11. Smuts, Holism, and Political Philosophy

After his defeat in the South African parliamentary elections in 1924, Jan Christiaan Smuts briefly ‘retired’ to his farm at Irene where, in an eight-month period, he produced a 350-page book, Holism and Evolution (Smuts, 1926). To some, this was idiosyncratic; Smuts was known as a military and political leader, but not as an academic writer. Nevertheless, Smuts's book was widely reviewed and, although it did not have lasting scholarly impact, it introduced a new term into popular discourse - holism. The views expressed in Holism and Evolution were, arguably, influenced by Smuts's studies and long interest in philosophy and may have had an influence in his later political activity both in South Africa and internationally (e.g., in the creation of the United Nations and in its Universal Declaration of Human Rights). In recent years, Holism and Evolution has been reprinted, and there have also been a number of studies on Smuts's life and his political career, and so a discernment of his views - and, specifically, given the focus on his politics, of whether he had a political philosophy - is timely. The present paper attempts to discern Smuts's political philosophy by focusing on Holism and Evolution - his most mature work - and, to an extent, a late essay on ‘freedom.’