Justice Among Nations Notes

Justice Among Nations

Thucydides' Realism

Thucydides presents a view of political life marked by harshness but tempered with humanity.
He combines clear vision and sober judgment with genuine compassion, exemplifying a somber yet humane realism.

Classical Idealism: Plato and Aristotle

The writings of Socratic political philosophers, including Plato (427? - 347 B.C.), Xenophon (434? - 355? B.C.), Aristotle (384 - 322 B.C.), and Cicero (106 - 43 B.C.), elaborate on the importance of the life of the mind.
These philosophers argue that the nature of politics and political ethics becomes clear only when analyzed from a suprapolitical perspective devoted to understanding.
The Socratics demonstrate the necessity of ascending from tradition to a life according to nature through conversational argument based on traditional views, while maintaining civic responsibility.
Socratic philosophy acknowledges the potential for demoralizing or subversive consequences from misunderstanding or abusing arguments about the incomplete nobility of prephilosophic political life.
The disciples of Socrates aim to provide substantial guidance to political life and bring out its highest aspirations through constructive moral and civic teachings derived from their critical theory of politics and knowledge of human nature.
The classical political philosophers stimulate reflection on the limitations discernible in all political life, even when speaking didactically.
They attempt to teach political moderation by inducing a rational tempering of hopes and demands regarding political reality, to avoid cynicism, despair, or misology.
Classical philosophers recognized that citizens would demand moral justification for foreign policy and war. However, they also believed citizens would prioritize fellow citizens over outsiders, granting limited rights to foreign nationals and nations.
Aristotle stated that political justice exists among those sharing a life together with a view to self-sufficiency, who are free and equal, either proportionately or arithmetically (Aristotle N. Ethics 1134a24-30).

Justice and Relations Between Nations

The character of justice between nations or aliens remains ambiguous.
It is unclear how this justice resembles political or simple justice and why only a resemblance is possible among non-citizens.
The reasons for ratifying the prephilosophic civic posture toward justice in international politics need examination.
Philosophic version of the ordinary outlook may have a dimension or depth qualitatively different from the version held by the pre-philosophic citizen.

The Human Being as a Political Animal

Aristotle argues that humans are political animals by nature, with a natural inclination to live in a society where they participate in the collective, rational determination of their lives.
Human life remains immature unless it can develop and exercise capacities for self-control, care, dedication, recognition, and rational thought in active republican life.
The satisfaction of sharing in such a community is a major constituent of the supreme political common good and serves as the standard of natural justice.
This standard is made concrete through the concept of a best regime, a community of friends focused on liberating education.
The best regime, a thought experiment, clarifies the ultimate goals toward which politics ought to aspire, informing the assessment of circumstances and limits.
The focus of education in the best regime is on civic and moral virtues rather than technical skills.
Virtues are deployed in response to bodily needs, and activities of self-control, generosity, and practical wisdom are valued for their own sakes.
A liberal public education aims for genuine leisure, reflecting a cultural and religious life reminiscent of the spiritual awakening enjoyed by philosophers.

Limitations and Sacrifices

Ancient thinkers acknowledged the effort and sacrifice required to pursue high domestic goals within the limitations of circumstances.
Citizens must know and cherish one another, fostering familiarity and attachment within the confines of a small city, or polis.
The polis must promote honesty and discourage luxury and vanity to foster similar lives and shared spiritual concerns among citizens.
True civic community prevents large, unequal accumulations of wealth and obsession with monetary goods.
Rootedness in tradition, sanctioned by providential divinity, awakens seriousness and high standards.
A spiritually healthy society provides citizens with moral education, fostering a common sense of noble distinctiveness, shared experiences, and reverence for heroes and gods.
This cultivation entails distance or alienation from the outside world, resisting foreign trade, mixing, travel, and innovation.
A healthy city emphasizes the excellence of its ways as a model to others and cautiously adopts outside influences, only from those excelling in honored virtues.
While selected individuals may travel to investigate foreign regimes for improvements, the generality of citizens should be restricted from going abroad privately.
Persons may be sent to participate in sacrifices and contests, promoting the city's reputation and teaching the young that foreign customs are secondary.
The need for a strong military reputation is crucial, as the healthy political society is necessarily endangered and must devote attention to military defense.
Citizens must develop spiritedness to discourage enemy aggression and subversion.
Citizenship centers on militia service and the cultivation of militia virtues.
Training in war involves necessary but ignoble acts, creating a paradox for the communitarian republic that values friendship, honesty, and justice.
The desire to dampen the use of military expertise against one another intensifies the distinction between obligations to citizens and strangers.
A foreign policy of disengagement or isolation is preferred, but its feasibility depends on geographical luck.

The Crux of Civic Justice

Plato's Socrates suggests that a just city may need to undermine the security and independence of its neighbors to maintain its own security.
The way of life in a good city requires leisure, which depends on a strong economic base and fertile land.
Acquiring necessary land may involve conquering it, leading to conflicts with previous possessors.
The harsh economic circumstances of human existence cast doubt on the possibility of a stable common good among neighboring cities.
Plato points out the origin of the just city involves an unprovoked aggressive war for conquest.
Socrates promulgates a noble lie to convince citizens of their divinely sanctioned claim to the land.
The best regime rests on the necessity of obscuring the shaky legitimacy of its place in the sun in relation to other cities.
A profound tension exists between the claim to respect others' rights and the pursuit of security.
The city prioritizes security but believes it deserves to be secure because its quest for security is limited by justice.
Athens claims to wage war only against what it regards as unjust actions.
Citizens seek a good that is more perfect than mundane security through self-denial and respect for divinely sanctioned justice and honor.

Civic Virtue

Civic virtue, in and of itself, fails to provide a coherent answer to this search.
Devotion to moral grandeur puts a question mark after international justice.
Civic virtue can induce expansion, benevolent hegemony, and conquest.
A longing for authority is implicit in the love of politics, challenging the interpretation of political life as merely a struggle for power.
Human nature seeks expanding opportunities for heroism, caring for others, and displaying genius in war or international competition, solidifying civic solidarity and arousing noble ambition.
Noble contention among republics for international hegemony and empire naturally occur.
Each champion claims to deserve preeminence or aims to prove such desert, accusing adversaries of unjust refusal.
Foreign policy becomes a field for testing moral and intellectual excellence, with paternalistic empire delegating power to subjects while retaining sovereign decisions.

Paradoxical Questions in Civic Life

The question arises as to whether the virtuous fulfillment and dignity attainable in civic life can truly be a common good.
Can full participation be a common good for both the few with civic virtues and the majority with average political capacities?
Can civic participation be unproblematically common even among the few best?
Is it possible to practice strict distributive justice without disenfranchising the majority and threatening the destruction of the city?
The question arises whether stepping down from noble deeds to turn the life of virtue over to others is a paradoxical noble self-sacrifice.
Can the cessation of action be understood as the culmination of a life of action, or is it for something else, such as the flourishing of others?
Are virtuous persons or societies to be means to the imperfect happiness of others, or are they also ends entitled to some compensation or consolation?

The Role of Divine Providence

Civic virtue culminates in a hope for a salvation beyond human action, discerning the essential role of divine providence.
The self-limitation of political ambition is intelligible only if it is good for the virtuous, liberating them for a superior pursuit.
Aristotle confronts the question of the best way of life, suggesting the active or political life and the theoretical or philosophic life are the two main contenders.
Those favoring the philosophic life believe that ruling over neighbors involves injustice or hinders one's well-being, while those favoring the political life see it as the only way for a real man.
Aristotle questions the aim of imperial expansion in statesmanship, suggesting a single city can be happy by itself with morally serious laws not directed toward war or mastery over enemies.
Happiness is activity, but the actions of the just and moderate encompass the completion of many noble things.
The argument that the best is to be sovereign over everything must include the premise that the most choiceworthy beings may pertain to those who plunder and use violence.
Aristotle concludes that the active life need not be in relation to others and that virtuous ambition can find coherent limit when civic virtues parallel the leisured and self-sufficient theoretical life.
Incorporating theological understanding prevents misinterpretation of civic virtues as serving material prosperity or imperial dominion.
The responsible promotion and protection of the theoretical life is a good common to philosophers and the city, despite tensions.
The healthy city will seek to transcend itself, with civil religion fostering appreciation for leisure that opens citizens to meditation on the whole.
Classical political philosophy understands its highest civic duty to be elaborating a civil theology rooted in nature and intended to influence ancestral myths and traditions.

Transcendence of Nationalism and Patriotism

A society imbued with Platonic and Aristotelian piety would look to a universal deity, conceiving of its citizens as sharing in a single cosmic community.
The polis would interpret its particularism as an avenue toward higher cosmopolitanism, recognizing a common human nature and good that cannot be reduced to selfish calculation.
The natural sense of species-community is evident in spontaneous pleasure, compassion, and a shared conscience.
The common good of the species ranges from survival to fostering human greatness, with the properly enlightened city having an awareness that humanity culminates in philosophy.
Genuine philosophers thrive in liberation from ambition and appetite, drawn to one another by admiration and spiritual kinship.
Philosophers' hearts leap across boundaries, with Socrates considering himself a citizen of the entire world.
The Socratic city's posture toward foreigners would be illuminated by the understanding that rational and political capacities are natural to men as men.
Divine human beings do not necessarily grow more frequently in cities with good laws, as the highest in man transcends the city.
Enlightened citizens' demeanor toward foreigners would echo their attitude toward one another, becoming more refined as they become more theologically self-conscious.

Implications for Foreign Policy

The Socratic city would aspire to benevolent autarky, approximating the life of Aristotle's god, engaging in trade, teaching, and learning from foreign cities.
It would open its doors to deserving refugees and feel obligated to actively assist neighbors where it could achieve substantial good without endangering domestic community.
Empire, even benevolently despotic, is not excluded as a possible necessity.
Aristotle lays down goals that reasonably justify military preparation in the best regime.
All of this implies that the city remains primarily concerned with its own welfare and only secondarily with that of other cities and virtuous foreigners.
To be a citizen is to be a citizen of this or that particular city, and only metaphorically a citizen of the world.
The city, even the best city, remains more a closed than an open society, needing constant vigilance and exclusivity.
The best regime recognizes duty to evaluate all human beings equally, but a sensible statesman must focus his city's policy on other governments.
Welfare of deserving individuals under hostile governments must be subordinated due to costs and risks to national security.
The city must then restrain or prohibit by law its own citizens from entering into individualistic foreign relations.
Every city must grant enormous preferences to claims based on heredity and ethnicity in defining its qualifications for citizenship or inclusion.
Even the best regime would have to continue to make ethnic loyalty a major consideration in its foreign policy given the nature of kinship implying a much more intense concern for and obligation to one's close kin, generally defined by blood.

Influence of Greek Thinkers

The more one ponders the severe restrictions on international community indicated by the Greek thinkers, the more one wonders to what extent they hope through their influence to bring about a relaxation of those restrictions, and to what extent their brief but pregnant reflections on foreign and war policy are meant to indicate some of the sharpest limits on and questions about the justice of which cities are capable.
They intended chiefly as a liberation for select wise, or potentially wise, individuals, hoping those few would have some appreciable influence upon their respective cities, mitigating patriotic xenophobia, imperialism, cruelty, and punitive moral fanaticism.
In the original Socratic perspective, a truly cosmopolitan spirit is likely to flourish only among a few noble souls dispersed through the various cities and nations. The friendship or generous goodwill of these authentic cosmopolites toward one another will go together with a serene if circumspect benevolence toward mankind.

Classical Cosmopolitanism: The Stoics and Cicero

Cicero has left us in his philosophic writings the fullest doctrinal elaboration of Socratic political theory in its implications for international affairs.
Through his modification of Stoicism, Cicero erected the basic conceptual framework of the law of nations, providing a foundation for subsequent international law and normative international relations theory.
Cicero confronted a challenge that statesmen and theorists were to face time and again down through the ages: the possibility of genuine Socratic philosophy has to be kept alive, and the norms discovered and promulgated by Plato and Aristotle have to be applied, in conditions that are unmistakably decadent-in circumstances for which the Greek philosophers' writings provide insufficient direct guidance.