Digressions&Impressions

Spinoza's Qualified Limitarianism in context of Monarchic political economy

The fields, and the whole soil, and, if it can be managed, the houses should be public property [publici iuris sint], that is, the property of him, who holds public authority [literally the right of the commonwealth ius civitatis habet]: and let him let them at a yearly rent [annuo pretio] to the citizens, whether townsmen or countrymen, and with this exception let them all be free or exempt from every kind of taxation [exactione] in time of peace. And of this rent a part is to be applied to the defences of the state, a part to the king’s private use. For  it is necessary in time of peace to fortify cities against war, and also to have ready ships and other munitions of war.--Spinoza, Political Treatise, Chapter 6, par. 12, translated  Robert Harvey Monro Elwes

The quoted passage is from a paragraph of Spinoza's treatment of a well-ordered or optimal, monarchy.* Such a monarchy is characterized, initially, by elected kingship (6.5); where the king is subject to  the rule of law. And where, in peacetime, the king's relationship to the people is mediated by a rotating assembly of elders (6.15-16). In many respects, the best form of monarchy described by Spinoza is best characterized as a constitutional monarchy. The major political difference with modern constitutional, hereditary monarchies (7.25) is that the assembly, which has agenda-setting and information power (6.19) over the monarch, is not elected by the citizens, but by the monarch itself (6.16). 

There is much to be said about the  themes of liberty, explicitly introduced with a nod to Machiavelli, (5.7; 7.2) and corruption (e.g., 7.9-10); and the many ways in which the passions are managed through the careful use of incentives and institutional design (see 1.3-4, and the anticipations of Kant and Buchanan's public choice]. I would be amazed if Hume did not have the Political Treatise open when he was writing his political essays, not least Of Perfect Commonwealth.** That's for another time; let's turn to the quoted passage above.

It turns out that there is no private property in land and real estate in a well ordered monarchy. Instead citizens lease it annually from the government.+ Before I discuss the effects of this on income and wealth (and war & peace), it is worth noting the tax significance. This is, simultaneously, the main source of income for the government which pays, thereby, for public works, especially public defense and spying, and the king's expenses. This suggests that the king has no royal estates either (as noted by Noordman 2016: 17). In addition, this also entails is that the government does not raise any tolls, excise taxes, or tariffs (all of them familiar to Spinoza's readers).

The predictable effect and so function of this is clear: the governors' interests are aligned with the people's interest. For, income from taxes can grow only in two ways: first, by population growth. Spinoza is explicit that "means should be devised for more easily increasing the number of citizens, and producing a large confluence of men." (6.32) In addition, to the fact that a growing citizenry can pay more tax (at least over homes), this is useful to have a larger army, in times of war, and to a class of non-citizens who pay a fee "for their exemption from service" or are required to perform "some forced labour." As an aside, his emphasis on population growth, Spinoza anticipates here Locke's "art of government" and he resonates with ideas of the De La Court brothers in the (1662) Interest of Holland.

Second, taxes can grow if land-values and property values grow. I am assuming that the annual renewal of the leases means that there are regular re-evaluations of the assessment. This requires, behind the scenes, as it were, a professional class of land surveyors which had grown in significance in early modern England and the Dutch provinces. At the end of the sixteenth century, Dutch academies were founded and started to churn out, in addition to engineers, such trained surveyors [see Van Bunge for background]. (To be sure, I don't mean to suggest that Spinoza takes either Holland, which he treats as an aristocracy, or England as a nearby example for the best kind of monarchy; strikingly, it seems he takes the early Kingdom of Aragon as the (undoubtedly partial) exemplar (7:30).

A predictable side-effect of annual leases, is that it prevents too much long-term investment in the productive capacity of land. These required (recall) the longer leases pioneered in fifteenth and sixteenth century England. That is not a bug in Spinoza's design, but a feature. For, in referring back to the quoted passage, Spinoza suggests that "all will be obliged, for the sake of gain, to practise trade, or lend money to one another, if, as formerly by the Athenians, a law be passed, forbidding to lend money at interest to any but inhabitants; and thus they will be engaged in business, which either is mutually involved, one man’s with another’s, or needs the same means for its furtherance." (7.8) Because Spinoza assumes that citizens are self-interested (and have relatively few opportunities to gain glory/renown), and, in virtue of lack of property in land and real estate, citizens will be encouraged to become a trading nation domestically and (recall  the lack of tariffs) internationally.

This nudging toward the trades and commerce is reinforced by the fact that banking is limited to domestic banking. That is to say, excess capital accumulation can neither be much invested in land and property nor be loaned out abroad, so this leaves it to be used as capital for domestic investment in trades, commerce, and manufacture. So, while there is some room for accumulation in gold and silver (and jewelry/plate), major landholdings are prevented. And the way Spinoza conceives of trade, this is involves mutual gain (even mutual assistance (2.15; 3:12; 7.8 ([see also, especially, TTP 5]). 

The intended political effect is clear (and explicit): to prevent the rise of a powerful nobility, and to maintain significant wealth equality so that there will be a near equal "risk in war" [ par propemodum periculum est.] (7.8; emphasis added; this, and other remarks clearly anticipates Kant's treatment in Perpetual Peace). With a lack of property in land and real estate, this will not just maintain rough equality, but people's interests and their representatives in the council of state will be pretty much identical (7.8).  While people still can grow somewhat wealthy, they will be doing so in virtue of providing each other in their needs. As population will keep growing, it is clear that this supposed to engender a virtuous cycle of moderate and egalitarian growth. So, when theorizing the best form of monarchy, Spinoza is clearly a qualified limitarian in the sense of (recall) Kramm & Robeyns.

Okay, I could stop here. But it is worth noting something. It turns out that the best form of monarchy in Spinoza's Political Treatise is a variation on Utopia in More's Utopia. That is easy to miss because Spinoza makes a disparaging comment about Utopia at the start of his book (1.1), where it is treated (recall) as useless philosophy. Utopian society is characterized by a lack of liberty, and constant surveillance. But in both places people are incentivized to work hard and provide each other needs, despite the precautions against accumulation of private property. (If anything Utopians are more encouraged to invest in their homes and communal gardens than Spinoza's monarchic citizens.) If anything, we might say that Spinoza's monarchy is, compared to Utopia, less focused on conquest and more on peace. 

For, in Spinoza's monarchy, where the citizens live by trade, and have no landed property and real estate to fall back, and are not paid for soldiering, they will lack war-spiritedness [animus gerendi bellum]. In fact, "war will always cause them fear of losing their possessions and liberty, it is to be added, that war requires fresh expenditure, which they must meet, and also that their own children and relatives, though intent on their domestic cares, will be forced to turn their attention to war and go a-soldiering, whence they will never bring back anything but unpaid-for scars." (7.7)

What we may call the laboring class [quotidiano opere vitam] gets stipends for wartime soldiering, but, by implication, the capitalists (and domestic banker) or entrepreneurs not (6.31). This suggests that Spinoza thinks that ultimate a monarchic state will be divided modestly, by those who live on wages and those who live by credit, trade, or enterprise.

On the Epistemology of the Political; On Carl Schmitt, Disunity of the Virtues and Standpoint Epistemology (I)

The specific political distinction to which political actions and motives can be reduced is that between friend and enemy.'*' This provides a definition in the sense of a criterion and not as an exhaustive definition or one indicative of substantial content. Insofar as it is not derived from other criteria, the antithesis of friend and enemy corresponds to the relatively independent criteria of other antitheses: good and evil in the moral sphere, beautiful and ugly in the aesthetic sphere, and so on. In any event it is independent, not in the sense of a distinct new domain, but in that it can neither be based on anyone antithesis or any combination of other antitheses, nor can it be traced to these. If the antithesis of good and evil is not simply identical with that of beautiful and ugly, profitable and unprofitable, and cannot be directly reduced to the others, then the antithesis of friend and enemy must even less be confused with or mistaken for the others. The distinction of friend and enemy denotes the utmost degree of intensity of a union or separation, of an association or dissociation. It can exist theoretically and practically, without having simultaneously to draw upon all those moral, aesthetic, economic, or other distinctions. The political enemy need not be morally evil or aesthetically ugly; he need not appear as an economic competitor, and it may even be advantageous to engage with him in business transactions. But he is, nevertheless, the other, the stranger; and it is sufficient for his nature that he is, in a specially intense way, existentially something different and alien, so that in the extreme case conflicts with him are possible. These can neither be decided by a previously determined general norm nor by the judgment of a disinterested and therefore neutral third party.
Only the actual participants can correctly recognize, understand, and judge the concrete situation and settle the extreme case of conflict. Each participant is in a position to judge whether the adversary intends to negate his opponent's way of life and therefore must be repulsed or fought in order to preserve one's own form of existence. Emotionally the enemy is easily treated as being evil and ugly, because every distinction, most of all the political, as the strongest and most intense of the distinctions and categorizations, draws upon other distinctions for support. This does not alter the autonomy of such distinctions. Consequently, the reverse is also true: the morally evil, aesthetically ugly or economically damaging need not necessarily be the enemy; the morally good, aesthetically beautiful, and economically profitable need not necessarily become the friend in the specifically political sense of the word. Thereby the inherently objective nature and autonomy of the political becomes evident by virtue of its being able to treat, distinguish, and comprehend the friend-enemy antithesis independently of other antitheses. Carl Schmitt (1932) The Concept of the Political : Expanded Edition. Translated by George Schwab, 2007, 26-27

Today's post is part of a larger series in which I confront illiberal thought. Let's stipulate, for the sake of argument, that the collective friend-enemy distinction helps carves out a specific and objective sphere of action.* In this sphere  "conflicts" -- in which one can kill and be killed -- with the enemy "are possible." The symmetry is important. An ethno-nationalist police state that terrorizes a minority (and here) is not engaged in politics so understood. Challenging and changing its practice through non-violent, collective action would also not count as Schmittian politics. In fact,  most of what we might commonly treat as 'political' is not part of the Schmittian conception of politics. 

As Leo Strauss persuasively shows (104) for Schmitt this sphere is conceptually prior to and in an evaluative sense "authoritative" (44) or more fundamental than other spheres.* The quoted passage above focuses on the distinctiveness of the political which is taken to be an objective feature of it. But strikingly, this objectivity is affirmed by way of an existentialist denial of the unity of the virtues (recall here and here). It's part of the intelligibility of the political that it can fail to instantiate other virtues, including not the least (moral) virtue. 

That two collectives treat each other as enemies (or friends) is an objective fact available to and known by outsiders. But, (a) the reciprocal decision to treat another collective as an enemy can only be taken by the parties themselves, and (b) they alone can understand it. I have split (a) and (b) for the purposes of analysis (although it is not clear Schmitt would do so). Let me discuss them in turn.

It is pretty clear why Schmitt thinks (a) is true. On his view one can't farm out "kill and be killed" (48) to others. (Of course, once the mutual killing starts outsiders can tell that enmity exists.) It presupposes a form of autonomy or independence--one is not, for example, a vassal or protectorate (which depoliticized forms of life). It is notable -- especially in light of his quiet polemic against Kant throughout The Concept of the Political -- that he tacitly accepts here the Kantian injunction (contra Machiavelli) against the use of mercenaries. The political is co-extensive with a willingness to bear (collective) mortal uncertainty.** The summum malum is not death, but an unwillingness to face (such) existential choice.

I don't wish to disguise Schmitt's polemic against Kantian ideals: (i) as Strauss notes, Schmitt rejects Kant's federative ideal of perpetual peace of a striving toward the abolition of war ("in a realm which embraces the globe" (53)); for that is to affirm the abolition of the political in favor of (inter alia) a life of mere "entertainment." (53 And (ii) one way he does so -- and Strauss is silent on this -- is to quietly reject the Kantian argument that how we conduct ourselves in war can signalsour desire for peace, and thereby escape the state of nature. And the reason for this is that, to put it in Hobbesian terms, the Schmittian thinks the state of nature (that is that conflicts are always "possible") is inevitable and inescapable (if one dares it) from the perspective of political life. That is to say, Schmitt leaves the door wide open to wars of extermination. There is, for him, no possible limitation on the intensity of enmity. 

It is pretty clear why Schmitt wishes to adopt (b). For this rules out the possibility of subsuming and, as it were, domesticating the political under the rule of law or (global) public opinion ("norm nor by the judgment of a disinterested and therefore neutral third party.") And, in particular, (b) entails one need not justify one's enmity to outsiders because there is a sense in which they won't be able to evaluate why one is enemies (or friends) with one's enemies or friends.

For, what grounds (b) is the claim that "Only the actual participants can correctly recognize, understand, and judge the concrete situation and settle the extreme case of conflict." That is to say, there are features of concrete political life that are epistemically inaccessible to outsiders. And one of these features is to the directedness of enmity, that is, the perception that an '"adversary intends to negate" one's "way of life."

So, on this view, outsiders are in a bad position to grasp that one's way of life is threatened. I think both parts are crucial: outsiders are in a bad position to grasp what is essential or intrinsic to one's way of life, one's identity (as a collectivity), and in virtue of that they are in a bad position to perceive the existential threats against it. (I return to this below.)

Schmitt's position has unmistakeable affinity with standpoint epistemology, which ordinarily is traced to marxists roots. I understand that comparison can be thought in poor taste. I want to pursue this affinity in order to clarify something about Schmitt's position (and perhaps the standpoint epistemologist). I don't mean to suggest Schmitt's position is identical to standpoint epistemology, which privileges the lived experience of marginalized groups within society. (Schmitt has no interest in that.) Nor do I mean to disqualify standpoint epistemology by noting the affinity with Schmitt's thought; or suggest that standpoint epistemology is irreconcilable with liberal values or must lead to open-ended conflict.++

But standpoint epistemology asserts that marginalized groups have special epistemic standing when it comes to topics that pertain to  their subordination (and so including threats to their identity and survival of the group). Often outsiders simply can't understand because their vantage-points are impoverished in the relevant sense.

Now, if you are an empiricist standpoint epistemologist, you will think that the special epistemic standing of the subordinated is a matter of degree, an "advantage," in Liam Kofi Bright's terms, to "be overcome in certain cases." And clearly Schmitt's position is not like such an empiricist. He thinks that when it comes to political decisions the outsider can never understand.

Schmitt need not appeal to something mysterious for why this is so. The outsider ipse facto does not face the question whether a circumstance or situation threatens one's identity and, crucially, so is worth dying for and risk killing another. In the parlance of the contemporary epistemologist, the outsider never faces the very high stakes of the insider. For, if she did face such existential stakes, she would de facto stop being an outsider. (There is nothing in Schmitt's treatment of the political that makes it impossible to join a collectivity as such. It is compatible with Schmitt's account that collective identity is porous even fluid.) For a willingness to experiencing killing and be killed with a collectivity just is to participate in its political life and so to have become an insider.+ So, for Schmitt the epistemic situation is not a matter of degree because killing and being killed is all or nothing. 

Now, one may claim that outsiders can know what it's like to make political decisions in Schmitt's sense because they themselves may have friends and enemies in the political sense. And Schmitt can grant this and still claim that outsiders can't judge the "extreme case" of this particular conflict because it is not theirs.

Clearly outsiders may well be tempted to judge by moral and legal norms. But this is precisely what Schmitt wishes to prevent conceptually. And one way he does this - in addition to claiming that the political is distinct from and prior to other spheres -- is by resting his case on the threat to "one's way of life." What counts as a way of life may well be, from the vantage point of the cosmos or equity/law, something accidental like birth or heritage/history or custom. Crucially, these essential features to one's identity will be precisely those things that from the perspective of reason are (even when functional in maintaining a way of life) irrational or without ground, or, in Schmitt's terms, a "profession of faith." (58)  That is to say, the development of mutual enmity may, while directed, be partially opaque to outsiders and, perhaps, even ultimately, the two collectivities until the fateful decision.

 

 

Seneca on Slavery, and Political Fortune (Letter 47)

Fortune has the same claim on [licere] slaves and free men alike... Kindly remember that he whom you call your slave sprang from the same seed, is smiled upon by the same skies, and on equal terms with yourself breathes, lives, and dies! [ex isdem seminibus ortum eodem frui caelo, aeque spirare, aeque vivere, aeque mori!] It is just as possible for you to see in him a free-born man as for him to see in you a slave. As a result of the massacres in Marius's day, many a man of distinguished birth, who was taking the first steps toward senatorial rank by service in the army, was humbled by fortune, one becoming a shepherd, another a caretaker of a country cottage...I propose to value them according to their character, and not according to their duties. Each man acquires his character for himself, but accident assigns his duties. [Non ministeriis illos aestimabo sed moribus: sibi quisque dat mores, ministeria casus assignat.]...Show me a man who is not a slave; one is a slave to lust, another to greed, another to ambition, and all men are slaves to fear. [Ostende quis non sit: alius libidini servit, alius avaritiae, alius ambitioni, <omnes spei>, omnes timori.]-Seneca, Letter 47, Translated by Richard Mott Gummere (with minor corrections).

To simplify, we can identify two distinct ways of thinking about slavery in Plato and Aristotle. First, in Aristotle, what we may call authentic slavery maps onto an innate hierarchy of human beings. This kind of view was trotted out in the Spanish conquest of the Americas and, drawing on new iterations in Hume and Montesquieu, still popular in the eighteenth century United Kingdom.

Second, Iin Plato (who, of course, was no stranger to views on natural hierarchy), slavery is a kind of retributive punishment for defeat in aggressive war. And one finds a similar, but more Lockean version of the argument, in  the quite egalitarian and even severe critics of slavery like Cugoano. Having said that, Plato's Socrates (see here and here) clearly circumscribes slavery for those who are from the stock of would-be-permanent-enemies and tries to rule it out among the (Greek)  would-be-permanent-friends. Would be permanent friends are not rooted in human nature, but in the more conventional barriers that separate peoples.*

Third, Seneca (recall Letter 44), embraces natural equality (in the sense of the methodological analytic egalitarian (MAE)), and clearly thinks there is no moral justification for slavery. But strikingly that does not lead him to abolition. It may be worth reflecting on why this is so.

The answer resides in disordered politics. Now, Seneca is explicit that politics is governed by fortune, which can strike anytime. And, in particular, anyone can be subjugated by it. Now, looking at today's headlines one need not be reminded of natural misfortune. But Senecal is treating natural and political misfortune on par; and in political struggle force is decisive. In one sense force does not respect morality. But in another sense it is also a great equalizer--all of us can be subject to it. So, force is the cause or mechanism by which fortune elevates or diminishes each of us. (Seneca even speaks of the wheel of fortune in his play Agamemnon.)

I use 'disordered' because in this very letter (47), Seneca also produces an image of ordered politics. This is possible, when force has settled the balance of power. Then power is channeled to structure order. This image is the patriarchal household (familiares and its father). This order is clearly intimate and habitual, but also hierarchical because in addition to a father it has servants/slaves. And, in fact, Letter 47, which is among the first 50 or so letters, quite lengthy, contains a mini treatise on household management, the art of orderly political leadership [for, "a household was a miniature commonwealth"] -- when the question of force is temporarily settled among moral equals who have been turned into political unequals. 

Because today's post is not on the art of statecraft, I ignore Seneca's teachings. But crucially even this mini-treatise, understands itself as idealized. It explicitly compares itself to the representation of the ancestral, patriarchal family life on the (dated) stage (mimis).+ And, even in this representation, the ordered hierarchy can -- not unlike in carnaval -- be overturned: "They allowed the slaves to attain honours in the household and to pronounce judgment." 

So, Seneca can't see a path toward abolition of slavery because he does not see a path toward the elimination of force as the ultimate decider in political life. And, so, political inequality -- and thereby a variety of servitudes -- is inevitable.

On Pandemics, Debt Jubilees, and the Suspension of More or Less Everything

I find that I am generally at peace, and that the balance between happiness and sadness on any given day is little different from what it always has been for me. I find that there is liberation in this suspension of more or less everything. In spite of it all, we are free now. Any fashion, sensibility, ideology, set of priorities, worldview or hobby that you acquired prior to March 2020, and that may have by then started to seem to you cumbersome, dull, inauthentic, a drag: you are no longer beholden to it. You can cast it off entirely and no one will care; likely, no one will notice. Were you doing something out of mere habit, conceiving your life in a way that seemed false to you? You can stop doing that now. We have little idea what the world is going to look like when we get through to the other side of this, but it is already perfectly clear that the “discourses” of our society, such as they had developed up to about March 8 or 9, 2020, in all their frivolity and distractiousness, have been decisively curtailed, like the CO2 emissions from the closed factories and the vacated highways.

Not to downplay the current tragedy—as I’ve already acknowledged, it is already affecting me personally in deep and real ways—but I take it that this interruption is a good thing.

The interruption is not total, of course. Normies seem particularly fond of toilet-paper joke memes for the moment, while the extremely online instinctively disdain them. Both the normies and the extremely online are, as they have been since 2016, far too reliant on the language of “apocalypse” and “end times.” These are not the end times; even a nuclear war would not be the end times for all the creatures on earth, among which there will always be at least some extremophiles to relish any new arrangement of the ecosystem. What this is, rather, is a critical shift in the way we think about the human, the natural and the overlap between these.

I have said that we can all just stop doing whatever we were doing before that may have come to ring false to us, and that that is liberating. In my own case, I was working on a book (one that developed, curiously, out of an essay of mine, entitled “It’s All Over,” posted here at The Point a little over a year ago) that was going to articulate how the internet is destroying the fabric of human community. But for the life of me I cannot, in the present circumstances, see the internet as anything other than the force that is holding that fabric together. I used to bemoan virtue signaling. I look at the newly assembled vanguard of the all-volunteer forces of “Wash Your Hands” Twitter, and though I can still discern that tone that used to get me so bent out of shape (“Listen up y’all, today I’m going to break down the virus’s lipid envelope for you”), now I just smile and think: “Good for them. Good for Dr. Brianna Ph.D., and all her loyal followers.”

So I’m going have to rethink that particular book project. But that follows from the much more general point that we are all going to have to rethink everything. .--Justin Smith (March 23) @The Point

During the last few weeks, I was consumed by the task of transforming an exam my 400 students were supposed to take this past Tuesday (March 24) at a particular physical location -- the former morgue of the university hospital, which also happens to be a wifi free zone --  into an online exam at the very same time.+ My department had decided -- but don't ask me how or when -- that it would be in the students' interests to complete the term online rather than postpone exams. My task was made more challenging by three inconvenient facts: moving the exam online meant moving it from one database management software system to another, largely untested one (the two being largely incompatible with each other); I was still busy grading the midterm exam (which needed to be completed a few days before the new exam) and several of my graders were unable to complete their work due to having to care for loved ones; we lack resources to hire folk to help out.* Luckily the tech support people stepped up, and the day of the exam I had time to read Justin's beautiful, elegiac essay.

My initial response to Justin's piece was pure envy. Not just at his skill at capturing the moment, to becoming the indispensable guide to living the intellectual life with integrity, but also envy at the very possibility of inhabiting the suspension of more or less everything. I know that being cooped up with a child in a small apartment life simply can't be suspended. 

For many years, I lived pretty much kitty corner of Prinsengracht 263-267, now known as the Anne Frank Huis. I often wondered, when cycling by, whether I would have started a diary if I had lived there with nothing to do these war years. But now for the first time, I don't identify with her, but with her parents, Otto and Edith wondering how indefinitely the lives of their children could be suspended. But not only did the lack a socially distanced stroll in the park, they lacked the internet, which as Justin points out,  is the "force that is holding" the "fabric of human community" together. As I write, my son is doing homework online.

Even so, against Justin's forecast that we have little idea what "the world is going to look like when we get through to the other side of this," I am pretty confident we humans are about to face a gigantic debt crisis. Whole sectors of our leveraged economies are imploding (bricks and mortar retailing and real estate, leisure/tourism, sports, etc. [see here for first hints]) and will miss debt repayments on mortgages and other forms of financing. And while the financial sector has an incentive to extend repayment on non-performing loans, whole industries are facing cash crunches if not bankruptcy. So, even if individuals can be supported by a basic income or welfare, as the lockdowns last, no accounting sleight of hand or more easy credit will prevent massive defaults.** 

So, even if we can hope for a genuine economic recovery at the end of the pandemic, and the acceleration of new modes of living together (and, perhaps, apart to slow down virus transmission) that do not fall victim to what Justin correctly criticizes as "human exceptionalism," at some point we will be back in familiar territory. Before long the "wanton delectation" that Justin  bids farewell to will be replaced, first, within the pandemic by (recall) dissolute mirth and gaiety.  And, then, to be followed by political turmoil because debt forgiveness and 'controlled'  inflation will be back on the political agenda. When David Graeber advocates debt jubilees from the anarchist margins, he was ignored. But before long it will be captains of industry that will call it sensible.

I fear an age of debt cancellation and inflation because they strengthen the hands of zero-sum politicians; more dangerous, yet, they upend existing social hierarchies in dramatic fashion. They, thereby, embolden those who need encouragement least, political adventurers. I glance over at my son, and, inspired by Justin, I wish to freeze time, inspired by the poets, in the form of limitation between un-being and being, and try to capture the moment--i will continue the daily digressions; but in the back of my head I hear the voice telling me, compound interest does not respect our wishes.

On Wars of Choice, Las Casas, Transatlantic federations, and Reparations

Now the fact that one must refrain from war, and even tolerate the death of a few innocent persons, is proved by arguments and many authorities.
The first argument is this: According to the rule of right reason when we are confronted by two choices that are evil both as to moral guilt and punishment and we cannot avoid both of them, we ought t0 choose the lesser evil. For in comparison with the greater evil, the choice of the lesser evil has the quality of a good. This is what the Philosopher  teaches. Now the death of a small number of innocent persons is a lesser evil than the eternal damnation of countless numbers of persons killed in the fury of war.

Again, the death of the innocent is better or less evil than the complete destruction of entire kingdoms, cities. and strongholds. For not all of them eat the flesh of the innocent but only the rulers or priests, who do the sacrificing, whereas war brings the destruction of countless innocent persons who do not deserve any such thing. Therefore if those evils cannot be removed in any other way than by waging war, one must refrain from it and evils of this kind must be tolerated.
Furthermore, it is incomparably less disastrous that a few innocent persons die than that Christ's holy name be blasphemed by unbelievers and that the Christian religion be brought into ill repute and be hated by those peoples and by others to whom word of this flies, when they hear how many women, children, and aged people of their nation have been killed by the Christians without cause, as will unavoidably happen, and indeed has happened, in the fury of war. What, I ask, will be the result, if not a perpetual barrier to their salvation, so that there will be no further hope for their conversion? Therefore when there is a question of war over a cause of this kind it is better to let a few innocent persons be oppressed or suffer an unjust death. In fact it would be a very great sin, and against the natural, to wage war on these unbelievers for this reason. This is proved in the following way.
According to right reason, and therefore the natural law, it is evident that in every case and in every matter that concerns two evils, especially those involving moral guilt, one must choose that which is less harmful or is thought to be less harmful. Therefore to seek to free innocent persons in the case proposed, within their territories, as has been proposed, would be against the natural la,v and a sin, which, although not mortal, is very serious indeed. This is evident because the greater the damage sin inflicts the more serious it is, according to St. Thomas. And this is true even if that damage is not intended or foreseen, since everything that necessarily follows upon a sin belongs in some way to the very species of the sin. From such a war a countless number of innocent persons of both sexes and all ages will unavoidably perish, and the other evils that have been mentioned will necessarily follow upon that war. Therefore anyone who would try to free those who suffer evils of this type by means of war would commit a very serious mortal sin. ---Las Casas (1550-1552) In Defense of the Indians, chapter 28, translated by Stafford Poole, pp. 191-2. 

During the The Valladolid debate (1550–1551), Sepúlveda, the spokesperson for Spanish landlords in the Americas, articulated (recall) the case for humanitarian intervention on behalf of natives exploited by 'savage' indigenous practices. In particular, Sepúlveda called attention to the way vulnerable natives may be subject to human sacrifice and cannibalism. He, thereby, sketched their existence in terms of a proto-Hobbesian state of nature. At bottom his argument rests on two thoughts: (i) that the violent extension of civilization, conquest, is to be pursued because it ultimately benefits the backward and savage. The benefits include not just protection from local oppression, but also access to Christian conversion. And (ii) that immoral and wicked practices may justifiably invite humanitarian intervention.

There is little doubt that Sepúlveda's argument is offered in bad faith. But, as Las Casas recognizes, that is not sufficient to undermine it. On the question of sacrifice and cannibalism, Las Casas' strategy is not to deny its existence. But, first, he minimizes it frequency. Second, he claims that in many cases what looks like sacrifice is merely a legally sanctioned death sentence (and so unobjectionable). Third, that leaves a small number of victims from practices that serve a religious or (non-juridical) political function in indigenous societies. The question is, then, do these victims justify humanitarian intervention? And this question is pursued both as a contribution to just war theory (in particular, jus ad bellum) as well as a contribution to the borders of the Church and the role of the emperor in imposing these.

Because the natives never posed any threat to the Spanish, and no Christians were present in the Americas, the issue becomes  really a question about to what degree one can choose war under the pretext or in the service of humanitarian intervention. As is clear from the first paragraphs of the quoted passage above, Las Casas' answer is an unambiguous rejection of war under such circumstances. For, in war many  innocents will die necessarily. Las Casas adds many gruesome descriptions of how likely it is that in the fog of war enemy combatants and innocent bystanders are confused (and the latter harmed or killed) and that war always provides cover for other harms (including looting, plunder, rape, etc.). 

In these cases the dead innocent bystanders are harmed twice over: they get killed and they have no chance to be converted (and so receive eternal salvation, etc.). Moreover, while he does not emphasize this as much, the soldiers are put in great temptation to sin and fall into eternal damnation. So, the cost of war of choice in the service of humanitarian intervention is material and spiritual. Even if one does not share Las Casas' theological commitments, it is not difficult to articulate the spiritual costs in more psychological/social terms (PTSDs, broken social ties, etc.) that due justice to a more secular metaphysics.

In addition, and Las Casas is not shy about this point, if the ultimate point is voluntary conversion then exposing would be converted to great risks, even enormous harms, is self-undermining: "war is not a suitable means for spreading Christ's glory and the truth of the gospel, but rather for making the Christian name hateful and detestable for those who suffer the disasters of war." (355) As Las Casas repeatedly notes, the natural response to Spanish conquest and plunder is loathing of Spanish religion. So, while the particular details of the consequences of wars of choice may not be explicitly intended, they are foreseeable in a certain generic (one may be tempted to say statistical) way as belonging to a class of foreseeable "unavoidable" harms (even if the particular detail is not foreseen). Among the harms are epidemic illnesses, as Las Casas recognized.*  

Las Casas' argument presupposes here (and he argues it throughout the book) that because the indigenous are unbelievers  the Church has no prior dominion over them. In fact, because he treats the indigenous as self-governing polities with natural right to self-defense (“Every nation, no matter how barbaric, has the right to defend itself against a more civilized one that wants to conquer it and take away its freedom,” (355)), they also have a natural right to their own religious practices (which he assures his reader are theistic in practice).  In virtue of some such comments, Las Casas comes very close to finding the whole Spanish presence in the Americas illegal. 

He draws back from this conclusion for two reasons, one theological and one political (intimately connected). The political reason is that he needs the power of the emperor to subdue the Spanish landlords (and reform their abuses) and control the conquistadors. But the emperor and his court rely on income from the Americas; the emperor is in a zero-sum competition with other European powers, and the emperor has opportunity to extend his dominion and power by incorporating the American colonies in a pacific, imperial project in which the emperor becomes a protector of self-governing natives against their oppressors in the same way he is a protector of burghers against feudal landlords (see, e.g., the New Laws of Charles V). In addition, and this is connected to the theological reason, the emperor can create conditions for possibility of peaceful missions to convert of the indigenous. This is also the interest of the Church to hold on to colonial enterprise (and is explicitly present in the various papal degrees.)

Before I conclude, and as an aside, it is worth emphasizing that Las Casas develops here the foundations for the pacific federations based on shared and ever closer, converging values and shared interests familiar from the history of liberalism (recall here; and neo-Liberalism  (recall here; here; here)). And this also suggests that we can tell an alternative to Foucault's story. Recall that for Foucault 'Europe' was discovered when the Westphalian, non-zero sum system presupposed a zero-sum extra-European relationship that extracts wealth from would be enemies (in what we may call the Global South). On this view a zone of open-ended progress requires the domination of the backward global. Prior to the development of this system, there were opportunities for a more mutualistic relationships with the Global South.+  

The very possibility of a more mutualist, equitable approach founders on the limitations of imperial state capacity and the power inequality between the natives and Spanish. The Imperial state is, even when willing,** incapable of genuinely controlling the Spanish landlords from afar when their interests align against it. This means that Las Casas' own proposal --  "what has been taken unjustly" must be "restored" (362) -- is doomed to failure. This despite the fact that Las Casas' proposal is itself a compromise with political reality. I put it like that because his arguments entail a more radical conclusion, not just restoration but also, "reparation for injuries." (4)++

On the Origins of Humanitarian Intervention

[T]hose people are barbaric, uninstructed in letters and the art of government, and completely ignorant, unreasoning, and totally incapable of learning anything but the mechanical arts; that they are sunk in vice, are cruel, and of such character that, as nature teaches, they are to be governed by the will of others....But, for their own welfare, people of this kind are held by natural law to submit to the control of those who are wiser and superior in virtue and learning, as are the Spaniards (especially the nobility), the learned, the clergy, the religious, and, finally, all those who have been properly educated and trained. Such persons must be considered when a judgment is to be made about the morals and character of any people, for in them especially shine forth natural ability, uprightness, training, and the best morals of any nation. Both in Spain and among the Indians, spiritual and temporal government is entrusted to these people rather than to soldiers, who, for the most part, are unprincipled and, under cover of military license, inflict many injuries.

The conclusion drawn from this is that the Indians are obliged by natural law to obey those who are outstanding in virtue and character in the same way that matter yields to form, body to soul, sense to reason, animals to human being, women to men, children to adults, and finally, the imperfect to the more perfect, the worse to the better, the cheaper to the more precious and excellent, to the advantage of the both. This is the natural order, which the the eternal and divine law commands be observed, according to Augustine.

Therefore, if the Indians, once warned, refuse to obey this legitimate sovereignty, they can be forced to do so for their own welfare by recourse to the terrors of war. And this war will be just both by civil and natural law, according to the second, third, and fifth chapters of the Politics of Aristotle....Finally, all political philosophers, basing themselves on this reason alone, teach that in cities, kingdoms, and states those who excel in prudence and virtue should preside with sovereignty over the government so that government may be just according to natural law....

Even if these barbarians (that is, the Indians) do not lack capacity, with still more reason they must obey and heed the commands of those who can teach them to live like human beings and do the things that are beneficial for both their present and future life.--"Summary of Sepúlveda's Position" from In Defense of the Indians by Bartolomé de Las Casas, translated by Stafford Poole, pp. 11-13 [ca 1550]

Juan Ginés de Sepúlveda was at the time the royal historian of Emperor Charles V. Las Casas treats him as a trained theologian, but I have also seen him described as a lawyer (see here; perhaps he was both). The Summary of Sepúlveda provided by his opponent, Las Casas, understates Sepúlveda's assertion of natural hierarchies between and within peoples. A line often quoted elsewhere from Sepúlveda's (ca 1550) Democrates Alter, Or, on the Just Causes for War Against the Indians states that "The man rules over the woman, the adult over the child, the father over his children. That is to say, the most powerful and most perfect rule over the weakest and most imperfect. This same relationship exists among men, there being some who by nature are masters and others who by nature are slaves."  This does echo Aristotle. Sepúlveda also goes beyond Aristotle. In the same document Sepúlveda pretty much compares the Indians to apes,* in a way that anticipates Rousseau's idea in a note to the Second Discourse that certain kinds of humans are apelike in the state of nature.

Of course, while Sepúlveda wholeheartedly and repeatedly embraces natural hierarchies, his argument actually does not rest on it. For he allows that, perhaps, the Indians are in no way inferior in capacity. In fact the real work is done by the purported existence of social misery, especially certain form of immorality, in their affairs ("that they are sunk in vice, are cruel,"). In fact, according to Sepúlveda intervention is required because they must be raised from their present immorality, which is bestial and savage.

Sepúlveda is relying on reports of human sacrifice and ritualized cannibalism among the Indians (see here). This matters not just because it shows they are pagans and abhorrent, but also because innocents are harmed if the Spaniards stand by and do nothing. (In context, Sepúlveda offers testimony for this assertion.)

That is the say, the thrust of Sepúlveda's argument does not rest on the reality of natural hierarchy, but rather on the claim that without Spanish, humanitarian intervention, all the Indians will be harmed to some degree, and especially the weak  innocent among them. Indian existence is a proto-Hobbesian state of nature, and so an educated Spanish sovereign is better than no sovereign. 

As an aside, even Sepúlveda indirectly admits that the Spanish conquest need not be beneficial to the Indians in all respects. For, where the Indians fall under de facto Spanish military occupation, they are simply miserably oppressed. 

Sepúlveda, thus, brings together (perhaps partially reinvents) two tropes that become extremely influential and pernicious: (i) that the violent extension of civilization, conquest, is to be pursued because it ultimately benefits the backward and savage. And (ii) that immoral and wicked practices may invite humanitarian intervention. This intervention is humanitarian in character because it is in the interest of the Indians to become humane ("to live like human beings") and acquire the skill and practice of civilization and thereby benefit from it politically and personally, that is, in the afterlife ("that are beneficial for both their present and future life.")). 

According to Sepúlveda, Spanish empire is providential ("God wanted the greater part of the world to come under their dominion so that it might be ruled more justly..." (p. 13)). It's notable that it's not just in Sepúlveda and adherents of providence that (recall) (i) and (ii) can amount to the same thing.

 

 

 

On The Virtue of Nationalism

Rather, the purpose of the balance of power is to ensure that no nation grows so strong that it is in a position of “making law” for the others. Its purpose is, in other words, to preserve the freedom of nations to make law for themselves—which is to say, to preserve their independence and self-determination.

The good of collective self-determination, which our forefathers knew under the order of tribes and clans, thus finds its greatest possible expression in the institution of the national state. A nation that is able to establish peace among its diverse tribes, and resists the urge to expend its resources in attempts to conquer the other nations and impose its own order on them, is one that has set the stage for a life of national freedom—the liberty that is shared by a people that are mutually loyal to one another, and are able to direct their energies to building themselves up in light of their own unique inheritance, without being forced to bow to any other nation or empire. In this way, the human desire for collective freedom and self-determination is preserved and cultivated, and channeled so that it may gain in strength and in the benefits it bestows, while as much as possible reducing the harms that arise by it.

Nor is it the case that only those who are born members of the nation, originally sharing its language, religion, and history, can take part in the collective freedom that is made possible by the national state. The independent national state can and frequently does adopt new tribes and clans that are willing to establish bonds of mutual loyalty to the nation and to bring their unique capabilities to its efforts. Thus the English adopted the Scots, Welsh, and Northern Irish into a broader British nation.---Yoram Hazony (2018) The Virtue of Nationalism, p. 127-8

A key merit of (my sometime co-author), Yoram Hazony's book, The Virtue of Nationalism (which, recall, I have discussed before) is that he recognizes that a nationalism worth having is, at least instrumentally, dependent on the character of the international state system. In particular, it requires an effective balance of power and, as he makes clear in passages I have not quoted, it requires "statesmen" willing to act the balancing role.* It also requires statesmen willing to promote the "order" of national states.+  

It is a bit of a shame that Hazony does not reflect further on the fact that absent such a balance of power, the harms of the nation state may be considerable (and so not worth having). More subtly, given that the current state system is not an effective balance of power, it is by no means obvious that getting to an effective balance of power and getting to an order of nation states amounts to the same thing. (Hazony is, recall, a critic of the EU, but breaking it up, as he clearly wishes. would clearly weaken even more the existing balance of power.) 

But lurking here are two more important problems. These problems are made worse by the realistic anthropology that Hazony embraces. (He is especially critical of the "impoverished and unsuccessful account of human motivation and action" (33) he attributes to the liberal tradition since Locke.) First, it's not obvious that statesmen who can act as balance(r)s in foreign affairs will get the freedom to do so from their own people. It's no coincidence that the most effective period of balance of power politics was the age of aristocratic, multi-cultural and mercantile empire (the long nineteenth century).** 

In order to understand the second problem it is worth looking at one of the very example he gives -- the English adopted the Scots, Welsh, and Northern Irish into a broader British nation. The way Hazony understands adoption (in this political/nation building context) implies that when a people (X) adopts another people (Y), (X) and (Y) become something different, that is (Z), even though (X) does not lose its adopting powers in (Z) (and so can adopt other (Ys) into (Z).  <-- This, I call incorporation. Now, the Northern Irish were not a people when they were so adopted into the British nation. (I am agnostic about their present condition.) They were Unionists, primarily Protestants. And they exist in virtue of the effects of a partition that liberated previously dominated and colonized Irish Catholics.++

The historical point I want to make is that it greatly facilitated the incorporation of the Scots into a British nation in virtue of the shared domination of the (Catholic) Irish (and other subject nations/peoples elsewhere). And, while this narrative is in some sense contingent, I take it that absent foreign enemies, it is likely that effectively balanced national states will require internal enemies for peace among its diverse and incorporating tribes/peoples. 

Now, Hazony thinks that "Protection of minority nations and tribes by the national government...is a principle without which the order of national states cannot persist." (183) His reasons for this are worth looking at.  I grant that he is not ignoring the problem of minority peoples. But what he misses, I think, is that the very order of states he promotes will predictably generate forces that make it impossible to achieve. 

Here, too, the case of the Northern Irish are instructive. Throughout the nineteenth century, the existence of, and so the need to protect, the Protestant minority in Ireland was used as a means/excuse to perpetuate a system of domination over the other (predominately Catholic) Irish.

But, more important, there exists a permanent temptation in a balance of power system, to use other national states' minorities as a balancing means by stoking discontent, etc. Hazony is aware of the problem (184), but he misses it is characteristic of the order of states he proposes. 

On Plato and Kant and War-Conduct

[I]f we are at all concerned to preserve friendly relations with the other Greeks. Rather we shall fear that there is pollution in bringing such offerings to the temples from our kind unless in a case where the god bids otherwise...And in the matter of devastating the land of Greeks and burning their houses, how will your soldiers deal with their enemies...In my view,...they ought to do neither, but confine themselves to taking away the annual harvest...In my opinion, just as we have the two terms, war and faction, so there are also two things, distinguished by two differentiae. The two things I mean are the friendly and kindred on the one hand and the alien and foreign on the other. Now the term employed for the hostility of the friendly is faction, and for that of the alien is war...Consider, then, if this goes to the mark. I affirm that the Hellenic race is friendly to itself and akin, and foreign and alien to the barbarian...We shall then say that Greeks fight and wage war with barbarians, and barbarians with Greeks, and are enemies by nature, and that war is the fit name for this enmity and hatred. Greeks, however, we shall say, are still by nature the friends of Greeks when they act in this way, but that Greece is sick in that case and divided by faction, and faction is the name we must give to that enmity...Then observe,” said I, “that when anything of this sort occurs in faction, as the word is now used, and a state is divided against itself, if either party devastates the land and burns the houses of the other such factional strife is thought to be an accursed thing and neither party to be true patriots. Otherwise, they would never have endured thus to outrage their nurse and mother. But the moderate and reasonable thing is thought to be that the victors shall take away the crops of the vanquished, but that their temper shall be that of men who expect to be reconciled and not always to wage war.” “That way of feeling,” he said, “is far less savage than the other.” “Well, then,” said I, “is not the city that you are founding to be a Greek city?” “It must be,” he said. “Will they then not be good and gentle?” “Indeed they will.” “And won't they be philhellenes, lovers of Greeks, and will they not regard all Greece as their own and not renounce their part in the holy places common to all Greeks ?” “Most certainly.” “Will they not then regard any difference with Greeks who are their own people as a form of faction and refuse even to speak of it as war?” “Most certainly.” “And they will conduct their quarrels always looking forward to a reconciliation?” “By all means.” “They will correct them, then, for their own good, not chastising them with a view to their enslavement or their destruction, but acting as correctors, not as enemies....They will not, being Greeks, ravage Greek territory nor burn habitations, and they will not admit that in any city all the population are their enemies, men, women and children, but will say that only a few at any time are their foes, those, namely, who are to blame for the quarrel. And on all these considerations they will not be willing to lay waste the soil, since the majority are their friends, nor to destroy the houses, but will carry the conflict only to the point of compelling the guilty to do justice by the pressure of the suffering of the innocent.” “I,” he said, “agree that our citizens ought to deal with their Greek opponents on this wise, while treating barbarians as Greeks now treat Greeks.” “Shall we lay down this law also, then, for our guardians that they are not to lay waste the land or burn the houses?” Plato, Republic, Book 5 470-1, Translated by Paul Shorey.

In Context Socrates and Glaucon are discussing the Guardians's behavior toward foreign enemies. Socrates anticipates here an argument that I think of the less dominant strain in Kant's Toward Perpetual Peace: (recall) a kind of argument from enlightened self-interest to the conclusion that one must be willing to restrict voluntarily one's conduct in war. The enlightened self-interest of restraint in war, makes possible decent relations after war. And, in fact, Socrates anticipates a key point of Kant's that the way one conducts oneself in way is a means toward looking forward to a reconciliation. For, conduct in war is a signal toward the kind of outcome one (is willing to) foresee(s).

Now, in my piece on Kant's Toward Perpetual Peace, I noted that there is a more dominant strain of argument (clearly indebted to Hobbes) in Kant's work: to take Hobbes's idea that the very point of a state is to escape from the state of nature seriously and to adhere to that even in the conduct of war (and so to prepare a durable escape from the state of nature). That conduct in war (say of the stronger party), can become self-undermining because it facilitates an outcome which is a permanent state of nature. 

Socrates also anticipates the spirit of this second Hobbesian argument. (I say 'spirit' because in context he is not connecting the argument to a social contract.) But he does so in terms of a principled distinction between self and other, or a version of would-be-friends and would-be-permanent-enemies (along what we would call civilizational, ethnic, religious, or even nationalist lines). And hostilities among one's own are for Socrates really a form of civil war, which undermines the whole point of having a state. That is, Socrates comes extremely close to treating intra-Greek war as undermining the very rationale of the polity.

The last sentence of the last paragraph is probably too speculative for most. But notice that Socrates quietly inserts a useful myth (one that anticipates a Kantian position), which Plato's readers know can barely sustain scrutiny even if it appeals to a self-conception that one may wish to have about one's fellow citizens: that the wars among the Greeks are always and everywhere caused by minority factions (who have a self-interest in war) and that the majority of each polity wishes to have friendly relations with others.* The last comment by Glaucon quoted above suggests that in reality Greeks are savage with each other. And in Book VI, when discussing the greatest corruption of would be philosophers in a democracy at say 494ff, Socrates makes clear that moderation is incompatible with nearly all political life. So, what I am calling Socrates' myth is a normative idea (would the world be like that the majority of wars are caused by minority factions.)

I have mentioned Hobbes and Kant a few times already, because Socrates assumes that relations between Greeks and non-Greeks is one of permanent would be enmity (the Hobbesian state of nature). And while I am not claiming that Socrates anticipates Machiavelli's dream of national (Italian) unification (recall), it is notable for Socrates the relationships among Greeks should be governed by an ideal of fraternity (470A).+

Socrates and Plato are often treated as idealist who demand a reform of human nature and peddle unattainable ideals (and (recall) one sees comments to this effect in, say, Machiavelli, Hobbes, Spinoza, Hume, and Kant--sometimes More's Utopia is the target sometimes Plato). One can understand the charge when one focuses on the internal order of Kallipolis. (The previous sentence leaves open that the charge is mistaken.) But once international relations are brought into the picture a more distressing (or realist) feature of Socrates's analysis emerges: if there are would-be-permanent enemies, this entails that (preparation for) strife is permanent.

Kant's Creative Use of Hobbes: On Self-limitation in the Context of War

6.—“No state at war with another shall countenance such modes of hostility as would make mutual confidence impossible in a subsequent state of peace: such are the employment of assassins (percussores) or of poisoners (venefici), breaches of capitulation, the instigating and making use of treachery (perduellio) in the hostile state.”

These are dishonourable stratagems. For some kind of confidence in the disposition of the enemy must exist even in the midst of war, as otherwise peace could not be concluded, and the hostilities would pass into a war of extermination (bellum internecinum). War, however, is only our wretched expedient of asserting a right by force, an expedient adopted in the state of nature, where no court of justice exists which could settle the matter in dispute. In circumstances like these, neither of the two parties can be called an unjust enemy, because this form of speech presupposes a legal decision: the issue of the conflict—just as in the case of the so-called judgments of God—decides on which side right is. Between states, however, no punitive war (bellum punitivum) is thinkable, because between them a relation of superior and inferior does not exist. Whence it follows that a war of extermination, where the process of annihilation would strike both parties at once and all right as well, would bring about perpetual peace only in the great graveyard of the human race. Such a war then, and therefore also the use of all means which lead to it, must be absolutely forbidden. That the methods just mentioned do inevitably lead to this result is obvious from the fact that these infernal arts, already vile in themselves, on coming into use, are not long confined to the sphere of war. Take, for example, the use of spies (uti exploratoribus). Here only the dishonesty of others is made use of; but vices such as these, when once encouraged, cannot in the nature of things be stamped out and would be carried over into the state of peace, where their presence would be utterly destructive to the purpose of that state.--Kant Toward Perpetual Peace: a Philosophical Blueprint, translated by Mary Campbell Smith. [8:346-7)]

The above  is one of my favorite passages in a work, Toward Perpetual Peace, that I am very fond of (recall this post, where I situate Kant in a tradition that includes Spinoza and Hume, but also public choice theory). The underlying  strategy -- and this accounts, I think, for the texts astounding influence on real politics -- is to argue for very idealistic ideals from extremely thin or even pessimistic (Augustinian-Hobbesian) commitments about human nature. At no point does Kant rely on a reform of human nature. But that's not the only strategy he deploys, and here I want to call attention to another.

Remember that for Hobbes, the whole point of generating a sovereign is to escape the state of nature by which Hobbes means both the state of war and the permanent preparation of war. Unlike Master Mo (recall), Hobbes does not really propose a solution to the problem of the existence of the state of nature at the level of international relations. Kant is aware of the problem because  he offers an argument against the existence of standing armies (a much debated issue in the eighteenth century -- Kant sides with the republican preference for militias) because these basically signal that one has not escaped the state of nature.

Okay, let me turn to the quoted passage. You may think that Kant is offering an argument from enlightened self-interest to the conclusion that one must be willing to restrict voluntarily one's conduct in war. This is not all wrong, for one with  such voluntary restrictions on one's conduct one signals to all belligerent parties (including one's own side) that one is waging war in the service of peace and so can be treated as a serious negotiating/peace partner when the time is ripe.

But there is a more important, perhaps more subtle point, lurking in Kant's argument. The worst version of the state of nature just is total war or a war of (mutual) extermination. This is what we wish to avoid when we contract in, or recognize the legitimacy of a sovereign. So, to engage  in total war is to undermine the very reason for the existence of sovereign states. And this remains true even during the conduct of interstate war. A war of extermination is to be avoided at all cost because it undermines the very rationale for the existence and legitimacy of a state (and it invites excessive retaliation). So, if you want to avoid at least one of the known causes of a war of extermination,  which just is the worst version of the state of nature, you need to show restraint in war. (And this, in turn,  signals that you care about escaping the state of nature, and wish for peace.)

The underlying idea here is to take Hobbes's idea about the escape from the state of nature seriously and to adhere to that even in the conduct of war (and so to prepare a durable escape from the state of nature). I think that's pretty convincing.

But you may think that if you are not on the receiving end of a war of extermination (but say on the winning side), you may not really have returned to the state of nature (you are being protected by your soldiers). Let's grant -- for the sake of argument -- that this is  true sometimes, but it is rare one can fully escape the effects of war altogether (although sometimes these effects are indirect). And the whole point of sovereignty is to avoid the state of war.

Kant himself has another response to the objection. He thinks the internal constitution of a state matters quite a bit. He calls it a republican state, but it's clear  this is a republican theory influenced by Montesquieu (or Madison [it's clear that in the text he treats the establishment of the United States as a possibility proof of continental size republics], or Hume) and less Rousseau. For, Kant insists that his blueprint requires states with separation of powers, a full franchise, representative government, and commercial relations with the outside world; he is very clear that Rousseau's version of republicanism leads to tyranny--not a surprising claim in 1795. (This is really the outlines of liberal democracy.) In such republics the costs of war, even a winning war of extermination are felt by those people who need to consult. This is, in fact, why even though Kant rejects standing armies in the best circumstances (the confederations of peaceful liberal democracies), conscripted armies are better (than, say, our own professional armies) during war. The cost of war is distributed widely.* There is an empirical-psychological question to what degree this will really reduce the willingness to consent to war. But here the point is a normative one: in such circumstances one cannot escape being pushed back to some degree into the state of nature even if one is on the winning side of a war of extermination.

 

*He also rejects debt-financing of war because then the  cost of war is shifted on to creditors and future generations.

 

 

On Plato's Noble Lies (and a bit on Spinoza and Hobbes)

“How, then...might we contrive one of those opportune falsehoods of which we were just now speaking, so as by one noble lie to persuade if possible the rulers themselves, but failing that the rest of the city?...Nothing unprecedented, but a sort of Phoenician tale, something that has happened ere now in many parts of the world, as the poets aver and have induced men to believe, but that has not happened and perhaps would not be likely to happen in our day and demanding no little persuasion to make it believable....I hardly know how to find the audacity or the words to speak and undertake to persuade first the rulers themselves and the soldiers and then the rest of the city, that in good sooth all our training and educating of them were things that they imagined and that happened to them as it were in a dream; but that in reality at that time they were down within the earth being molded and fostered themselves while their weapons and the rest of their equipment were being fashioned. And when they were quite finished the earth as being their mother delivered them, and now as if their land were their mother and their nurse they ought to take thought for her and defend her against any attack and regard the other citizens as their brothers and children of the self-same earth.”

“It is not for nothing,” he said, “that you were so bashful about coming out with your lie.” Plato, Republic, 414B-E (Shorey's translation)

In this post I want to reflect on what the doctrine of Noble Lies reveals about Plato's understanding of  political philosophy. But before I get to that, I will ignore the controversies about hidden doctrines/esotericism/Straussianism. (Yes really; that's not a coded message!) Perhaps, what follows is also ready well known to students of Plato, but in preparing for class, I realize, that the main point of the Noble Lie is actually explicitly stated in the myth: to get people to sacrifice their lives for others in defense of the polity. That is, the Noble Lie is explicit that the ultimate defense of the state will benefit other citizens. What's remarkable about this, is that it's true. It is also notable that the Noble Lie does not disguise that the patriotic sacrifice benefits others (rather than just  the more abstract state).

I want to elaborate on the previous paragraph. But I do not want to disguise some of the peculiarity of the rest of the Noble Lie, which entails that (i) the reality of lived experience is a kind of successful simulation -- there are strange echoes with the cave analogy here -- and (ii) that the truth is that we come preformed into the surface world (a thought that Hobbes exploits in his treatment of the state of nature in De Cive, where he treat people as emerged from the earth, and suddenly, like mushrooms, come to full maturity (De Cive, ch. 8, 1)).  I call this 'peculiar' not just because it is so hard to imagine that this would be really believed, but also because (iii) the rulers are also supposed to buy into it. That is, nobody in society is expected to see through the myth, which is, then, de facto, an origin myth in both senses: (a) it tells the story of human origins and (b) it is an ideology that is part of the original founding of the state (derived from Socrates).

Okay, let's return to the main thread here. As I said, the Noble Lie is explicitly aimed at encouraging the ultimate sacrifice on behalf others. In fact, it's pretty clear that the rationale for the Noble Lie is not to encourage the totalitarian use of propaganda for any purpose. Rather, the purpose is to defend the survival of the state when it requires a willingness to sacrifice one's life in the defense of others. (I think here Socrates is also tacitly relying on the thought that one always has the option to flee the battlefield or go into exile.) Of course, the practice of Noble Lying can be abused in practice, and so one wonders why it is introduced at all. In particular, recall, that the whole point of the ship of state analogy is to argue that one of the main problems of a direct/popular democracy is that truthful politics is impossible [recall here].

I think the answer lies in the thought that Socrates clearly insists that this particular end -- the requirement that one is willing to sacrifice one's life to ensure that others can thrive in the state's survival -- justifies the means (some deception). And the underlying thought seems to be, and this is why I mentioned Hobbes already, that without the survival of the state nobody can enjoy any fruits of existence. I think this fits Socrates's/Plato's more general rejection of what I have labeled 'rustic wisdom'--and the clear preference for urbane/city life  (Phaedrus, 230D).*

Before I close with Spinoza, just one more point: I call the Noble Lie a species of 'ideology' and not 'civic religion.' I take the latter, which is very important to Socratic political thought, to involve no falsehood. Civic religion provides images of the good/true for the masses, but does not engage in falsehood. The Noble Lie -- while really speaking the most important political truth** -- uses false means.+

In the preface Theological Political Treatise, Spinoza attacks the use of Noble Lies to encourage the ultimate sacrifice:

It may indeed be the highest secret of monarchical government and utterly essential to it, to keep men deceived, and to disguise the fear that sways them with the  specious name of religion, so that they will fight for their servitude as if they were fighting for  their own deliverance, and will not think it humiliating but supremely glorious to spill their blood and sacrifice their lives for the glorification of a single man. But in a free  republic, on the other hand, nothing that can be devised or attempted will be less successful. For it is completely contrary to the common liberty to shackle the free judgment of  the individual with prejudices or constraints of any kind. Spinoza, Preface, Theological Political Treatise 7 (Translated by Michael Silverthorne and Jonathan Israel)

I don't mean to ignore the fact that a (Christian) monarchy is not a Platonic Kallipolis. Nor to deny the differences between really existing religions and Socrates's fable. The point is rather that on Spinoza's account the function of religion in a monarchy is to produce the kind of effects of Socratic Noble Lie. But that in a monarchy only one person really benefits--namely the one who is not asked to sacrifice (the monarch). That is to say, for Spinoza a monarchy requires something like religion in order to survive.

I introduce Spinoza not to compare religion to Noble Lies. But rather that Spinoza plainly asserts that one can have a society without the need for such a Noble Lie. His claim is that in a true republic a reign of truth is possible because people will be willing to sacrifice themselves for distant others and do so knowingly without propaganda or ideology.** For all I know Spinoza is right about this possibility (and he surely was influenced by some Roman republican examples). But it is a notable empirical fact that most republican-democratic governments have not trusted Spinoza's advice.