To Cavendish Motors through Birkenhead Park to deliver the keys of the Toyota whose windscreen has been smashed by the usual sad suspects. I buy the Guardian and head to Costa for an Americano with milk. There is an article by Simon Tisdall about Saeed Jalili who has replaced Ali Larijani as top Iranian negotiator on the nuclear issue. Apparently Jalili is 'a man of strong moral views who believes spiritual values should inform political action'. He is leading a big debate 'about how to reinsert justice and spirituality into political life'. It's amusing how an expression like 'strong moral views' acts as code for 'inflexible and rigid'. 'He was a man of weak moral views'. So to the small philosophical point: many people would agree that spiritual values should inform political action. The trouble is that we differ profoundly about what would count as spiritual values informing political action. The Dalai Lama would take a different view from Ahmadinejad ... language conceals as well as reveals and we seek too eagerly to join together in the expression of such sentiments without looking too closely at how they are being grounded or what they are rooted in which is really what determines their meaning. Sometimes this works in diplomatic contexts but at least there everyone knows what everyone else means by the shared formulae.
I met Larijani once, when he ran the IRIB, the Iranian Broadcasting authority. The media are saying that his resignation indicates that Ahmadinejad's hand has been strengthened, but I'm not so sure. I think it is a move to isolate him further. Larijani still has the support of the Supreme Leader. Aristotle's 'mixed polity' is taken seriously in Iran. The Shia tradition has a strong connection with Aristotle.
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