Philosophy.Com

Arendt: politics as critique of modernity

This is interesting terms of the interpretation of Foucault's governmentality as a rupture with traditional (juridical ) conceptions of the political. Dana Villa's new book, Arendt and Heidegger: The Fate of the Political, provides an account of the political thought of Heidegger and Arendt from the perspective of a politics marked by the philosophical critique of modernity.

According to Charles Bambach, Villa focuses on the way that Arendt's whole style of reading and appropriating the Western philosophical tradition:

"... is determined by her adherence to two basic modes of interpretation from Being and Time (1927): retrieval (Wiederholung) and de-construction (Abbau). Simply put, like Heidegger, Arendt's fundamental strategy is to read the tradition not in a spirit of reverence or with the aim of repetition; instead, she attempts to dismantle philosophical concepts, to loosen them from their sedimented and hypostatized strata in order to free them up for a radical kind of retrieval that rethinks their essence from an ontological perspective. Or rather, she wishes to dispense with the whole notion of any subject-centered "perspective" and recover not concepts, but a certain way of being-in-the-world."

Arendt argues against Aristotle. Her theory of political action attempts a radical reconceptualization of action, one that proceeds, in part, through a critique and transformation of Aristotelian praxis. Bambich says that whereas Aristotle understands political activity on the model of poiesis as a kind of "crafting" of political life:

"...Arendt breaks with him in order to recover the freedom of political action which she finds in the pre-Socratic tradition. For her, both Plato and Aristotle come to see lawmaking and city-building [politcs] as.... as a means and not an end. As Arendt understands it, while Aristotle asserts on the one hand that praxis is valuable in and of itself, on the other, like Plato he makes it subservient to a goal: the "highest good." And yet by virtue of her deconstructive reading of Aristotle.....Arendt comes to define political action as the last realm of activity in which the human being can experience freedom."

For Arendt in modernity which she equates with the European project of technical-instrumentalist activity since the seventeenth century), there are three types of the vita activa: "labor" (which she describes as a cyclical and repetitious "animal" activity tied to the sheer biological necessity of survival), "work" (which she defines as a "human" activity that involves one in the making, producing, and instrumental fabrication of poiesis), and "action" (which she equates with Aristotle's notion of an activity that has no end outside of itself and is a genuine form of praxis).

She argues that the modern individual gets borne by the ceaseless project of Cartesian mastery and the possession of nature. As a result, s/he is transformed into homo faber, that active being whose finished products become means for the inevitable end of "the limitless instrumentalization of everything that exists." All contemporary life winds up being caught within this instrumentalist mode of being that leads humanity to desire ever more power and control over the world of nature.

This is a very familar critique, one that was developed by the Frankfurt School--Adorno, Horkheimer and Habermas. So what was different about Arendt's political critique of modernity?

Part Two of Villa's book suggests that the difference lies in the ontological dimension of Arendt's critique of modernity. This was influenced by Heidegger's critique of Cartesian subjectivity and its corresponding instrumentalism. Bambich says that Arendt follows Heidegger in deconstructing:

"...the Cartesian will to mastery (reconfigured as Nietzsche's will to power), Heidegger pointed to a new ontological sense of freedom--not of the self-grounding subject, but of human Dasein as a form of "being-in-the-world"... For Arendt, this implied that human freedom was marked by finitude, contingency, and worldliness-properties that reinforced the public character of existence rather than the privatized, interior, and abstract world of the Cartesian subject."

Arendt then puts Heidegger into question by challenging his emphasis on "authenticity" and private life. Villa argues that Arendt "politicizes" Heidegger's existential lexicon by inverting the Heideggerian identification of authenticity with interiority and inauthenticity with the public world of the "they-self." Arendt's argument is Heidegger's brilliant critique of modern subjectivity is limited by the privileging of the authentically interior vita contemplativa against the inauthentically public vita activa.

On Villa's account Arendt appropriates Heidegger by twisting, displacing, and reinterpreting his thought in ways designed to illuminate a range of exceedingly un-Heideggerian issues; the nature of political action, the positive ontological role of the public realm, the nature of political judgement, and the conditions for an antiauthoritarian, antifoundational, democratic politics.

governing citizens

This is a very useful summer course at York University, Canadia, on Foucault, governance and citizenship that is run under the auspices of the Canadian Reseach Chair in Citizenship Studies. It ties in with the posts on governmentality.

The course blurb says that in dealing with the issue of governing citizens breaks with traditional approaches. Rather than:

".... considering citizenship as an enclosed political identity (liberal, communitarian, republican, radical), we examined it as an assemblage of strategies and technologies that aim to produce governable subjects. It is through these assemblages that citizenship becomes a 'problem' insofar as its project of producing governable subjects encounter resistances, difficulties, detours and reversals to which it responds with various different rationalities. We examined this subject by drawing upon the literature on 'governmentality' as we also investigated the limits and flaws of this literature."

The first reading is an account of Foucault's unpublished governmentality lectures by Colin Gordon.

Governmentality#3

How does Foucault's governmentality approach make a critical contribution to our understanding of neo-liberalism by moving beyond the standard dualisms of political philosophy, such as knowledge and power, state and economy and subject and power (as domination)?

Lemke says that the dualism of knowledge and power is undermined by the concept of political rationality. This concentrates on the rationalities underlying the historical practices of neo-liberalism that produces new forms of knowledge, new concepts that contribute to new government domains of regulation and intervention.

Lemke mentions sustainable development as an example. This reinvents nature external to the economy as an ecosystem and brings the stand alone economy within the environment. The economy is now seen as dependant on the ecosystem, eg. if there is no water in the dams or the rivers, then there is no economy or cities. Hence we have limits to growth and the efficient management of natural resources.

The second way that the dualism of knowledge and power is undermined by the concept of political rationality is the focus on the strategic character of government. Instead of the old idea of a (pure) plan that is then applied to (an impure) reality we have rationalities as part of reality.

The various resistances to the Living Murray Initiative that plans to return environmental flows to the River Murray by the irrigator groups are not just a block to the implementation of the plan. They are already a part of the plan, as they actively contributed to the fissures, contradictions and incohereneces inside the Living Murray Initiative.

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governmentality#2

I previously mentioned this paper by Thomas Lemke entitled 'Foucault Governmentality and Critique' in my earlier post on Foucault & governmentality.

What does Lemke say? He starts by asking two good questions:

"(1) why does the problem of government assume a central place in Foucault's work? and (2) how could this concept serve to analyse and criticize contemporary neo-liberal practice?"

I am more interested in the 2nd question than the first given this.

On the first question, Lemk says that governmentality is the missing (unpublished) link between the genealogy of political rationality and the genealogy of the subject. What the unpublished lectures explore is the way that the history of the modern state and individual co-determine each others emergence.

Governmentality as a mode of governance has the following characteristics:

1. Foucault's earlier rejection of the juridical model of power (law, contract, consensus in favour of the war (and conquest) give way to a view of consensus and coercion as instruments, mechanisms, means of government;

2. governmentality is what links the individual's self-control is linked to political form and economic regulation and exploitation;

3. it distinguishes between power as strategic games and domination to consider ways the modes of power regulate or shape our conduct to empower subjects.

That is a quick sketch. It is enough to enable us to as the question we are interested in: 'How goes this way of looking at power help us to understand neo-liberalism?'

Lemke usefully constrasts it with other approaches such as:

*one that treats neo-liberalism as wrong knowledge ie., as an ideology;

*one that treats neo-liberalism as the extension of the economy into politics as the truiumph of capitalism over the state. So they set out to civilize a barbaric global capitalism. Mark Latham's ALP adopts this approach, which it calls the Third Way;

*one that concentrates on the negative consequences of neo-liberalism on individuals in the nation-state.

Lemke says the limits of these 3 approaches is that they continue to rely on the very concepts they intend to criticize. They presuppose the dualism of knowledge and power, state and economy and subject and power as domination. The critical contribution lies in it moving beyond these dualisms in political philosophy.

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Athens and Jerusalem

Philosophers have celebrated Greece and Rome as foundational pillars of Western civilization. While honoring Christianity as a major contributor to Western civilization, conservatives have attempted to defend a cultural synthesis of Jerusalem and Athens, which currently goes by the name of "traditional values."

This synthesis informs twentieth-century conservatism. It is what constitutes the civilized nations of the world---the West after 9/11. The conservatives experience 9/11 as negation, as a nothing, and they reassert their civilized heritage in response.

If, from the earliest centuries the West has been built upon its foundation, then these foundations have faultines. The faultlines in foundation are:

Greek philosophy of Athens on the one hand, and, on the other, the spiritual aspiration of Jerusalem.

"Athens" stands for the view that truth is discovered through reason.

"Jerusalem" stands for the view that truth is delivered through the insights of revelation.

"Athens" stands for cognition, philosophy, and science.

"Jerusalem" stands for the spiritual aspiration to holiness, or purity of soul.

If think of the two cities as representing reason and revelation or truths we can arrive at through the operation of human reason and truths revealed to us by God, then western civilization is a product of the inevitable tension and tentative reconciliation between these truths.

The fault lines that separate Jerusalem (faith) and Athens (reason) are becoming more pronounced with the rise of Christian fundamentalism, as this opposes a (bad) Athens to (good) Jerusalem and then asserts the primacy of Jerusalem. This exclusion reaches back to antiquity, to those Christians (such as Tertullian) who desired to exclude Greek philosophy from the Christian perspective.

In contrast, Leo Strauss argued that, notwithstanding their theoretical disagreement as to the end or ends served by the moral virtues, revelation and reason had agreed substantially on what in practice morality was. And I had taken my bearings further from Strauss's assertion that the very life of western civilization depended upon the continuing dialogue between revelation and reason.

A central theme of Strauss’ was the "crisis of the West." He argued that Western civilization had been built on two great pillars: "Athens and Jerusalem." These great cities represented the two forces—reason and revelation—that gave life to the West. But modern philosophy, Strauss observed, was dedicated to the overthrow of these pillars .Strauss's critique of modern philosophy was directed towards overcoming what he often called the self-destruction of reason, so that the authority equally of classical philosophy and the Bible, with respect to virtue and morality, might be restored.

I have put that in a Nietzschean way as one of Strauss's legacies is a strongly negative assessment of Nietzsche. Nietzsche is interpreted by Strauss as the modern philosopher most at odds with that tradition; and the one most responsible for the charcater of twentieth-century culture--relativism, godlessness, nihilism, and the breakdown of family values. Hence the conservative talk about "cultural catastrophe" and the disastrous trend away from studying the great works of these two traditions in the modern university.

In this conservative discourse the decline of Western civilization is due to our loss of connection to the classics of Greece and Rome. The conservatives one look into the nihilistic abyss with Nietzsche and they see the postmodernists merely wandering aimlessly along the bottom in the dark.

Is the relationship between Athens and Jerusalem one of conflict? A continued conversation? A dialectical relationship? A synthesis?

The effect of the secular Enlightenment tradition is to push Christianity into the background as irrelevant, or to deny its relevance. Christianity, in response, has attempted to deny or surpass Enlightenment assumptions, by philosophising God though pushing him out beyond the metaphysics of the Enlightenment; or pulled God inside the reach of metaphysics by formulating him around emotional-religious experience.rather than simply recognising them for what they are.

The secular Enlightenment tradition has dictated the terms of the engagement, and thus consequently largely determine the state of various post-Enlightenment forms of Christianity.

a quote

A quote courtesy of Hector Rottweiller's Web Log, which has now gone into hiatus.

"Under empire, rhetoric cannot look to the future, and can exist in the present only as hypothesis and speculation. Its most significant role is in rewriting the past to suit the whims of power--but in this, it need convince no one, because of the very fact of power. It is nothing but an ornament, a diversion, a way for personal pride to pass the time."

Mike Edwards, Power Words

Foucault & governmentality

Thomas Lemke's book, A Critique of Political Reason: Foucault's Analysis of Modern Governmentality look to be a very interesting text indeed. Governmentality is the link between Foucault's exploration of the political rationalites and genealogies of the state and the techniques of domination on the one hand, and his exploration of ethics, the genealogies of the subject and the technologies of subjectivity on the other. Governmentality links the formation of the state and the formation of the subject.

I have tried looking for Foucault's lecture courses on governmentality on the internet off and on, but I've come up with nothing much. As I understand it Foucault gave two courses of lectures around 1978 and 1979. at the College of France. The 1978 lecture course is a genealogy of governmentality from the classical Greeks and Romans through the Christian idea of pastoral guidance to the idea of state reason and the police in the 18th century. The 1979 lecture course explored the social market (German Ordo)liberal and the neo-liberal (Chicago School) forms of governmentality. It is a pity that these lecture courses are not online, as the 1979 lecture series ---summarized by Lemke here ---looks to be interesting. These lecture series (audio only?) should be online.

In the meantime the Foucauldian Reflections weblog run by Ali Rivzi fills the online gap. The weblog is very good and thoroughly recommended. Ali is also in the process of developing a resource site that provides a wealth of articles by and about Foucault. So things are beginning to shift in terms of online resources.

My understanding of governmentality is gained from reading some of the above lectures several years ago.I'm interested in governmentality as it connects academic theory with public policy and political power in a fruitful way. I've found the governmentality approach to be particularly useful for understanding how neo-liberalism works to govern (shape the conduct of) populations through the deregulated market that take the whole of society as their domain, governing the environment through community, and the practices of social medicine as a system of power and economics. Governmentality gives us is the idea of neo-liberalism as a political project that creates a political economic reality that it says exists.

I have not read Lemke's book. So I am working from his summary of this text. Lemke starts off by saying that the body/power Foucault of Discipline and Punish tended to identify power with discipline. The relations of power are understood in terms of war, struggle and conflict not law, legitimation, will and consensus. Foucault reversed the juridical model of power centred around sovereignty and during the 1980s he took a lot of flak from Anglo-American liberal critics (Habermas, Taylor, Walzer) for this reductionism. They highlighted the gaps, contradictions and aporias in Foucult's work on power and drew attention to the tension between his empirical insights into the modern mechanisms of power and normative problems associated with saying that domination and discipline was bad. Hence an effective critique of the use of power was undermined.

In the second part of his book entitled 'Governmentality' Lemke shows:

"....how Foucault significantly changes his conception of power: the importance of discipline is relativated with respect to macropolitical phenomenons (bio-politics); the war-model, that he prefered and opposed to the juridical model, is questioned and finally critized for being reductive."

So Foucualt takes the criticisms on board and then revises his understanding of how power in a liberal society actually works. What replaces the earlier disciplinary model of power is governmentality. Governmentality is an important category shift.

What then is governmentality?

Lemke says that:

'This is the point where the notion of government appears. Foucault uses this term to solve both problems that are insufficiently treated in the "microphysics of power:" government takes up the question of the government of the self (the problem of the subject) and articulates at the same time the problem of the government of the others (the problem of politics and the state).

Foucault "discovers" a new dimension of power: government does not operate as "right" or as "war"; it works foremost as a "conduct of conducts."'

By conduct of conducts in a liberal society Foucault the practices (conduct) of a population and our subjectivity. An example is how neo-liberalism weans us off our social democratic reliance on state provision of services, and shapes the unemployed through welfare to work programs to become more self-reponsible and entrepreneurial.

Lemke rightly says that this perspective of politics as governmentality is especially useful to analysing the ongoing transformations of the welfare state that are linked to the appearence of new "neoliberal" forms of subjectivity associated with the welfare-to work-policies that target the unemployed, the disabled and single mothers.

In the third part of his hbook, which is entitled 'Politics and Ethics', Lemke says that:

"I try to show that Foucault's interest in subjectivity and ethics in his later work does not signify that he breaks with his analytics of power. On the very contrary: government is the notion that links the ways subjects conduct themselves ("ethics") with forms of power and domination."

Governmentality is concerned to ensure the right conduct of a population in a deregulated market and to shape new forms of (entrepreneurial) subjectivity. In governmentality the ethics and the politics are deeply intertwined.

I appreciate that this is a very condensed summary of some complex material, but I think that it is enough to highlight the importance and the significance of governmentality for a history of the present.

A paper by Lemke for those interested. It provides more background on governmentality and highlights the way that the contact point of the state governing others is also the contact point for our self-regulation.

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Sydney Peace Prize Lecture: 2003#4

In the light of this one sided account I want to return to pick up the thread in this post and continue with Hanan Ashrwai's 2003 Sydney Peace Lecture. The lecture was entitled, 'Peace in the Middle East: A Global Challenge and a Human Imperative'.

In it Hanan makes two remarks that are often overlooked in debates in Australia about the Israeli Palestinian conflict. The first point is the importance of self-determinaton:

"Self determination to the Palestinian people is not an abstraction, but the actual realization and enactment of their identity on their own land, and a motivating force for independence and statehood. It is the final negation of the myth of a “land without a people for a people without a land” that has long framed the rationalization for the most extreme forms of Zionism that sought to deny the very existence and humanity of the Palestinians."

That kind of insight is rarely heard in Australia now that the key discourse is terrorism. Barry Cohen in the above linked article makes no reference to it in his article, which is structured around reason versus prejudice.

The second point that Hanan talks about is what the Palestinans and Israeli's have in common:

"Neither side can lay claim to a monopoly of pain and suffering, in the same way as it cannot claim exclusivity of narrative and legitimacy. Clearly, peace cannot be made incumbent upon converting all Palestinians to Zionism or transforming all Israelis to espouse Palestinian nationalism."

She then goes on to observe:

"It should also become apparent that, ironically, in this context the Palestinians and Israelis have reached the stage of dependent legitimacies rather than a competition over a singular and mutually exclusive legitimacy. Since the essential requirement for peace lies in sharing the land of historical Palestine, it follows that there has to be a shared legitimacy based on parity and mutuality. Neither side can (or should be allowed to) destroy the other physically, morally, or legally."

And she highlights another commonality:

"......there can be no exclusivity of claims—whether to the land or to security or to the discourse and public presentation of the issues. Shared boundaries exist both as territorial and as moral/human concepts of proximity and interaction. Security, therefore, is a factor of mutuality and interdependence...."

So what Hanan is doing is using the idea of peace in a world of violence to open up some middle ground. It is a thinking otherwise or differently that involves a critique of fundamentalism, power politics and coercion.

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US: looming economic crisis?

In the US the Bush/Kerry camps bitterly battle it out in the last weeks of the American presidential elections.

Meanwhile, there has been a quiet unease and concern within Australia over the implications of the twin US trade and budget deficits.

I want to link this economic discourse to a liberalism of fear as underneath this discourse lies fear of the effects of crisis on Australians.

Some in the US split the twin budget and current account deficits. A lot of the unease in the US is directed at the widening current account that causes increases in unemployment for less skilled workers. A key question that is asked is: 'is a chronic and widening current account deficit sustainable, or will the dollar crash, perhaps taking the economy with it?'

Some split the twins. Others see the main solution to the current account deficit to lie in increasing savings in the US. Others talk in terms of a revaluation of Asian currencies.

John Quiggin says that in relation to the US trade deficit:

"It's not clear that global capital markets can call forth enough savings to finance deficits on this scale, at least not without an increase in interest rates. Any significant increase in interest rates would create huge problems for debtor countries like Australia and the US."

Quiggin does not think that a smooth, market-driven adjustment to a sustainable trading position is unlikely. In a followup post he goes on to argue why this is so:

"...if the current account deficit is to be stabilised at a sustainable level, the balance of trade on goods and services must return to surplus in the next decade or so. In this post, I'm going to ruIe out a soft option and argue that, while a smooth market-driven adjustment is not inconceivable, it's unlikely.

The soft option is the idea that central banks will keep on buying US dollars indefinitely in order to keep the world trading system indefinitely, and that the US can therefore consume as much as it wants, subject only to the capacity of the Treasury to keep printing dollars. This option is not a goer for both economic and geopolitical reasons."

The imbalance in the currrent account deficit can be reduced in a number of ways:a (further) devaluation of the US dollar; reductions in US wages relative to those overseas; increases in US relative to foreign productivity (the relevant concept here is multifactor productivity, taking account of both capital and labour inputs); and reductions in US consumption relative to foreign consumption. He adds that to get back to balance or surplus in a decade, and without a crisis, no one of these would be sufficient.

The possibility of increases in US relative to foreign productivity is addressed here. Segal states that:

"The United States' global primacy depends in large part on its ability to develop new technologies and industries faster than anyone else. For the last five decades, U.S. scientific innovation and technological entrepreneurship have ensured the country's economic prosperity and military power. It was Americans who invented and commercialized the semiconductor, the personal computer, and the Internet; other countries merely followed the U.S. lead."

Segal then argues that this assumption is being undermined:

"Today, however, this technological edge-so long taken for granted-may be slipping, and the most serious challenge is coming from Asia.....Although the United States' technical dominance remains solid, the globalization of research and development is exerting considerable pressures on the American system. Indeed, as the United States is learning, globalization cuts both ways: it is both a potent catalyst of U.S. technological innovation and a significant threat to it. The United States will never be able to prevent rivals from developing new technologies; it can remain dominant only by continuing to innovate faster than everyone else. But this won't be easy; to keep its privileged position in the world, the United States must get better at fostering technological entrepreneurship at home."

I heard very little about the failure of U.S. trade and industrial policies to nurture and sustain U.S. international competitiveness in the 3 presidential debates.

Our fear is that Australia is going to come off badly with higher interest rates, highly mortgaged households and its own current account deficit. That fear was exploited by the Howard Government to get itself it re-elected, by saying that the horrors would come about through the economic policies of the ALP.

So a liberalism of fear has some bite.

political liberalism

The problem I've always had with political liberalism has to do with its claims about universal validity. The universal quality of liberal theory is one of it's core principles. In Australia liberalism has tradionally been based on a thin conception of the individual as the rational economic man, called "utility maximizer" who engages in utility-maximizing behavior.

To challenge the universal attitude of liberal thought is to rattle its foundations since the universalism of liberalism means that it does not tolerate particular identities and ways of life. Liberal thought is insensitive to it's contingency and historicity.

Friend/enemy & fear

If we adopt Carl Schmitt’s distinction of the political—the friend/enemy distinction--- then all politics can be seen as struggle. Can we not see fear as a part of this struggle. A fear of being destroyed by one's enemies?

The implication that Schmitt draws in the Concept of the Political is that:

"War is neither the aim nor the purpose nor even the very content of politics. But as an ever present possibility it is the leading presupposition which determines in a characteristic way human action and thinking and thereby creates a specifically political behavior.” (p.34)

The recognition of politics as “conflict and war” does not need to mean literally a war—nor does it mean war in the Hobbesian sense of “a war of all against all". Rather, it is the struggle of one collective grouping against another for autonomy.

By viewing politics in this fashion, we can achieve better understanding of struggles around class, the environment colonization, ethnic nationalism and between polticla parties (eg., LNP v ALP in Australia and Republicans v Democrats in the US). between nation-states. Schmitt’s concept of the political opens up politics to solidarity and takes us beyond the functions of states. Thus political struggle within parliamentary politics, or in civil society around the environment, is where individuals and collectives choose to unite in a political struggle against other political groupings.

Another example is the aboriginal question in Australia. The treatment of Aborigines in the creation of European civilisation in Australia is a question of injustice that presently haunts all our serious political debates. The cold war conservatives were so concentrated on the evils of Nazism and Communism, (what they called totalitarianism) that they failed to gain an understanding of the question of Aboriginal injustice.

In contrasting the barbarity of political conditions in totalitarian Europe with the dull decency, liberty and rule of law in the political life in the Australia of the second half of the twentieth century, they averted their gaze from evils closer to home and to abandon hope for the creation here of a better world.

A lot of that conflict between white and black in Australia (and elsewhere) is structured around fear of cruelty.

punching liberalism

One of the implications of the rise of conservatism in Australia and its capture of the levers of power (both the House Representatives and the Senate after 2005) is that liberalism will increasingly become a kind of political and philosophical punching bag. We have already seen some indication of this.

On the one hand, liberalism is often denounced as the theory of big, government (the social democratic ALP) whilst its statist principles are condemned for justifying government that is too intrusive. On the other hand liberalism is condemned as the theory of small, ineffective government (libertarianism); and for requiring a government that is too limited (neo-liberalism). Communitarians say that the public law promulgated under its name refuses to take a stand on fundamental questions of the good life even as it promulgates a particular way of life as the best and the true one.

The non- liberal left argue that greater equality of power would enhance the conditions for justice, but they are often so paternalistic as to arouse a sense of injustice. Though they aim at a more perfect democracy, plans for the reform of existing institutions to ensure freedom through self-government, democratic participation, and civic virtue often require remaking the citizenry as well. And who exactly is competent to shape the virtue of citizens--those qualities of mind and character that are exercised in the pursuit of the good life?

Despite these criticisms our political culture remains liberal in the sense that few seriously advocate a politics that does not respect individual rights, insure equality before the law, and support the practice of toleration. So liberalism's core commitments are widely shared, even as its political expressions are routinely disdained.

In these dark times of conservative hegemony, which works in terms of obvious resort to fear and hate as a campaign weapon coupled to trusting conservatives to defend the homeland. So cruelty can reside and proper within within the enlightened liberal state--as with the mandatory detention of asylum seekers and the treatment of the unemployed and disabled by the free market.

Maybe we need a liberalism that is more concerned with fear and humiliation than a Kantian liberalism rights and justice? The liberalism of fear--as urged by Judith Shklar-- emphasizes the dangers of political violence, cruelty, and humiliation. Those dangers clearly mark ethnic and cultural conflicts, so the liberalism of fear is an especially appropriate political ethic for an age marked by such conflicts. So a state need not be just but it should be decent.

This is a shift in focus. The concern is with the dangers and evils that we must defend against, rather than with the goods that we should pursue and the virtues or virtus we should cultivate in order to achieve those goods. So we would begin with the negative principle that the first aim of politics is to secure individuals from the worst injustices they can suffer. And the worst of all such injustices is cruelty. So argued Judith Shklar in her essay "The Liberalism of Fear"

clash of civilizations

There has been some discussion of the rise of religious conservatism in Australia has a result of the shift to the right in the Australian federal election. The discussions be found at John Quiggin's place, at Chris Shiel's Back Pages at Troppo Armadillo and public opinion that is connected to with the decline of the political centre argument over at Catallaxy.

One aspect of this shift to conservatism that has been overlooked in the current discussion is the conservative construction of the relations between Islam and Christianity: this relationship is seen to be basically adversarial, a long-drawn-out conflict between the two rival civilizations of East and West. Theirs is a story of conflict, instead of one of the mutual cross-fertilization Western and Islamic civilization.

William Dalrymple's review in the New York Review of Books suggests that a key figure in the conservative clash of civilizations thesis is Bernard Lewis. Dalrymple says that underlying the diverse essays in Lewis' latest work, From Babel to Dragomans: Interpreting the Middle East is the assumption that there are two fixed and opposed forces at work in the history of the Mediterranean world. On one hand, Western civilization, which he envisages as a Judeo-Christian block; and on the other hand, quite distinct, an often hostile Islamic world hellbent on the conquest and conversion of the West. Dalrymple quotes Lewis in one essay, "The Roots of Muslim Rage":

"The struggle between these rival systems has now lasted for some fourteen centuries. It began with the advent of Islam, in the seventh century, and has continued virtually to the present day. It has consisted of a long series of attacks and counterattacks, jihads and crusades, conquests and reconquests."

Lewis argues that Islamic hostility to America has less to do with American foreign policy in the Muslim world, notably American support for Israel, than a generalized Islamic "envy" and "rage" directed against its ancient cultural rival. This he claims derives from "a feeling of humiliation—a growing awareness, among the heirs of an old, proud, and long dominant civilization, of having been overtaken, overborne, and overwhelmed by those whom they regarded as their inferiors."

The idea that the Islamic world has been humiliated by a West it once despised and ignored, and that it has never come to terms with this reversal, leads Lewis to the clash of civilizations thesis:

"This is no less than a clash of civilizations—the perhaps irrational but surely historic reaction of an ancient rival against our Judeo-Christian heritage, our secular present, and the worldwide expansion of both."

Lewis argues that for a thousand years Islam was technologically superior to Christendom and dominated its Christian neighbors; but since the failure of the Ottoman siege of Vienna in 1683, the Muslim world has been in retreat. Militarily, economically, and scientifically it was soon eclipsed by its Christian rivals. Failure led first to a profound humiliation, then an aggressive hatred of the West.

This clash of civilizations thesis underpins the neocon's understanding of international relations after 9/11.

fear in politics

One reason to be pessimistic about Australian politics, after the end of communism and the triumph of the free market the mediocrity of its current political class in terms of its foreign policy. That political elite certainly looked pretty mediocre during the federal election.

True, we heard something different from all that boring business talk about the free market as a harmonious order requiring the light hand of regulation, with the end of the nation state being economic growth and economic prosperity. In contrast to the neo-liberal world-without-borders vision we had some post 9/11 political talk about the new moral energy coursing through the body politic, restoring trust in government, creating a new culture of patriotism and connection and Australia acting to shape rather than respond to events.

I even thought I heard calls for sacrifice and destiny resonating in the wings of the rhetoric about danger and security, the need for resolute will and force and the apocalyptic confrontation between good and evil, civilization and barbarism.

The political elite seemed to take their bearings from the Washington neocons; the ones who were enthralled by the epic grandeur of Rome, embraced the ethos courage and barbaric virtù of the pagan warrior, and expressed their deep yearning for an American empire. These were the ones who wanted the US to shape the future, to determine the outcome of history, to make the world and create history.

It is a mediocre political class because the right-wing political culture in contemporary Australia talks about getting some "respect" for Australia in the Pacific Rim (Indonesia) and ensuring the "authority" of the West is not challenged in places like the Middle East.

What this rightwing political culture accepts as a reasonable way to conduct foreign policy is ensuring that America is respected as a global imperial power and that it gets "respect" through it policy of regime change in the Middle East: in Baghdad, and then in Tehran and Damascus. Foreign policy seems to be driven by Australia getting respect by the nation state flexing its muscles and punching above its weight through its role as the Deputy Sheriff of the US in the Asia Pacific Rim.

The domestic side of "getting respect" from Islamic nation states is fear of the enemy (the alien terrorist), with its flip side of patriotism. This then dove tails into the fear about radical projects accomplishing social goals in the service of grand utopian visions.

Hence the mediocrity thesis.

Does this disclosure of the role of fear indicate that the mediocrity thesis of Australia's political class has got things wrong?

Is it fear shaping our politics as our faith in progress recedes? As our faith in progress recedes, so we turn to fear as the justifying language of public life. We no longer know the good, but we do know the bad. So we cling to fear, abandoning the quest for justice, equality, and freedom.

Is the role of fear now a key instrument of political rule within our liberal democratic institutions.

Is this what is going on? Have we turned back to Hobbes and the murky world of power and violent conflict, of tragedy and rupture? Since the government is there to protect us, so the political class had to educate its people to be afraid. And it does so through cultivating the fear of death from a terrorist's bomb.

the status of philosophy

Robert D'Amico on philosophy and whether it has its own domain--a defensible province of its own. It's a question about the status of philosophy.

Alas the address goes nowhere. It remains stuck in the 1930s and the good old continental analytic divide. This kind of academic philosophy has run out of puff.

Hell, the academy can do better than that. Why not give up the navel gazing and turn to some issues that concern us as citizens--the significance of 9/11 for instance.

Or why philosophy matters to, and in, politics.

Why not philosophy engaging with the view of the US as an empire. Or a critically engagement with the economists over competition policy. The ris a huge gap there between the actuality of corporate giant-dominated economy and the ideal of the liberalist vision of a dynamic economic system made up of lots of small innovative entrepreneurs.

Why not contest the view of big business that says what is good for Australia are executive salaries like the Americans, tax rates as in entrepots like Singapore (20% corporate tax rates) and wages as in China and an authoritarian government that gets the job done.

The living heart of philosophy is critique. That seems to have been forgotten.

Australian Strategic Policy Debate#2

In the previous post I indicated Paul Monk's argument that the significance of 9/11 is that the Australian Government will need to confront the outmoded premises of its existing strategic doctrine and adapt and modernize it. Monk bases his argument on Philip Bobbitt's thesis in his The Shield of Achilles: War, Peace and the Course of History. Monk argues that there are three central premises to Bobbitt’s argument and that he draws four powerful inferences from them.

The first premise is that modern history is best understood as a series of epochal wars that have shaped both state constitutions and the international society of states. The struggle between Athens and Sparta was not merely a series of wars but a prolonged, fundamental conflict, which shaped the whole future of the Greek world. Similarly with other epochal wars: – the Hundred Years’ War, the Thirty Years’ War, the Punic Wars. Epochal wars put the constitutional basis of the participants in play and do not truly end until the underlying constitutional questions are resolved.

The inference drawn from this that the wars of the twentieth century between liberalism, communism and facism was an epochal wars. It was fought to determine which form of constitution – liberal parliamentary, fascist or communist – would replace the imperial states of Europe that had emerged after the epochal war of the Napoleonic period and had dominated the world between the Congress of Vienna and August 1914.

The second premise is that strategy, law (both constitutional and international) and history (as a study) are inextricably intertwined, since they shape one another. Properly speaking, none can be understood without close reference to the others. It is stated by Bobbit thus:

"Law cannot come into being until the state secures a monopoly on the legitimate use of violence. Strategy cannot be formulated unless law prevails, for in its absence there is only civil war or banditry....Yet the legitimacy necessary for law and for strategy derives from history, the understanding of past practices that characterizes a particular society.”

The inference drawn from this is that that the key technologies produced by the epochal war fo the 20th century - weapons of mass destruction, information technology and global communications - are undermining the very possibility of nation states in the twentieth century sense at just the point when its liberal parliamentary form had triumphed over its rivals for primacy.

Australian Strategic Policy Debate

This a good pice of work. Paul Monk contests the standard argument in Australian strategic thinking advanced by Paul Dibb, that dealing with terorism after 9/11 is a police matter not a military one for nation states.

Monk argues this by considering Philip Bobbitt's' thesis advanced in his 'The Shield of Achilles: War, Peace and the Course of History.' Bobbitt argues that the dangers which have arisen in recent years are every bit as great as those we have just faced down. They are all the more so for being of a different nature to the threats faced down in the Cold War and characterized by unprecedented uncertainty. Bobbitt argues that the new dangers will compel profound reassessments of the nature of ‘national’ security itself and, with it, the civil laws, force structures and rules of engagement that buttress such security.

This means that our classical strategies of deterrence based on retaliation will have to be rethought. Bobbitt says that we need to move our thinking from:

"... threat-based strategies that rely on knowing precisely who our enemy is and where he lives, to vulnerability-based strategies that try to make our infrastructure more slippery, more redundant, more versatile, more difficult to attack…There will be no final victory in such a war. Rather, victory will consist in having the resources and the ingenuity to avoid defeat. So long, however, as states rely on a deterrence and retaliation model for their strategic paradigms – that is, a model that requires a threat-based analysis – they will inevitably neglect those steps, including enhanced intelligence collection, pre-emption, the development of defensive systems (including sensors), vaccinations, the pre-positioning of medical supplies and advanced methods of deception that provide the basis for operating within a different paradigm, one that relies on a vulnerability analysis.”

He suggest that unless such changes begin, in anticipation of what could now happen at any time, we could face a catastrophic breakdown in global order.

lying as fearmongering

An interesting paper: 'Lying in International Politics' by John J. Mearsheimer. He says that lying is an accepted feature of international relations as statesmen obviously believe that lying sometimes has utility.

He spells out 4 different forms of lying:

"Inter-state lying is where states lie to each other to gain strategic advantage. Fear-mongering is where foreign policy elites lie to their own public because they believe that the people do not recognize the seriousness of an external threat and they need to be motivated to deal with it. Nationalist myth-making is where elites tell lies about their state’s history to help foster a powerful sense of national identity among all segments of society. Anti-realist lying is where elites attempt to disguise brutal behavior carried out in pursuit of realist (or other) goals, because it conflicts with widely-accepted liberal norms."

Mearsheimer says that although there are compelling logics for pursuing each of these different kinds of lying, lying as fearmongering is questionable as it is the one form most likely to have serious negative consequences. Specifically, it is likely to encourage a culture of dishonesty on the home-front, and it has the most potential for backfiring and leading to a strategic debacle.

time for change

This article in Maarive International, entitled, 'No More Free Lunches', by Jonathan Ariel adds to, and reinforces, some of the points of the previous posts on Hanan Ashrawi's 1993 Sydney Peace Lecture. Ariel argues that both Israel and the Palestinians have come to a cross roads where they can no longer evade confronting their situation of destructive violence.

The first part of the article deals with Israel. It says:

"Israel has every right to occupy the land, but not to be an occupier of an alien population that does not want it. Israel decided to keep the Palestinians there, it must now pay for this historic mistake, since eventually every free lunch runs out, and the time to pay arrives. The price is going to be steep, the acceptance of the fact that for the foreseeable future, Israel will have to relinquish its dream of maintaining its sovereignty over all of western “Eretz Yisrael” or Palestine. It has the right to do so, but not the ability, given demographic realities. Numbers do matter. ..... Five and a half million Jews occupying 3.5 million Arabs is just not on, this may be neither fair nor right, but that’s the way it is. Israel created a situation in which it became an occupier of those Arabs, it is going to have to do what is necessary to change that."

Jonathan Ariel says that Israel has to deal with that reality. The options of driving the Arabs out or keeping them indefinitely under occupation as stateless people are neither morally nor practically viable in today’s world. The longer Israel tries to procrastinate, the less of the West Bank it will end up with.

Ariel goes on to spell out the implications of the demographic argument. He ays

"By the end of the decade it is estimated there will be six million Jews and five million Arabs, at which point all the Palestinians have to do is renounce the two state solution and demand Israeli citizenship. They will get it, since Israel would have no other alternative, after having occupied them for two generations it could not keep them as stateless residents, devoid of civil and political rights. That would make Israel an apartheid state, something it today most certainly is not."

Ariel then says that the Palestinians have also run out of room to maneuver:

"In their case the price is to come to terms with the fact that they will have to relinquish their dreams of a greater Palestine, and that the refugees are never going to return, because after over fifty years Israel no longer is their home.

Just as Israel risks losing everything by refusing to come to terms with reality, so do the Palestinians. In their case this means one simple thing, the uprooting of the entire Palestinian nation. If after Israel has withdrawn from all of Gaza and most of Judea and Samaria, the Palestinians do not establish a stable state, willing and capable of living side by side with Israel, preferring instead to continue a war of terror, Israel will have no choice but to evict all the residents of Gaza and the West Bank."

Ariel says that the options are closing down for the Palestinians:

"Unfortunately there is no other option. Reoccupying the Palestinians is not a viable option, been there, done that, it didn’t work. Withdraw, well if the Palestinians continue down the path of terror after Israel has already withdrawn, than clearly that would not have been the solution either. Since living under a constant threat of terrorism is a non-starter, that leaves only one option, chuck them out. It’s not a pretty option.... But, under this worst possible scenario it would be the only possible one, since every other option would have already been a proven failure."

So the Palestinians have to do something more than give tacit support to Arafat's terror. By going along they become the object of military attack by the Israeli's.

So neither side can continue doing what they are doing.

The US/Australia Alliance

There is a good article by Bruce Grant on the Australia US alliance in the Australian Financial Review's Review section. At one level the alliance is not an issue since the geopolitics of Australia's situation and national interest requires it. Hence the bipartisan support for that alliance.

However, things are not that simple. Grant opens his article with this very accurate remark:

"The curious thing about the alliance with the United States is that, in Australia, it is divisive. You would expect that because it has bipartisan political backing, broad support in the Australian community, and is generally regarded as the most important security arrangement we have, it would have a unifying effect. In fact, it does not bring Australians together. Rather it creates tensions among us. This in turn engenders sensitivities in our relations with the US."

How come? Grant is very clear:

"There has been a conscious strategy on the part of the coalition parties in Australia to lift the bar of enthusiasm for the alliance to a height that their political opponents cannot jump...The complex issues which the White House has to juggle, including public opinion and relations with Congress, apart altogether from the merits of any military campaign itself, are simplified by the time they cross the Pacific to whether Australians are for or against America, or for or against America's declared adversaries or enemies, or for or against democracy or Western civilisation. Or personally for or against the American president."

As Grant points out even the free-trade agreement with the US became a political battlefield, to be decided, like Iraq, under the pressure of a contrived timetable and bluster about loyalty to the alliance. It was hustled in the same way that the invasion of Iraq was hustled: it was in the national interest because it was a vital part of our relationship with the US and if you were against it you were anti-American. All the spin was about the critics being anti-American.

It is cartoon politics based on insecurity and the desperate need for protection in an anarchic world full of threats. Cartoon politics because it is no longer about a security arrangement with the US. It is about an image of Australia; an image of Australia as pale reflection of the US. That is why many Australians critically talk about Australia becoming the 51st state of the US.They have a different image of Australia; one that that reflects Australia's different (social democratic) pathway in modernity to that taken by the US.

Peace in the Middle East

There was an article in the weekend edition of the Australian Financial Review (subscription required) that has some bearing on the issue of peace in the Middle East. The article is by Peter Rogers, a former Australian Ambassador to Israel, and author of Herzl's Nightmare: One Land Two People.

In Australia we are constantly pressured to declare our allegiance to one side or the other in the Palestinian Israeli conflict. To criticize Israel runs the gauntlet of the charge of anti-Semitism. To criticize the Palestinians risks the accusation of pro-Israeli bias. Those of us who speak about the conflict can only hope we draw fire from both sides.

Rogers opens up this partisan debate. He points out that there are good reasons for taking aim at both Israeli and Palestinian, since each has acted towards the other with extraordinary blindness and inhumanity on the land both call home. At their heart lies a contradiction between freedom fighter and terrorist. On the Palestinians he says that:

"There is little doubt that Arafat is both [freedom fighter and terrorist]. In his quest for Palestinian statehood, he has employed, directly, and indirectly, indiscriminate violence---often against Israeli citizens. And he has, again, without a doubt, been a better terrorist than freedom fighter. Arafat may have delivered rebellion; freedom he has not. Arafat renounced terrorism but never discredited it. The conflict has defined Arafat. Tragically he cannot move on. "

The Palestinian leadership has become dysfunctional and lives in its own fantasy world.

Rogers says that the other side to Palestinian terrorism is Israeli colonialization of the Palestinian territorities of the West Bank and the Gaza Strip.

"There is no better example of Israeli myopia than its settlement of the West Bank and the Gaza Strip. This movement was launched soon after Israel's stunning victory over the Arab world in the 1967 Six-Day War. It was given enormous fillip by then agricultural minister Sharon, who in 1977 unveiled his 'vision of Israel at century's end', calling for 2 million settlers in the occupied territories by 2000. Fortunately, it did not come to that. But the extraordinary thing is that during the 1990s, when a peace deal seemed in prospect, Israeli's could not resist the urge to occupy land that logically should have been earmarked for the Palestinian state. In the past decade, the number of Israeli settlers in the West Bank have actually doubled, to about 230,000."

This account shifts beyond Arafat and Sharon to argue that Israeli's and Palestinians have grown so used to conflict they have appear to have lost the will and the courage to end it.

So where to now?

Rogers says that both sides know what needs to be done:

'Both have to renounce their dreams---the Jewish one of a homeland in all of Biblical Israeli; the Palestinian dream of their state supplanting the Jewish one. Arafat and the Palestinian leadership have to to say to the Israelis clearly, unequivocally: "We accept that you have a deep attachment to this land. We accept the Jewish state as a natural legitimate part of the region. We will deal harshly with those if us who attack you."

And the Israelis have to say to the Palestinians:"You paid a great price for you self-determination.We dispossesed you from a land that you also hold dear. We cannot undo that wrong. But we can, and will, help you to to achieve your own statehood."'

Such a scenario does appear unreal. Neither side can move forward as both are locked up inside their own myths, sense of victimhood and absolutist conception of good and evil.

The decades of violence have rendered Israeli's and Palestinians incapable of peace. Both sides are incapable of looking one another in the eye and acknowledging that history has dealt both a raw deal. Both claim the high moral ground and neither deserve it.

Rogers concludes by saying that:

"For peace to have a chance Israeli's and Palestinians must acknowledge the horror if what they are doing to the other and to themselves. They are not ready for that mental shift. And no outsider can impose it."

How long before the constantly refreshed layers of hurt, anger, bitterness and hostility overwhelm any prospect of a rational solution?

Can a viable Palestinian mini-state really be concocted from the bits of the West Bank that Israel might relinquish, connected to Gaza by a tenuous land bridge across Israel? So the question we face is whether it’s too late for Palestine.

Jacques Derrida: death & friendship

The lack of posts over the last two days has been due to a federal election in Australia on Saturday. I did my duty as a political functionary in deliverying materials on Friday and then handing out how to vote cards.

The sad news. Derrida died from aggressive pancreatic cancer.

Whilst handing out how to vote cards all day I kept on thinking about the politics of friendship and the friend/enemy distinction. Derrida wrote a book about the politics of friendship in the late 1990s. There he explored the play of difference within the concept of friendship and argued that politics does not begin with the identification of the enemy -- as with Carl Schmitt -- but with the identification of the friend.

A discussion between Derrida and Geoffrey Bennington. An article here.

Conversations with the Constitution#2

One of the main claims about the Constitution is that Australians are trapped in a horse and buggy constitution of the 19th century with no hope of escape. The 'no hope of escape' refers to the difficulty of constitutional change through a democratic referendum, whilst 'the horse and buggy' refers to federalism.

Does this indicate a dislike of the democratic foundation and federal processes of the Constitution?

Most would appear to accept the democracy part--who is against democracy these days?-- whilst being deeply criitcal of the federal part.

next start

Sydney Peace Prize Lecture: 2003#3

This post returns to Hanan Ashrawi's 2003 Sydney Peace Prize Lecture entitled Peace in the Middle East.

I want to locate the lecture within the context of the Ashwrai affair in my first post on this lecture. I do so to highlight what is said in the lecture and the arguments to justify the attempts to prevent granting Hanan Ashwrai the 2003 Sydney Peace Prize.

Here is a sample of agument of the attack on Ashwrai. It is by Barry Ruben, who says:

"By giving Hanan Ashrawi a peace prize someone has made a bad mistake. The problem is not that she's a radical or relatively hardline. It is simply that she has done virtually nothing to promote Israeli-Palestinian peace.

But from this mistake we can learn a great deal about the problems of the Middle East conflict and why it is so often remarkably misperceived by outsiders. The simple truth is this: Ashrawi is a woman and a Christian. She speaks English well and knows how to talk to Westerners. She does not shout (though her tone is usually icily sarcastic) or voice slogans.

The assumption is, then, that she must be a moderate. ... Like everything else about Ashrawi and this applies to other Palestinian leaders as well it is all a matter of appearance and never of substance. And that has been a major reason why there is no peace.

She does not analyse issues or make any contribution to understanding them but simply repeats the line of a leadership that is dictatorial and extremist.
She formally condemns terrorism but then explains it away so that the listener concludes that it is all Israel's fault."

Ruben says that Hanan Ashwrai is not in favour of peace since she has staunchly defended the Palestinian's "right" to "resist" Israeli "occupation", which includes the use of violence. So her emphasis is on image-building rather than peace-making.

That lipservice to peace is not what is happening in the lecture. If you recall she had argued that the Palestinian struggle for national self-determination was "just", meaning it was justifiable, defensible or, perhaps, morally necessary, given the alternatives of colonial oppression by Israel.

But more than that is happening in the lecture.

The conflict between Palesinians and Israeli's is placed in an international context. Hanan's key claim is that in the aftermath of September 11 the logic of peace that had been formulated:

"....as the substance of Palestinian-Israeli encounters and dialogues, even long before negotiations, is currently being drowned by the din of war drums and the frenzied mutual infliction of pain over the last three years. Such tragic and unprecedented pervasive violence is not only eradicating previous achievements and agreements, but is also destroying the prospects of any future reconciliation."

Hanan Ashrawi's perspective is that the fallacies and assumptions of those who bang the wr drums must be confronted. What then is a fallacy? She says:

"The notion that a whole nation can be brought to its knees by the use of unbridled violence, or that the will of a people can be defeated by military means must be discarded once and for all. Armies may be able to defeat other armies, but the limits of power are most apparent when used against civilians and non-combatants. Along with that, the fallacy that there is or can be a military solution to the conflict must be completely and irrevocably discarded."

A military solution cannot resolve a political problem. That would apply to both Palestinian and Israeli attempts to use violence against civilians and non-combatants.

She argues that the situation in the Middle East is one that reinforces the irrational and immoral killing of civilians and the victimisation of the innocent. She says:

"The drive for revenge, like the escalation of military brutality, has generated the most tragic and futile momentum for escalation and self-destruction. On both sides, the “no holds barred” mindset has taken over as a mindless, visceral, repetitive response with horrific ramifications."

That is is what the Middle East appears to be from Australia: a prevailing dynamic of death and destruction.

An assumption Hanan highlights here, and questions, says that greater pain and punishment would lead to success or surrender of one side to the other.

previous start

Conversations with the constitution

I've just started reading Greg Craven's Conversations with the Constitution (2004). It is very accessible text, unlike most writing on the Constitution. Most of the writing on the Australian Constitution has been dominated by lawyers who have treated it primarily as a legal document.

Suprisingly the Australian Constitution, has been compared unfavourably with the American one, even though the roots of the former are democratic ones. The constitution of Australia was founded on, and by, a democracy through the process of a referendum.

I have found most texts on the Constitution to be boring: they're an expression of a classical legal consciousness of legal formalism, which postulated that law stood apart from other cultural fields such as politics. Judges were disinterested subjects who objectively discovered the law etc etc. Hence we have the politically neutral legalism of the High Court (under Latham, Dixon, Barwick and Gibbs C JJ); a legalism that represents political neutrality as being essential for the rule of law.

Yet the Constitution is a political document as well as a legal one. It is the founding document of a sovereign nation-state.

Craven says one reaction to the democratic foundation of the Australian Constitution is to pooh pooh the genuineness of the popular choice and to see it as little more than a passing imperial parade. These responses dismiss the moral authority of the democratic expression (a referendum) of a people forming themselves into a nation state.

Why so? Why dismiss what is unique about the Australian Constitution? Why not see it as something we are proud of: not just because it represents the rule of law, but because of the popular participation involved in its making. Why not celebrate the democracy involved?

Is that not a valuable heritage? Is that not something worth remembering and defending?

next.

Sydney Peace Prize Lecture: 2003#2--Just war

I want to return to Hanan Ashrawi's 2003 Sydney Peace Prize Lecture entitled entitled Peace in the Middle East. The title appears to be as much an utopian desire as Kant's perpetual peace.

So how does Hanan deal with this? Remember that she said that the prospect of peace was the most effective means of dislodging the rising power of extremism, fundamentalism and militarism in the region. She adds:

"The legacy of colonialism clearly has served the interests of those in power, predominantly client regimes, who sought to maintain control, thereby leading to the collusion of internal and external forces in the exclusion of the people as a whole. A just and comprehensive solution to the Palestinian-Israeli (and hence Arab-Israeli) conflict would unleash all those forces so far held in abeyance, but forming the indispensable energy for sustainable progress, development, democratization, and regional integration."

A just and comprehensive solution to the Palestinian-Israeli conflict? Is that possible in a region marked by realpolitik and national self-interest? What Hanaan appears to be doing to carving out a space for a moral regime even in the midst of hell. She says that the energy (desire?) energy for sustainable progress, development, democratization, and regional integration threatens:

"... short-term stability based on restrictive and constrictive norms and patterns, [but] constitutes the sole mechanism for any stability that can lay claim to permanence on the basis of contemporary and future-oriented political, social, cultural, and economic systems of cooperation and interdependence."

Is this tacitly implying some notion of just war? It would appear to be so. Recall that she had previously said:

"....the just solution of the Palestinian-Israeli conflict, can be addressed in its proper context as the longest standing case of military occupation and as the most persistent unresolved case of denial, dispossession and exile in contemporary history. As such, it is also an anachronism in that it has all the components of a colonial condition in a post neo-colonial world, plus the requirements of national self-determination as a basis of nascent statehood in a world moving towards regional and global redefinitions."

A colonial condition is unjust whilst national self-determination is good. The lecture is based on the distinction between struggles against tyranny or oppression involving struggles for self-determination. She tacitly appeals to the basic norm governing humanitarian intervention: such intervention is justified to prevent or halt massive violations of personal security rights or the destruction of a national group.

Does the idea of a just war have any relevance? Or is it limited to colonial struggles?

One example of a just war is the first major intervention of the post-cold war period was designed to oust Iraqi forces from Kuwait, which had been invaded in August 1990. In this case the diplomatic options had to be backed by a credible threat of force against a fixed deadline. Secondly, the UN war sought only to restore things to the state they were in before the act of aggression. The war against Iraq had a limited aim of expelling Iraqi forces from Kuwait.

In contrast we can we argue, (and the UN did), that the military intervention to address Saddam Hussein's bad behaviour, was not warranted since the conditions for a just-war intervention in Iraq did not exist. Inspections yes, war no. Regime change is not a justification for war and the containment of Saddam was a better course of action than war.So America, Britain and Australia's war is unjust because there were alternatives to war that could have achieved disarmament at lower cost.

Hanan is quite right to tactily appeal to just war to support her case.

Stoicism#2

More background on Stoicism from the Ecole Initiative.

What I'm trying to do here is to counter my education that classical philosophy peaked with Plato and Aristotle, degenerated into the popular "feel good" philosophy of the Hellenistic period, and did not approach its earlier glory again until Plotinus. Oh, genuine and proper philosophy not returning until Descartes and Locke. You all know the rest of the narrative.

The latter Stoics of the Hellenistic period, including Cleanthes of Assos (c 331-233 BCE) and Chrysippus (c 281-208 BCE), developed Stoicism as a systematic body of doctrine, complete with a system of logic, epistemology, and cosmology. In logic, the Stoics developed the logic of propositions more recently formalized by Frege and Bertrand Russell. Chrysippus was recognized by his contemporaries as the equal of Aristotle in logic. Stoic epistemology was decidedly empiricist and nominalist in spirit. They rejected both Plato's and Aristotle's notions of form. There are no abstract universals, either apart from particulars, as Plato would have it, or in particular substances, as Aristotle held. Only particular things exist and our knowledge of them is based on the impressions they make upon the soul. Our knowledge of particular objects is therefore based on sense perception, as is our knowledge of our mental states and activities, our soul itself being a material thing.

Metaphysically, the Stoics were materialists. While all that exists is material, nevertheless there are two principles of reality. The passive principle is matter devoid of quality. Borrowing from Heraclitus, the Stoics identified the active principle of reality with the Logos, Reason, or God. Unlike later Christian versions, the Stoic view of the Logos is both materialistic and pantheistic. God has no existence distinct from the rational order of nature and should not be construed as a personal, transcendent deity of the sort essential to later Western theism.

The Stoics were determinists, even fatalists, holding that whatever happens happens necessarily. Not only is the world such that all events are determined by prior events, but the universe is a perfect, rational whole. For all their interests in logic and speculative philosophy, the primary focus of Stoicism is practical and ethical. Knowledge of nature is of instrumental value only. Its value is entirely determined by its role in fostering the life of virtue understood as living in accord with nature.

My attraction is practical ethical side of Stoicism to its conception of ethical philosophy as the art of living well. Stoicism, like its rival Epicureanism, addressed the questions that most people are concerned with (death, suffering, great wealth, poverty, power over others and oppression) in very direct and practical ways.

The Stanford Encyclopedia says:

"The Stoics claim that whatever is good must benefit its possessor under all circumstances. But there are situations in which it is not to my benefit to be healthy or wealthy. (We may imagine that if I had money I would spend it on heroin which would not benefit me.) Thus, things like money are simply not good, in spite of how nearly everyone speaks, and the Stoics call them ‘indifferents’ (Diog. Laert., 58A)--i.e., neither good nor bad. The only things that are good are the characteristic excellences or virtues of human beings (or of human minds): prudence or wisdom, justice, courage and moderation, and other related qualities.

These are the first two of the ‘Stoic paradoxes’ discussed by Cicero in his short work of that title: that only what is noble or fine or morally good (kalon) is good at all, and that the possession (and exercise) of the virtues is both necessary and sufficient for happiness. But the Stoics are not such lovers of paradox that they are willing to say that my preference for wealth over poverty in most circumstances is utterly groundless. They draw a distinction between what is good and things which have value (axia). Some indifferent things, like health or wealth, have value and therefore are to be preferred, even if they are not good, because they are typically appropriate, fitting or suitable (oikeion) for us."

This then leads to a self-governance of the soul to help us ease away from indifferent things (money and status) to what is genuinely good (virtue).

Stoicism#1

I have been digging into the background of Stoic philosophy. More here.

Keith Seddon says that this Graeco-Roman school, of which Epictetus (c. A.D. 50-130) is a representative, began as a recognizable movement around 300 B.C. Its founder was Zeno of Cytium (not to be confused with Zeno of Elea, who discovered the famous paradoxes).

For more than 500 years Stoicism was one of the most influential and fruitful philosophical movements in the Graeco-Roman world. From the Renaissance until well into the nineteenth century, Stoic ethical thought was one of the most important ancient influences on European ethics, particularly because of the descriptions of it by Cicero, through surviving works by the Stoics Seneca, Marcus Aurelius, and also Epictetus -and also because of the effect that it had had in antiquity, and continued to have into the nineteenth century, on Christian ethical views.

We never explored this school in philosophy in Australia. We read Plato and Aristotle, along with the presocratics. I only vaguely knew about Stocism, along with the two other major ancient philosophical movements, Epicureanism and Scepticism. That is a great pity because I have much sympathy with the whole idea of a therapeutic philosophy that enables us to live well.

In his introduction to Epictetus' Handbook Nicholas White says:

"....it is clear that early Stoic philosophy, particularly as carried on by Chrysippus (c. 279-206 B.C.), the third head of the Stoic school at Athens, was very largely a theoretical and (in the modern sense) academic philosophical movement. In a philosopher like Epictetus, on the other hand, one has the sense that the practical advice-giving side dominates, and that interest in working through philosophical problems or arguments is relatively small. In varying degrees, the works of later Stoics such as Seneca (c. 5 B.C.-A.D. 65) and Marcus Aurelius (A.D. 12 1-180) are in this respect much like those of Epictetus."

The core ideas involved in living well are: freedom from the violent feelings; the key to freedom from the violent feelings is living in accordance with virtue; the key to virtue is living consistently in agreement with nature.

The Stoics hold that emotions like fear or envy (or impassioned sexual attachments, or passionate love of anything whatsoever) either were, or arose from, false judgements and that the sage--a person who had attained moral and intellectual perfection--would not undergo them. The later Stoics of Roman Imperial times, Seneca and Epictetus, emphasise the doctrines (already central to the early Stoics' teachings) that the sage is utterly immune to misfortune and that virtue is sufficient for happiness.

Epictetus: What philosophy promises

I have been reading one of Epictetus' text called Discourses, which was composed by his student Flavius Arrian. Epictetus was an exponent of Stoicism in the early second century in Rome and the Discourses concentrates on ethics. I presume that he builds on the texts of early Greek Stoic philosophers (Zeno, Cleanthes and Chrysippus). These texts survive only as quoted fragments found in the later works.

The role of the Stoic teacher was to encourage his students to live the philosophic life, whose end was eudaimonia (‘happiness’ or ‘flourishing’).This was to be secured by living the life of reason, which – for Stoics – meant living virtuously and living ‘according to nature’.

The Discourses appear to record the exchanges between Epictetus and his students after formal teaching had concluded for the day. In these discussions Epictetus aims to make his students consider carefully what the philosophic life – for a Stoic – consists in, and how to live it oneself.

This is what Epictetus says about philosophy in Ch.15, Bk 1, of the Discourses:

"When a man was consulting him how he should persuade his brother to cease being angry with him, Epictetus replied: Philosophy does not propose to secure for a man any external thing. If it did philosophy would be allowing something which is not within its province. For as the carpenter's material is wood, and that of the statuary is copper, so the matter of the art of living is each man's life. "What then is my brother's?" That again belongs to his own art; but with respect to yours, it is one of the external things, like a piece of land, like health, like reputation. But Philosophy promises none of these. "In every circumstance I will maintain," she says, "the governing part conformable to nature." Whose governing part? "His in whom I am," she says.

"How then shall my brother cease to be angry with me?" Bring him to me and I will tell him. But I have nothing to say to you about his anger.

When the man, who was consulting him, said, "I seek to know this- how, even if my brother is not reconciled to me, shall I maintain myself in a state conformable to nature?" Nothing great, said Epictetus, is produced suddenly, since not even the grape or the fig is. If you say to me now that you want a fig, I will answer to you that it requires time: let it flower first, then put forth fruit, and then ripen. Is, then, the fruit of a fig-tree not perfected suddenly and in one hour, and would you possess the fruit of a man's mind in so short a time and so easily? Do not expect it, even if I tell you."

In chapter 10 Bk 3 Epictetus asks: "But what is philosophizing? Is it not a preparation against events which may happen?

The ills we suffer, says Epictetus, result from mistaken beliefs about what is truly good. We have invested our hope in the wrong things, or at least invested it in the wrong way. Our capacity to flourish and be happy (to attain eudaimonia) is entirely dependent upon our own characters, how we dispose ourselves to ourselves, to others, and to events generally. What qualities our characters come to have is completely up to us. Therefore, how well we flourish is also entirely up to us.