WEBVTT NOTE Philosophy and Violence 1 00:00:00.000 --> 00:00:13.000 When I'm discussing violence, I want to talk specifically about a particular kind of violence, war, which Cicero calls war a contention by force. 2 00:00:13.000 --> 00:00:22.000 The interesting recent philosopher Alexander Mosley calls war a collective, open-ended violence. 3 00:00:22.000 --> 00:00:29.000 So we're not talking about individual acts of violence, say someone doesn't like my lecture and knocks me down. 4 00:00:29.000 --> 00:00:39.000 I want to distinguish three different views that we find in the philosophical tradition of war. 5 00:00:39.000 --> 00:00:47.000 One is that war is desirable or has a lot of beneficial aspects to it. 6 00:00:47.000 --> 00:00:54.000 I'm going to talk probably the most about this view because it's one I think most people are unfamiliar with. 7 00:00:54.000 --> 00:01:02.960 And the second is that war is something that should be subject to legal or moral regulation. 8 00:01:02.960 --> 00:01:09.200 This has a suggestion that war is in some respects undesirable, although it doesn't logically require 9 00:01:09.200 --> 00:01:14.720 that somebody could hold war as a very good thing, but we should just have a lot of moral or at least 10 00:01:14.720 --> 00:01:22.720 some moral or legal regulations. And the last view is that war is undesirable and to be avoided. 11 00:01:24.000 --> 00:01:31.000 The first of these views is one we find that the war is desirable, has a lot of good aspects. 12 00:01:31.000 --> 00:01:36.000 It is one we find in Greek philosophy very much. 13 00:01:36.000 --> 00:01:44.000 If we look, for example, at Plato, I want to concentrate not so much on his most famous work of political philosophy, 14 00:01:44.000 --> 00:02:06.640 of the Republic. 15 00:02:06.640 --> 00:02:13.280 If we look at his last dialogue, The Laws, which he calls the second best regime, the 16 00:02:13.280 --> 00:02:30.000 The government is something very distinct from our private lives. 17 00:02:30.000 --> 00:02:35.920 Each of us has his or her own private life, and we have various religious or philosophical 18 00:02:35.920 --> 00:02:36.920 opinions. 19 00:02:36.920 --> 00:02:40.840 But the government is really something that's either performing, at least supposed to perform 20 00:02:40.840 --> 00:02:42.840 The Theory of Money and Credit 21 00:03:10.840 --> 00:03:24.840 Plato held exactly this view. He said that everyone really has to hold the same beliefs. 22 00:03:24.840 --> 00:03:34.840 In fact, it was a common belief in Greek society that the gods that people believed in were the gods of a specific city they lived in. 23 00:03:34.840 --> 00:03:47.840 You could have cities with the same gods. You would have, say, Zeus would be the god of a whole lot of different cities, but they would have special names for the god that was specific to that specific city. 24 00:03:47.840 --> 00:04:17.840 so that each what your belief your religious belief was very closely connected with where you lived you couldn't say well I'm a resident of Athens but I hold different religious views from the rest of the Athenians it would be very difficult for you if you did say that everyone would have to really believe the same thing in the 19th century French historian Foustel de Coulange and famous book the ancient 25 00:04:17.840 --> 00:04:24.080 The City stressed very much how the Greeks had this view that the city is really what 26 00:04:24.080 --> 00:04:26.560 people really believed in. 27 00:04:26.560 --> 00:04:30.680 The gods were so closely connected with the city, they really had a belief in the city 28 00:04:30.680 --> 00:04:34.520 as some kind of collective entity that they were all parts of. 29 00:04:34.520 --> 00:04:41.480 Now, Plato said also there should be what he called a nocturnal council, which was kind 30 00:04:41.480 --> 00:04:46.960 of an inquisition that would find out if people had deviant beliefs and then subject them 31 00:04:46.960 --> 00:05:05.840 The way this is related to war is that Plato and those who think in this way thought that 32 00:05:05.840 --> 00:05:10.720 there are specific virtues that are found in warfare. 33 00:05:10.720 --> 00:05:20.720 For example, soldiers have to display courage in war. They're risking their own lives in battle. 34 00:05:20.720 --> 00:05:26.720 You don't have, in peacetime, the opportunity to display this kind of courage very often. 35 00:05:26.720 --> 00:05:33.720 Sometimes you do, say, rescuing people from danger, but in war you're able to display your courage 36 00:05:33.720 --> 00:05:42.100 Average is a way not very easy to find in the peacetime, and also you can display other 37 00:05:42.100 --> 00:05:43.100 virtues. 38 00:05:43.100 --> 00:05:49.760 For example, you can sacrifice yourself for other people who are in battle with you, or 39 00:05:49.760 --> 00:05:52.100 you can sacrifice yourself for the city. 40 00:05:52.100 --> 00:05:56.700 This was one of the supreme virtues in this Greek conception. 41 00:05:56.700 --> 00:06:02.420 Remember, for example, when Socrates is condemned to death and he's given a chance to escape, 42 00:06:02.420 --> 00:06:06.260 He says he doesn't want to escape because he owes everything to the city. 43 00:06:06.260 --> 00:06:12.180 He can't leave Athens because this is where he owes everything to the city. 44 00:06:12.180 --> 00:06:19.500 So you see, you have this idea that by sacrificing yourself for the city, you're displaying a 45 00:06:19.500 --> 00:06:27.460 supreme form of virtue and this is something that you're not able to attain in peacetime. 46 00:06:27.460 --> 00:06:37.340 A model that Plato used for this, he was very sympathetic to the type of government found 47 00:06:37.340 --> 00:06:43.660 in the city-state of Sparta, which is one where, as you no doubt know, military virtue 48 00:06:43.660 --> 00:06:44.660 was stressed the most. 49 00:06:44.660 --> 00:06:51.780 It doesn't by any means follow from this that a city-state organized on platonic lines of 50 00:06:51.780 --> 00:06:56.880 The following Plato's principles would always be very aggressive or always be engaged in 51 00:06:56.880 --> 00:07:05.700 war, but it would just be that war has certain virtues in it that we would not find in peacetime. 52 00:07:05.700 --> 00:07:11.700 This is a very desirable thing according to Plato, that we would have these virtues. 53 00:07:11.700 --> 00:07:16.580 He had a very low view of economic activities. 54 00:07:16.580 --> 00:07:21.020 We had to have certain kinds of trading and economic activities, but this was something 55 00:07:21.020 --> 00:07:21.560 The 56 00:07:21.560 --> 00:07:29.940 very much a bad part of life, a distasteful necessity, not to be compared with the real 57 00:07:29.940 --> 00:07:38.380 virtues that are found in the military activities. This is where you could really at least prove. 58 00:07:38.380 --> 00:07:41.980 There were a few people who were capable of something even higher, which is philosophical 59 00:07:41.980 --> 00:07:48.900 contemplation, but for most people the highest type of virtue they could find is in military 60 00:07:48.900 --> 00:07:54.940 Activity. I think one very good source here, although I think there's severe 61 00:07:54.940 --> 00:07:59.220 problems for the interpretation of Plato that's generally given by the Saudis in 62 00:07:59.220 --> 00:08:05.340 Karl Popper's book, Open Siding Against Enemies, first volume of that has a good 63 00:08:05.340 --> 00:08:10.860 account of the influence of Sparta on Plato's thought, although I wouldn't 64 00:08:10.860 --> 00:08:16.940 recommend the whole book for its whole interpretation of Plato, but I think on this 65 00:08:16.940 --> 00:08:22.940 This Point, he's right. So we have this again, this notion that war is sometimes desirable. 66 00:08:22.940 --> 00:08:30.940 Now, from my point of view, unfortunately, this notion didn't die out with Plato and 67 00:08:30.940 --> 00:08:39.540 the Greek philosophers. You find it. It's a constant theme in later writers. For example, 68 00:08:39.540 --> 00:08:49.100 Machiavelli criticizes Christianity and he says, well, the Christians have the notion 69 00:08:49.100 --> 00:08:56.420 of salvation as something apart from the state, that your salvation is a relationship between 70 00:08:56.420 --> 00:09:02.660 the individual and God, and this is a very, according to him, what happens if you have 71 00:09:02.660 --> 00:09:07.680 this idea that your salvation is something that depends on a personal relationship between 72 00:09:37.680 --> 00:09:54.680 The 18th century philosopher Jean-Jacques Rousseau criticizes Christianity on grounds that are very similar to Machiavelli, which is not surprising because he read Machiavelli and was very influenced by him. 73 00:09:54.680 --> 00:10:02.680 Christianity is really at fault because it separates the individual from the state. 74 00:10:02.680 --> 00:10:09.760 We have to have a new civil religion that will require everybody to have certain common 75 00:10:09.760 --> 00:10:16.000 beliefs where they're all subordinating themselves to the state. 76 00:10:16.000 --> 00:10:18.720 Everyone is to be subordinating to the state. 77 00:10:18.720 --> 00:10:26.360 You don't have the right to be an individual apart from the state, but you really gain 78 00:10:26.360 --> 00:10:33.360 The Theory of Money and Credit 79 00:10:56.360 --> 00:11:03.360 The Theory of Money and Credit 80 00:11:26.360 --> 00:11:38.360 How close he studied with Strauss and then William Kristol, who was a leading defender of the invasion of Iraq, was very influenced by Strauss. 81 00:11:38.360 --> 00:11:45.360 There are various claims as to how influential Strauss has been on American foreign policy. 82 00:11:45.360 --> 00:11:52.360 Some people said, well, no, no, he wasn't very influential at all. He was a historian of political thought. 83 00:11:52.360 --> 00:11:58.240 I didn't really have very strong political views of his own, but I do think that there 84 00:11:58.240 --> 00:12:03.360 are certainly students of his who profess themselves to be Straussians, like Caron's 85 00:12:03.360 --> 00:12:10.200 Lord, who was an official of the Reagan administration, or Harvey Mansfield, who was a professor of 86 00:12:10.200 --> 00:12:16.120 government at Harvard, who call themselves Straussians, who take views that are very 87 00:12:16.120 --> 00:12:44.120 I want to take, for example, a book that came out a couple years ago, I think, just before the September 11th attacks on the World Trade Center. 88 00:12:44.120 --> 00:12:59.120 Tax on the World Trade Center. It was called Making Patriots by Walter Burns. Burns was a professor for a long time at Cornell University, a very influential follower of Leo Strauss. 89 00:12:59.120 --> 00:13:12.120 And what Burns says, and we can see these views I was just talking about are not really old-fashioned views, but people are still holding them today. He says we need to have a common civic religion. 90 00:13:12.120 --> 00:13:25.120 In the Greek city-state, we had everybody believing the same thing according to what the gods of the city were. 91 00:13:25.120 --> 00:13:29.120 He said, we don't have that anymore because of Judaism and Christianity. 92 00:13:29.120 --> 00:13:35.120 We have the notion of belief as something that's private, that people have a part in the city. 93 00:13:35.120 --> 00:13:40.120 He said, well, we can't really change that. He seems to suggest it would be desirable. 94 00:13:40.120 --> 00:13:59.120 What we have to do is have a common civic religion, and this civic religion is to be based on the speeches and activities of Abraham Lincoln. 95 00:13:59.120 --> 00:14:11.960 The Gettysburg Address is the greatest speech ever written, and we should really have this 96 00:14:11.960 --> 00:14:20.080 and all teach this, get everyone to learn this, and we could all absorb Lincoln's wisdom. 97 00:14:20.080 --> 00:14:25.600 When we do this, we'll realize that the supreme goal, at least in political life, is that 98 00:14:25.600 --> 00:14:32.400 And we'll be able to sacrifice ourselves for the state in warfare. 99 00:14:32.400 --> 00:14:35.240 And we have exactly the same ideas as I mentioned. 100 00:14:35.240 --> 00:14:40.800 Plato is still very prominent today, that the notion we're sacrificing ourselves for 101 00:14:40.800 --> 00:14:43.520 the state is part of a civic religion. 102 00:14:43.520 --> 00:14:51.200 I want to mention that this Platonic view isn't the only view that holds that war is 103 00:14:51.200 --> 00:14:52.200 desirable. 104 00:14:52.200 --> 00:15:09.200 In his early writings, Hegel has very much the same view that in war people are able to attain certain kinds of unity that they're unable to have otherwise. 105 00:15:09.200 --> 00:15:16.200 This is a very good thing in that he mentions in his great early work, Phenomenology. 106 00:15:16.200 --> 00:15:20.860 Who criticizes Christianity says this has led to the notion of the unhappy consciousness 107 00:15:20.860 --> 00:15:28.460 where an individual is separate from society, but if we're engaged in the collective activities, 108 00:15:28.460 --> 00:15:34.200 one of which is war, then we can attain meaning in a way we can't in an individual life. 109 00:15:34.200 --> 00:15:38.760 Now there's a related view that holds that war is undesirable. 110 00:15:38.760 --> 00:16:00.760 In other philosophies, for example, we find, I'll mention specifically the early 20th century German philosopher and sociologist, Georg Zimmel, who, well, I think he wasn't that bad, but he did have unusual views. 111 00:16:00.760 --> 00:16:18.760 What he held was that our ordinary life is very, we find very complicated. We have, say, modern economic production, which he was very interested in. He wrote a book called Philosophy of Money, which some Austrians think has certain Austrian insights. 112 00:16:18.760 --> 00:16:25.880 It's very complicated. We have long chains of means and ends. To produce something requires 113 00:16:25.880 --> 00:16:32.540 long chains of production. We can have various counts of structured production. They're very 114 00:16:32.540 --> 00:16:40.020 hard for people to follow. Life gets very complicated for people. People get very cynical 115 00:16:40.020 --> 00:16:46.720 about things because they can't follow what's going on. We need to remedy this. We need 116 00:16:46.720 --> 00:16:53.720 We need to have kind of very heightened sensations. We need to really experience things directly. 117 00:16:53.720 --> 00:17:01.720 And what better way to do this than to have a war than we can really experience things in a very direct way. 118 00:17:01.720 --> 00:17:06.720 We'll have a whole lot of different sensations from the ones we usually do. 119 00:17:06.720 --> 00:17:13.720 And this will give us meaning in life by having all these new aesthetic sensations. 120 00:17:13.720 --> 00:17:33.720 We find similar ideas in the early 20th century French writer Georges Sorrel, who had a famous essay short book called Reflections on Violence. 121 00:17:33.720 --> 00:17:41.720 He said that in modern life people are dominated too much by rational thought. 122 00:17:41.720 --> 00:17:57.080 People are trying to reason things out, but we have to really, this is separating us from what's really important in life and by direct action, by violence, then we can attain real meaning. 123 00:17:57.080 --> 00:18:09.640 There's a very interesting discussion that came out in a book last year by the writer Chris Hedges, who had a book called War is a Force that Gives Us Meaning. 124 00:18:09.640 --> 00:18:17.440 And he's not very sympathetic to this idea that war is a good thing because it provides 125 00:18:17.440 --> 00:18:22.320 us with these sensations or experiences we don't have in ordinary life. 126 00:18:22.320 --> 00:18:27.800 But he discusses this view at length and he says he himself has been a war correspondent. 127 00:18:27.800 --> 00:18:30.960 He's very attracted to this view. 128 00:18:30.960 --> 00:18:34.280 He sees the force of it and he thinks it's something very dangerous because of all the 129 00:18:34.280 --> 00:18:38.720 horrible things that happen in war, but he thinks this is something that we need to take 130 00:18:38.720 --> 00:18:46.720 This is why people actually engage in wars, because they're seeking this kind of special experiences. 131 00:18:46.720 --> 00:18:54.720 They think they'll get meaning in their lives from the extreme situations that they won't get in their ordinary life. 132 00:18:54.720 --> 00:19:09.720 This is the first of the three traditions I want to talk about, as I say. It's one that probably most people are not too familiar with. 133 00:19:09.720 --> 00:19:19.720 Now, the second one I want to mention is the notion that war should be subject to certain kinds of legal or moral regulation. 134 00:19:19.720 --> 00:19:24.720 This is one we find especially developing in the Middle Ages. 135 00:19:24.720 --> 00:19:32.720 We had various nations that sometimes came into conflict with each other. 136 00:19:32.720 --> 00:19:40.720 There's a notion in the Middle Ages that all the Christian countries were part of a single entity, 137 00:19:40.720 --> 00:19:44.720 which is called the Christian Republic, the Race Publica Christiana. 138 00:19:44.720 --> 00:19:48.720 So they were all, in a sense, part of a common realm. 139 00:19:48.720 --> 00:20:06.240 and I should mention the raised public Christian Republic entirely different notion from the 140 00:20:06.240 --> 00:20:12.920 holy Roman Empire in a book that came out a few years ago by Harry Jaffa who you may 141 00:20:12.920 --> 00:20:20.600 I know is not one of my favorite authors. He apparently confuses you because he says at 142 00:20:20.600 --> 00:20:31.120 one point he puts England in the Holy Roman Empire. I wondered in my review when exactly 143 00:20:31.120 --> 00:20:35.600 was England part of the Holy Roman Empire. I'd like to have the dates on that. It is 144 00:20:35.600 --> 00:20:42.600 It is true that England was at one time a papal fief when the Pope annulled the Magna Carta, 145 00:20:42.600 --> 00:20:46.600 but I don't think it was ever part of the Holy Roman Emperor. 146 00:20:46.600 --> 00:20:51.600 That's just a digression. I like to always attack Jaffa when I can. 147 00:20:51.600 --> 00:20:59.600 So, we had the notion that because all the nations were part of the Christian Republic, 148 00:20:59.600 --> 00:21:27.600 The limitations on the power on war were developed by many of the great Christian thinkers like St. Augustine, Thomas Aquinas, and they were developed later by some of the Spanish scholastics like de Vitoria and later by Hugo Grotius and others. 149 00:21:27.600 --> 00:21:43.600 They generally had very severe restrictions. These kinds of restrictions were both on when you could engage in war at all, what were the conditions in which you would be able to engage in a just war. 150 00:21:43.600 --> 00:21:56.600 And also, once you were in the war, there were certain limits on what you could do. Even if you passed the test you were in a just war, you couldn't do anything you wanted. 151 00:21:56.600 --> 00:22:14.600 You have to observe certain limits. For example, one of the restrictions that you find in Aquinas is that war has to be a last resort. You have to try peaceful means of settlement first. 152 00:22:14.600 --> 00:22:33.600 For example, we can see one case where this seems to have been violated. In the U.S. invasion of Afghanistan, there were certain negotiations that seemed to be taking place between the U.S. and the Taliban forces in control in Afghanistan. 153 00:22:33.600 --> 00:22:56.600 The U.S. said, well, they're not really sincere in this, so they're going to invade anyway, they're going to disregard this, but according to the classical just war theory, you're not allowed to do this, you have to pursue these measures of negotiation till it's evident that they fail. 154 00:22:56.600 --> 00:23:02.600 You can't just say, well, I'm not going to bother with that because it's interfering with what I want to do. 155 00:23:02.600 --> 00:23:12.600 There's a recent writer, Jean Bethke Elshteyn, who's at the University of Chicago, who has a rather truncated view of natural law. 156 00:23:12.600 --> 00:23:19.600 She says, well, of course, last resort doesn't really apply if it's going to get in the way of your military tactics, 157 00:23:19.600 --> 00:23:31.600 but that's not really what the people had in mind by natural law restriction, and just an example of what's meant by restriction on what's done in war. 158 00:23:31.600 --> 00:23:41.600 One of the principle rules of the Just War tradition is that you can't directly intend the death of people who aren't fighting. 159 00:23:41.600 --> 00:23:58.600 You can't say, well, it would really make the enemy very upset if we just destroyed one of their large civilian centers of population and they'd really see reason and surrender. 160 00:23:58.600 --> 00:24:24.400 According to just war theory, you can't do that. Even if you're right that that would have just the effect you want, you can't say, well, this is the way I can bring the war to an end as soon away as possible, so I'm just going to attack the civilians. That'll just minimize total casualty, so it's a good thing to do. This would be a violation of standard just war principles. 161 00:24:24.400 --> 00:24:31.840 Now we can see this whole notion was later, it's been very influential later on, for example, 162 00:24:31.840 --> 00:24:43.280 Immanuel Kant had the notion of a universal system of republics, each of which would be peaceful. 163 00:24:43.280 --> 00:24:48.800 He thought by having, I'm not a world government, kind of a league of all the different republican governments, 164 00:24:48.800 --> 00:24:52.000 we would have a peaceful world. 165 00:24:52.000 --> 00:25:21.360 But I think we can see one danger in this type of thought, which was called attention to, I think, probably best by the great German constitutional theorist, an extremely controversial writer, Carl Schmitt, in many books he wrote in the 20th century, especially a book called The Nomos of the Earth, which is on what he called the public law of Europe. 166 00:25:21.360 --> 00:25:37.360 What he pointed out is, he said, well, there's a danger in this notion of legal, moral regulation, because then we can start to view international affairs as if they were to be equated with local police matters. 167 00:25:37.360 --> 00:25:48.360 We would say, just say, suppose we have somebody in, say, someone robs you, you would say, well, that's the criminal, then the police have to capture that person. 168 00:25:48.360 --> 00:26:00.280 Schmitt says, well, if you apply this notion of legal regulation to international affairs 169 00:26:00.280 --> 00:26:05.200 too far, then you'll say, well, there's certain aggressor nations who are just criminals and 170 00:26:05.200 --> 00:26:10.200 then the rest of the countries have to come in and suppress them, and this is going to 171 00:26:10.200 --> 00:26:15.720 lead to many more wars than before. 172 00:26:15.720 --> 00:26:21.040 We won't be able to limit wars by negotiation because, sorry I can't take any calls right 173 00:26:21.040 --> 00:26:33.080 now, so I guess the person is pretty persistent, keeps calling back, so we can't take, we have 174 00:26:33.080 --> 00:26:39.740 to limit, so he says well, we'll have a notion these aggressors are criminal, we can't have 175 00:26:39.740 --> 00:26:44.280 any neutrals and anyone who tries to be neutral is just someone who favors aggression, he 176 00:26:44.280 --> 00:26:46.280 The Theory of Money and Credit 177 00:27:14.280 --> 00:27:37.280 I've left very little time for it because I think this is a view I'm sure you're all familiar with, the view of war as undesirable, which we find especially in the classical liberal tradition. 178 00:27:37.280 --> 00:27:53.780 We find, for example, in Herbert Spencer, in the German sociologist, Franz Oppenheimer, said that they distinguished very sharply between two different methods of people who can attain their ends. 179 00:27:53.780 --> 00:28:05.780 One is peaceful production exchange, where people can attain their ends by cooperation, 180 00:28:05.780 --> 00:28:13.780 by having a system of social cooperation. We can each get much more than we could attain by individual actions. 181 00:28:13.780 --> 00:28:19.280 If each person were producing by himself, very few people would be able to be living. 182 00:28:19.280 --> 00:28:25.240 by being in an organized society where peacefully exchanging goods and services with each other, 183 00:28:25.240 --> 00:28:32.840 we can attain much more, almost infinitely more, than we could by individual action. 184 00:28:32.840 --> 00:28:37.760 In this type of action takes place only if it's to everyone's mutual benefit, because 185 00:28:37.760 --> 00:28:42.720 of course you wouldn't engage in an exchange if it's not to your benefit. 186 00:28:42.720 --> 00:28:48.280 So whenever you have an exchange, it's the mutual benefit of everyone engaged in it. 187 00:28:48.280 --> 00:28:53.720 Mises contrasted with the political means where one person is taking or a group of people 188 00:28:53.720 --> 00:28:58.360 is taking something from another, and of course this is what we find in warfare. 189 00:28:58.360 --> 00:29:05.420 So the notion here was that war is something that's very undesirable because it's interfering 190 00:29:05.420 --> 00:29:10.080 with the whole process of social cooperation. 191 00:29:10.080 --> 00:29:18.000 We can see, I think perhaps the best account of this whole system is in Mises' Human Action. 192 00:29:18.000 --> 00:29:24.760 We have the whole notion of what Mises called the law of association, the notion that we 193 00:29:24.760 --> 00:29:31.760 can have peaceful relations among people enabling each one to attain his ends is something that's 194 00:29:31.760 --> 00:29:36.200 really perhaps the basic theme of Mises' book, Human Action. 195 00:29:36.200 --> 00:29:42.620 I think we can see in this, especially by combining this notion, war is undesirable 196 00:29:42.620 --> 00:30:08.620 with certain aspects of the just war tradition we can get I think a really good account of the proper views on war so that we see that from this war is something that's to be engaged in almost never perhaps only in case of direct invasion because it interferes with the whole process of social cooperation. 197 00:30:08.620 --> 00:30:10.620 Well, I think I'm about out of time now. Thanks.