Most people who have only read one thing Plato wrote -- or, more likely, excerpts from one thing -- read the Republic. It is without question the most famous of Plato's works, though very far from his best. Plato himself obviously wasn't satisfied with it, as he reprised the subject at much greater length in the Laws (on which I have written a commentary that you can find on the sidebar).
One of the more famous passages of this most famous dialogue has to do with the definition of justice. The antagonist in the dialogue, an aggressive man named Glaucon, gives what must have been the standard definition of the term. This was what Plato wanted to argue against, after all, so he sets up the most plausible definition in the popular sense of the time in the mouth of Socrates' opponent.
Socrates: And what is that which justice gives, and to whom?
Glaucon: If, Socrates, we are to be guided at all by the analogy of the preceding instances, then justice is the art which gives good to friends and evil to enemies.
The justice of that proposition must have been self-evident in ancient times. Your friends help you, so you should help them. Your enemies seek to harm you, so seeking their harm is the 'turnabout' that the proverb states is fair play.
What could be more just than to do to others as they do to you? From the Christian input into our society, we have two model answers: the Silver and Golden rules. The first is "Do not do unto others that which you hate," which we have from the Book of Tobias; the latter is "Do unto others as you wish they would do unto you," which we have from Jesus himself. Both of these set aside the actions you have received as important considerations.
It isn't obvious why we should set that aside, though, other than that it comes as instruction from Jesus. Prudentially, the fact that someone is your enemy seems like an important consideration in how you treat with them. It may mark out an ideal of excellence to dispose of the matter as unimportant and to do what you would want them to do for you instead; but you might get knifed, depending on just how seriously they take their enmity.
Raymond Llull risked his life as a martyr having laid down the knightly sword of his youth to try his hand at the peaceful conversion of Muslims in Islamic Tunis, and maybe that's the saintly path. Perhaps it is more for older men, or unmarried ones: husbands and fathers may choose to imperil their souls to save their wives and children.
I'm thinking about this today because of two pieces I read, one from the
NYT and one from
Protein Wisdom.
Its members refer to it as the Axis of Resistance.... The Axis of Resistance includes Hamas, Hezbollah, the Houthis and other groups, and both its strategy and its tactics have long been radical. The official slogan of the Houthis — the Yemen-based group that has attacked commercial ships in the Red Sea — includes “death to America, death to Israel, a curse upon the Jews,” for example.
Emphasis added. These people are our declared enemies, which either is or is not an important consideration. Against it being so are the authority of Jesus and the arguments of Plato; in favor of it being so is natural prudence and the fact that Plato's arguments are terrible, leading to an endorsement of totalitarian government and an elitism that would eliminate natural families in order to preserve itself.
Longtime readers understand my position, which is that in matters of war we do what we must and trust in the forgiveness we are promised. Greg, who is not actually welcome here but keeps coming around anyway, raises the just and defensible point that this does not live up to the standard set in the Sermon from the Mount.
It does not. As Martin Luther, I sin boldly as a proof of my faith in the promised forgiveness. I think we should, as a rule, help our friends; and sometimes I think we must, however disinclined to the business we may be, harm our enemies.
Frankly, I'm not even especially disinclined to it. This is the sort of revenge that was said, in the recent discussion of Aquinas, to be good because it aims at justice. And justice, as Glaucon said, is very plausibly helping your friends and -- at least sometimes -- harming your enemies. May our trespasses be forgiven, and let us forgive them theirs once they can no longer harm us, but sometimes in this world there is little wiser than to do unto others as they intend to do unto you.
If you can do more kindly by them, I think that's wonderful. Sometimes, however, you just can't; and as Kant said, 'ought implies can.'
4 comments:
CS Lewis's "Why I Am Not a Pacifist" in The Weight of Glory covers a lot of this ground nicely. It should be noted that that Lewis was a WWI vet with PTSD (nightmares until his death in 1963) who was very much antiwar and skeptical of claims for war in general. But he was not an absolutist, and delivered the essay in 1940, to a pacifist group urging England to stay out of WWII.
As for justice, we hope we do more than merely feather our own nest. We always allow that we may be deeply mistaken - many decent people have been over the centuries.
the fact that someone is your enemy seems like an important consideration in how you treat with them.
I suppose one way of squaring the circle is to look at the Golden Rule in the light of the Good Samaritan. "Who is my enemy?" is a similar question to "Who is my neighbor?", and just as the Samaritan ignored the tribal affiliation of the man who was beaten, the Golden Rule says there is no justification for treating someone badly simply because we think of their tribe as treating our tribe badly. I think it's hard for us to wrap our heads around how shocking the command would have been in a more intensely clannish or tribal world where the Samaritan would have been fully expected to ignore the beaten man simply because he wasn't a Samaritan, and the Samaritan wouldn't have felt he had done anything wrong for the same reason.
Yes, I think that's right. It's akin to the scene in Lawrence of Arabia when the sheriff shoots Lawrence's guide for drinking from the well, but not Lawrence himself. The guide is from an enemy tribe, and is stealing water; Lawrence, an Englishman who is both a stranger and from a stronger tribe, is "welcome."
The impact of the Christian ethic has been far deeper and more positive than it is easy to realize. I'm not opposed to it; I'm just trying to point out how surprising it really is to suggest that it shouldn't matter to questions of justice whether we are dealing with a friend or a stranger or an avowed enemy. There may be some practical limits to that, even if it is what we should strive to achieve.
I think we should, as a rule, help our friends; and sometimes I think we must, however disinclined to the business we may be, harm our enemies.
GKChesterton has another perspective which favors your take: "The true soldier fights not because he hates what is in front of him, but because he loves what is behind him."
GKC would relieve you of sin.
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