Nevertheless, Augustine also urges that soldiers should go to war mournfully and never take delight in the shedding of blood.
He becomes quite pessimistic though in his view of human nature and of the ability and desire of humans to maintain themselves orderly, much less rightly. Augustine holds that, given the inextricable mixing of citizens of the two cities, the total avoidance of war or its effects is a practical impossibility for all men, including the righteous. Happily, he holds that the day will come when, coincident with the end of the earthly city, wars will no longer be fought.
For, says Augustine, citing words from the Psalms to the effect that God will one day bring a cessation of all wars,. This not yet see we fulfilled: yet are there wars, wars among nations for sovereignty; among sects, among Jews, Pagans, Christians, heretics, are wars, frequent wars, some for the truth, some for falsehood contending.
For the present, however, man—particularly Christian man—is left with the question of how to live in a world full of war. As the Roman Empire collapses around him, Augustine confronted the question of what justifies warfare for a Christian.
On the one hand, the wicked are not particularly concerned about just wars. On the other hand, the righteous vainly hope to avoid being affected by wars in this life, and at best they can hope for just wars rather than unjust ones.
This is by no means a perfect solution; but then again, this is not a perfect world. If it were, all talk of just wars would be altogether nonsensical. Perfect solutions characterize only the heavenly City of God. Its pilgrim citizens sojourning on earth can do no better than try to cope with the present difficulties and imperfections of the earthly life. Thus, for Augustine, the just war is a coping mechanism for use by the righteous who aspire to citizenship in the City of God.
In terms of the traditional notion of jus ad bellum justice of war, that is, the circumstances in which wars can be justly fought , war is a coping mechanism for righteous sovereigns who would ensure that their violent international encounters are minimal, a reflection of the Divine Will to the greatest extent possible, and always justified. In terms of the traditional notion of jus in bello justice in war, or the moral considerations which ought to constrain the use of violence in war , war is a coping mechanism for righteous combatants who, by divine edict, have no choice but to subject themselves to their political masters and seek to ensure that they execute their war-fighting duty as justly as possible.
Sometimes that duty might arise in the most trying of circumstances, or under the most wicked of regimes; for. In sum, why would a man like Augustine, whose eye is fixed upon attainment of citizenship in the heavenly city, find it necessary to delineate what counts as a just war in this lost and fallen world? In general terms, the demands of moral life are so thoroughly interwoven with social life that the individual cannot be separated from citizenship in one or the other city.
In more specific terms, the just man who walks by faith needs to understand how to cope with the injustices and contradictions of war as much as he needs to understand how to cope with all other aspects of the present world where he is a stranger and pilgrim. Augustine takes important cues from both Cicero and Ambrose and synthesizes their traditions into a Christianized world view that still retains strong ties to the pre-Christian philosophic past.
He resolves the dilemma of just war and pacifist considerations by denying the dilemma: war is simply a part of the human experience that God Himself has ordained or permitted. War arises from, and stands as a clear manifestation of, the nature of fallen man.
His approach explains how a morally upright citizen of a relatively just state could be justified in pursuing warfare, in prosecuting war, and ultimately, although unhappily, in taking human life.
Augustine as a Christian philosopher achieves a full synthesis of the Roman and Christian values associated with war in a way that legitimizes war as an instrument of national policy which, although inferior to the perfect ideals of Christianity, is one which Christians cannot altogether avoid and with which they must in some sense make their peace.
Traditionally, the philosophical treatment of the just war is divided into two categories: jus in bellum and jus in bello. The former describes the necessary and, by some accounts, sufficient conditions for justifying engagement in war.
The latter describes the necessary conditions for conducting war in a just manner. Concerning jus in bello , Augustine holds that wars, once begun, must be fought in a manner which:. Augustine distinguishes the two cities in several important ways, as well as the kind of peace they seek:.
There is, in fact, one city of men who choose to live by the standard of the flesh, another of those who choose to live by the standard of the spirit.
The citizens of each of these desire their own kind of peace, and when they achieve their aim, that is the kind of peace in which they live. Because the common choice of fallen man is a peace of his own liking—one that selfishly serves his own immediate or foreseeable ends, peace becomes, in practice, merely an interlude between ongoing states of war.
Augustine is quick to point out that this life carries with it no guarantee of peace; that blessed state is reserved for the saved in heaven. Augustine delineates three kinds of peace: the ultimate and perfect peace which exists exclusively in the City of God, the interior peace enjoyed by the pilgrim citizens of the City of God as they sojourn on earth, and the peace which is common to the two cities.
Sadly, Augustine is abundantly clear that temporal peace is rather an anomalous condition in the totality of human history and that perfect peace is altogether unattainable on earth:. Such is the instability of human affairs that no people has ever been allowed such a degree of tranquility as to remove all dread of hostile attacks on their dwelling in this world. That place, then, which is promised as a dwelling of such peace and security is eternal, and is reserved for eternal beings.
However, Augustine insists that, by any estimation, it is in the best interest of everyone — saint or sinner—to try to keep the peace here and now; and indeed, establishing and maintaining an earthly peace is as fundamental to the responsibilities of the state as protecting the state in times of war. Interestingly, Augustine gives no suggestion whatsoever that the rest of the earth will be at peace while this violence against the church continues. On the contrary, the entire tenor of his argument suggests that anti-Christian violence is merely typical of the violence and disorder that will accompany the human experience until the second coming of Christ.
While men do not agree on which kind of peace to seek, all agree that peace in some form is the end they desire to achieve. Social and economic differences, i. In the Platonic vision of the Republic , all social classes get to perform what they are best fit to do and are unified into a single community by mutual interests. In this sense, although each are different, they are all friends. In the Laws a similar statement is made again c , and it is interpreted as the right of the strong, the winner in a political battle a.
The answer to the question of what is right and what is wrong can entirely determine our way of life, as individuals and communities. They, the wise and virtuous, free from faction and guided by the idea of the common good, should rule for the common benefit of the whole community, so that the city will not be internally divided by strife, but one in friendship Republic , a-b. Then, in the Laws , the reign of the best individuals is replaced by the reign of the finest laws instituted by a judicious legislator c-d.
The skeptic may believe that every adult is capable of exercising the power of self-direction, and should be given the opportunity to do so. He will be prepared to pay the costs of eventual mistakes and to endure an occasional civil unrest or even a limited war rather than be directed by anyone who may claim superior wisdom. In the short dialogue Alcibiades I , little studied today and thought by some scholars as not genuine, though held in great esteem by the Platonists of antiquity, Socrates speaks with Alcibiades.
The subject of their conversation is politics. Frequently referred to by Thucydides in the History of the Peloponnesian War , Alcibiades, the future leader of Athens, highly intelligent and ambitious, largely responsible for the Athenian invasion of Sicily, is at the time of conversation barely twenty years old.
The young, handsome, and well-born Alcibiades of the dialogue is about to begin his political career and to address the Assembly for the first time a-b. He plans to advise the Athenians on the subject of peace and war, or some other important affair d. His ambitions are indeed extraordinary. He does not want just to display his worth before the people of Athens and become their leader, but to rule over Europe and Asia as well c.
His dreams resemble that of the future Alexander the Great. His claim to rule is that he is the best. His world-view is based on unexamined opinions.
He appears to be the worst type of ignorant person who pretends that he knows something but does not. Such ignorance in politics is the cause of mistakes and evils a. What is implied in the dialogue is that noble birth, beautiful looks, and even intelligence and power, without knowledge, do not give the title to rule.
Ignorance, the condition of Alcibiades, is also the condition of the great majority of the people b-c. Nevertheless, Socrates promises to guide Alcibiades, so that he becomes excellent and renowned among the Greeks b-c. He or she is perfect in virtue.
The best government can be founded only on beautiful and well-ordered souls. In a few dialogues, such as Phaedo , the Republic , Phaedrus , Timaeus , and the Laws , Plato introduces his doctrine of the immortality of the soul.
Expert political knowledge for him should include not only knowledge of things out there, but also knowledge of oneself. This is because whoever is ignorant of himself will also be ignorant of others and of political things, and, therefore, will never be an expert politician e. Those who are ignorant will go wrong, moving from one misery to another a. For them history will be a tough teacher, but as long they do not recognize themselves and practice virtue, they will learn nothing.
It is also impossible without an ongoing philosophical reflection on whom we truly are. Therefore, democracy would not be a good form of government for him unless, as it is proposed in the Laws , the element of freedom is mixed with the element of wisdom, which includes ultimate knowledge of the self.
Unmixed and unchecked democracy, marked by the general permissiveness that spurs vices, makes people impious, and lets them forget about their true self, is only be the second worst in the rank of flawed regimes after tyranny headed by a vicious individual. This does not mean that Plato would support a theocratic government based on shallow religiosity and religious hypocrisy. There is no evidence for this. Freedom of speech, forming opinions and expressing them, which may be denied in theocracy, is a true value for Plato, along with wisdom.
It is the basic requirement for philosophy. In shallow religiosity, like in atheism , there is ignorance and no knowledge of the self either.
In Book II of the Republic , Plato criticizes the popular religious beliefs of the Athenians, who under the influence of Homer and Hesiod attribute vices to the gods and heroes dc. He tries to show that God is the perfect being, the purest and brightest, always the same, immortal and true, to whom we should look in order to know ourselves and become pure and virtuous b-e.
God, and not human beings, is the measure of political order Laws , c. The three other virtues describe qualities of different social groups. Wisdom, which can be understood as the knowledge of the whole, including both knowledge of the self and political prudence, is the quality of the leadership ea. Courage is not merely military courage but primarily civic courage: the ability to preserve the right, law-inspired belief, and stand in defense of such values as friendship and freedom on which a good society is founded.
It is the primary quality of the guardians b. Finally, moderation, a sense of the limits that bring peace and happiness to all, is the quality of all social classes.
It expresses the mutual consent of both the governed and the rulers as to who should rule da. The four virtues of the good society describe also the soul of a well-ordered individual. Its rational part, whose quality is wisdom, nurtured by fine words and learning, should together with the emotional or spirited part, cultivated by music and rhythm, rule over the volitional or appetitive part a.
Under the leadership of the intellect, the soul must free itself from greed, lust, and other degrading vices, and direct itself to the divine. The liberation of the soul from vice is for Plato the ultimate task of humans on earth.
Nobody can be wicked and happy a-c. Only a spiritually liberated individual, whose soul is beautiful and well ordered, can experience true happiness.
Only a country ordered according to the principles of virtue can claim to have the best system of government. Liberal democracies are not only founded on considerations of freedom and equality, but also include other elements, such as the rule of law, multiparty systems, periodic elections, and a professional civil service.
He believes that virtue is the lifeblood of any good society. They were losing their virtuous souls, their virtue by which they could prove themselves to be worthy of preservation as a great nation. Racked by the selfish passions of greed and envy, they forfeited their conception of the right order.
Their benevolence, the desire to do good, ceased. Humans without souls are hollow. When Marx evokes spectres at the moment he analyses, for example, the mystical character or the becoming-fetish of the commodity, we should therefore not see in that only effects of rhetoric, turns of phrase that are contingent or merely apt to convince by striking the imagination. If that were the case, moreover, one would still have to explain their effectiveness in this respect. One would have to say why it frightens or strikes the imagination, and what fear, imagination, their subject, the life of their subject, and so forth, are.
Let us situate ourselves for a moment in that place where the values of value between use-value and exchange-value , secret, mystique, enigma, fetish, and the ideological form a chain in Marx's text, singularly in Capital, and let us try at least to indicate it will be only an indicator the spectral movement of this chain.
The movement is staged there where it is a question, precisely, of forming the concept of what the stage, any stage, withdraws from our blind eves at the moment we open them. Now, this concept is indeed constructed with reference to a certain haunting. It is the moment in which Marx means to demonstrate that the mystical character owes nothing to a use-value. Is it just chance that he illustrates the principle of his explanation by causing a table to turn? Or rather by recalling the apparition of a turning table?
This table is familiar, too familiar; it is found at the opening of the chapter on the fetishism of the commodity and its secret Geheimnis. This table has been worn down, exploited, over-exploited, or else set aside, no longer in use, in antique shops or auction rooms.
The thing is at once set aside and beside itself. Will that which is going to loom up be a mere example? Yes, but the example of a thing, the table, that seems to loom up of itself and to stand all at once on its paws.
It is the example of an apparition. Let us take the chance, then, after so many glosses, of an ingenuous reading. Let us try to see what happens. But is this not right away impossible? Marx warns us with the first words. The point is right away to go bey rid, in one fell swoop, the first glance and thus to see there where this glance is blind, to open one's eyes wide there where one does not see what one sees.
One must see, at first sight, what does not let itself be seen. And this is invisibility itself. For what first sight misses is the invisible. The flaw,, the error of first sight is to see, and not to notice the invisible. If one does not give oneself up to this invisibility, then the table-commodity, immediately perceived, remains what it is not, a simple thing deemed to be trivial and too obvious. So as to prepare us to see this invisibility, to see without seeing, thus to think the body without body of this invisible visibility — the ghost is already taking shape — Marx declares that the thing in question, namely, the commodity, is not so simple a warning that will elicit snickers from all the imbeciles, until the end of time, who never believe anything, of course, because they are so sure that they see what is seen, everything that is seen, only what is seen.
The commodity is even very complicated; it is blurred, tangled, paralysing, aporetic, perhaps undecidable ein sehr vertracktes Ding. This phenomenological good sense may perhaps be valid for use-value.
It is perhaps even meant to be valid only for use-value, as if the correlation of these concepts answered to this function: phenomenology as the discourse of use-value so as not to think the market or in view of making oneself blind to exchange-value. If one keeps to use-value, the properties Eigenschaften of the thing and it is going to be a question of property are always very human, at bottom, reassuring for this very reason.
They always relate to what is proper to man, to the properties of man: either they respond to men's needs, and that is precisely their use-value, or else they are the product of a human activity that seems to intend them for those needs. It is quite different when it becomes a commodity, when the curtain goes up on the market and the table plays actor and character at the same time, when the commodity-table, says Marx, comes on stage auftritt , begins to walk around and to put itself forward as a market value.
Coup de theatre: the ordinary, sensuous thing is transfigured verwandelt sich , it becomes someone, it assumes a figure. The ghostly schema now appears indispensable.
What surpasses the senses still passes before us in the silhouette of the sensuous body that it nevertheless lacks or that remains inaccessible to us. Marx does not say sensuous and non-sensuous, or sensuous but non-sensuous. It renders the non-sensuous sensuous. One touches there on what one does not touch, one feels there where one does not feel, one even suffers there where suffering does not take place, when at least it does not take place where one suffers which is also, let us not forget, what is said about phantom limbs, that phenomenon marked with an X for any phenomenology of perception.
The commodity thus haunts the thing, its spectre is at work in use-value. This haunting displaces itself like an anonymous silhouette or the figure of an extra [ figurante ] who might be the principal or capital character. Marx must have recourse to theatrical language and must describe the apparition of the commodity as a stage entrance auftritt. Theo-anthropological figure of indeterminate sex Tisch, table, is a masculine noun , the table has feet, the tab e has a head, its body comes alive, it erects its whole self like an institution, it stands up and addresses itself to others, first of all to other commodities, its fellow beings in phantomality, it faces them or opposes them, For the spectre is social, it is even engaged in competition or in a war as soon as it makes its first apparition.
Otherwise neither socius, nor conflict, nor desire, nor love, nor peace would be tenable. One would have to put this table on the auction block, subject it to co-occurrence or concurrency, make it speak with so many other tables in our patrimony, so many that we have lost count of them, In philosophy, rhetoric, poetics, from Plato to Heidegger, from Kant to Ponge, and so many others.
Marx, then, has just announced its entrance on stage and its transmutation into a sensuously supersensible thing, and now here it is standing up, not only holding itself up but rising, getting up and lifting itself, lifting its head, redressing itself and addressing itself. Facing the others, and first of all other commodities, yes, it lifts its head. Let us paraphrase a few lines as literally as possible before citing the translation.
Facing up to the others, before the others, its fellows, here then is the apparition of a strange creature: at the same time Life, Thing, Beast, Object, Commodity, Automaton — in a word, spectre. This Thing, which is no longer altogether a thing, here it goes and unfolds entwickelt , it unfolds itself , it develops what it engenders through a quasi-spontaneous generation parthenogenesis and indeterminate sexuality: the animal Thing, the animated-inanimated Thing, the dead-living Thing is a Father-Mother , it gives birth through its head, it extracts from its wooden head a whole lineage of fantastic or prodigious creatures, whims, chimera Grille , non-ligneous character parts, that is, the lineage of a progeniture that no longer resembles it, inventions far more bizarre or marvellous viel wunderlicher than if this mad, capricious, and untenable table, its head beginning to spin, started to dance on its own initiative desonpropre chef, aus freien Stucken.
And since this becoming-immaterial of matter seems to take no time and to operate its transmutation in the magic of an instant, in a single glance, through the omnipotence of a thought, we might also be tempted to describe it as the projection of an animism or a spiritism. The wood comes alive and is peopled with spirits: credulity, occultism, obscurantism, lack of maturity before Enlightenment, childish or primitive humanity.
But what would Enlightenment be without the market? And who will ever make progress without exchange-value? Capital contradiction. At the very origin of capital. Moving about freely aus freien Stucken , on its own head [de son propre chef], with a movement of its head but that controls its whole body, from head to toe, ligneous and dematerialised, the Table-Thing appears to be at the principle, at the beginning, and at he controls of itself.
It emancipates itself on its own initiative: all alone, autonomous and automaton, its fantastic silhouette moves on its own, free and without attachment.
The capital contradiction does not have to do simply with the incredible conj unction of the sensuous and the supersensible in the same Thing; it is the contradiction of automatic autonomy, mechanical freedom, technical life. Like every thing, from the moment it comes onto the stage of a market, the table resembles a prosthesis of itself.
Autonomy and automatism, but automatism of this wooden table that spontaneously puts itself into motion, to be sure, and seems thus to animate, animalise, spiritualise, spiritise itself, but while remaining an artifactual body, a sort of automaton, a puppet, a stiff and mechanical doll whose dance obeys the technical rigidity of a program.
Two genres, two generations of movement intersect with each other in it, and that i s why it figures the apparition of a spectre. It accumulates undecidably, in its uncanniness, their contradictory predicates: the inert thing appears suddenly inspired, it is all at once transfixed by a pneuma or a psyche. Become like a living being, the table resembles a prophetic dog that gets up on its four paws, ready to face up to its fellow dogs: an idol would like to make the law.
But, inversely, the spirit, soul, or life that animates it remains caught in the opaque and heavy thingness of the bule , in the inert thickness of its ligneous body, and autonomy is no more than the mask of automatism.
A mask, indeed a visor that may always be hiding no living gaze beneath the helmet. The automaton mimes the living. The Thing is neither dead nor alive, it is dead and alive at the same time. It survives.
At once cunning, inventive, and machine-like, ingenious and unpredictable, this war machine is a theatrical machine, a mekhane. What one has just seen cross the stage is an apparition, a quasi-divinity — fallen from the sky or come out of the earth. But the vision also survives. Its hyperlucidity insists.
For if no use-value can in itself produce this mysticality or this spectral effect of the commodity, and if the secret is at the same time profound and superficial, opaque and transparent, a secret that is all the more secret in that no substantial essence hides behind it, it is because the effect is born of a relation ferance, difference, reference, and diff a rence , as double relation, one should say as double social bond.
This double socius binds on the one hand men to each other. It associates them insofar as they have been for all times interested in time, Marx notes right away, the time or the duration of labour, and this in all cultures and at all stages of techno-economic development. On the other band, but how? And how is what takes place on the one band among men, in their apprehension of time, explained by what takes place on the other hand among those spectres that are commodities? This formula literally recalls and this literality cannot be taken as fortuitous or external the definition of time — of time as well as of space — in Hegel's Encyclopedia Philosophy of Nature, Mechanics.
Hegel subjects the Kantian definition to a dialectical interpretation, that is, to the Aufhebung. He analyses time as that which is first of all abstract or ideal ein Ideelles since it is the negative unity of being-outside-self like space of which it is the truth.
This ideality of time is obviously the condition of any idealisation and consequently of any ideologisation and any fetishisation, whatever difference one must respect between these two processes.
The commodity table, the headstrong dog, the wooden head faces up, we recall, to all other commodities. The market is a front, a front among fronts, a confrontation. Commodities have business with other commodities, these hard-headed spectres have commerce among themselves. That is what makes them dance. So it appears. Here the theatrical quid pro quo stems from an abnormal play of mirrors.
There is a mirror, arid the commodity form is also this mirror, but since all of a sudden it no longer plays its role, since it does not reflect back the expected image, those who are looking for themselves can no longer find themselves in it.
History demonstrates the ease with which ordinary people commit atrocious acts, particularly during crises. When you believe you are morally superior, when you dehumanise those you disagree with, you can justify almost anything. Take the example of one of the most consequential purity spirals, the Puritan Revolution in 17th-century England. The Puritans were certain that the godly majority supported them in toppling the tyranny of King Charles I.
In their eyes, the monarch and his bishops were challenging the true word of God. Families were divided and fought during a bloody civil war across England, Scotland and Ireland. The ultimate act of iconoclasm or cancellation is to kill another human being. The poet John Milton, in his Eikonoklastes Icon Breaker of October , justified the execution of Charles I by arguing that shattering the sacred icon of monarchy had been essential to prevent the English people from being turned into slaves.
Living within a purity spiral defined Puritan society. Dress became simple. Luxury was forbidden. Christmas was cancelled. And discipline became a social watchword. Marriage and patriarchy within the household were sacred. Those who did not accept the new culture were condemned. A new tyranny replaced the old. Looking back from the 18th-century, many feared new waves of Puritans seeking to enforce their moral codes upon an unwilling society, bringing public violence and political upheaval.
Some philosophers, such as the Scot David Hume , argued that the Puritan purity spiral had been worth it.
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