered as 'spirit.'
Plato expresses some doubt as to whether or not 'spirit' is a function in the human being separate from craving and appetite on the one hand, seated in the belly, and reason, seated in the head. He rather quickly concludes, however, that the spirit indeed is a function distinct from these other two, and identifies it with feeling. He then goes on to describe how the Guardians of the Republic need to be indoctrinated to feel a love for the State, and to take actions only on behalf of the community as a whole.
In our day, the middle sphere has settled around contracts and the law of contract. Contracts bestow on their signatories if not equal at least commensurate rights under law. The middle sphere is thus the sphere of social equality.
In anthroposophical conversation, the middle sphere is expressed in an extremely forthright way. In anthroposophical conversation, universal reproducibility of content is the basic rule of attitude. Everyone is equally entitled to an anthroposophical conversation, and without everyone's equal participation in each conversational moment, the conversation simply doesn't rise to the level of Community. In this way, anthroposophical conversation is regulated by the weakest link in the chain of conversational capacity. For this reason, anthroposophical conversation resembles an Hellenic Republic less than it does a Jewish or Judeo-Christian tabernacle, although the Hellenic model is not without relevance.
Contractualism
Robert Reich, the diminutive and capable American economist and social commentator, has recently published a book describing the ascent of super-capitalism, a form of life dominated by corporate arrangements which has largely superceded the values and practice of democratic self-government in America and other Western countries. Corporations, Reich reminds us, are really nothing but contracts stipulating rights and expectations which have the great virtue of maximizing economic efficiency but the great evil of depersonalizing transactions between individuals and treating them as fungible elements in their calculations.
Perhaps people here have noticed this corporatizing trend where they live?
What I think we anthroposophists need to wake up to is the fact that enormous social power is contained in corporate contractualism. Today human beings consume better products and live better lives, at least insofar as these can be measured externally, than anyone ever has. These increases in life expectancy and standard of living are due almost entirely to the efficiencies of corporate contractualism, of making mutual agreements that lower costs and incentivize individuals to discover new ways to produce, to consume and to promote products that people value.
Anthroposophy needs to become more sophisticated about contractualism. It needs to recognize itself as occupying a unique position in social history because it is able, better than any other form of social organization, to rework the basic social contract itself. Anthroposophy is in a position to rewrite the rules of social interaction, because it can show how these rules can be made to impinge the realities that obtain beyond death and that hold sway in the immortal round of the soul's reincarnation. It is these transhuman realities that the Social Contract can and should be made to serve.
Robert Reich, of course, is correct to say that we need to recover our democratic government and our values of fairness and equality from the forces of corporate contractualism. But it is anthroposophists who can and must recover the astral world, which equalizes us all through death, by rediscovering and reworking the social contract itself. To do this will be, among other things, to recover the living motive to counteract the dehumanizing force of corporatism.
the dehumanizing force of corporatizm
from one side we can see dehumanisung force of corporatism but on the othe side corporations are the strong humanisation power. Let us again read my book:"This means that particular forms of the state as an expression of blood relations are withering away in the scope in which production gets rid of human blood – the human bodily personification of technological procedures. We can thus see (mainly thanks to Marx) the way in which the changing nature of production forces adjusts the relations of production to themselves. The increasing strengthening of the producer is reflected not only in breaking the initial kin relations, but also in territorial arrangements. For example, when the producer moves on from the stage of craftsmanship to the stage of factory, the former dismembered princedoms unify into nation states. Later, when corporate management tools changed – when the producer was provided with information technologies and attached them to his “body” – the nation states became too small and companies started establishing the global market. The role of nation states is fading and gradually changing into a service for multinational producers. It can be clearly seen, for example, in Formula One racing. Not long ago Formula one drivers wore their national colours, but today the race has turned into a competition of automobile manufacturers. The fight has moved to a completely different battlefield. From the human race to the “races” of the “blood” of producers. Producers are thus gradually weakening the nation type of state. Moving their production to cheaper territories they affect the nature of the governments in such territories and clear away international rivalry based on skin colour. This process proves the destructive effect of the new spiritual forces of the human species on old blood relations and particular forms of state. The more extensive uniting of producers with human spiritual potencies of production raised the need for more modern forms of state. The final death of the state will also mean the full appropriation of the new species human forces – spiritual potencies – by the producers."
Carl - here you could see change love in blood to agape love (or spiritual love) by another words - humanizing force of corporatizm
Valdi