[lit-ideas] Re: On the prospect of World Peace
- From: Robert Paul <rpaul@xxxxxxxx>
- To: lit-ideas@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
- Date: Wed, 06 Sep 2006 15:46:17 -0700
Eric wrote:
Phil wrote: There may be occasions where violence is needed to stop a
greater evil, but no good comes from violence.
Could you explain this principle a little more thoroughly? I assume
you are basing it on a belief that one cannot overcome evil with evil.
I'm as tired of this thread as I would be of a lingering case of poison
oak, but
something non-pacific in my nature compells me to offer some probably
ignorable
remarks. First, Phil does not explicitly equate violence and 'evil.' As for
overcoming evil with evil, whatever that may mean, it's not at all clear that
the Allies eventual resistance to Hitler's (and the Japanese imperialists')
aims was evil, even though it was as violent in means and scale as anything
that had gone before. Moreover, if one 'overcomes evil with evil,' one
is stuck
with evil all the way down. In the Oresteia, a cycle of potentially
never-ending
violence (the word 'evil' would be misplaced here) is broken by
Athena's bargain
with the Furies, and justice takes its place. There is no law of nature which
says that the analogue of this is impossible today or that it is or has been
conceptually impossible; the use of violence needn't entail perpetual
violence.
Yet haven't good things resulted from violence? Didn't the Civil War
bring about an end to slavery? Haven't workers gained rights and
benefits as as result of violent strikes?
My earlier claim (lost behind the sofa somewhere) was that everything that is
mentioned here could have been brought about by non-violent means. To say that
the American Civil War put an end to slavery (at least de jure) does not mean
(see the New York draft riots) that what motivated the Union was to put an end
to slavery. Yes, eventually slavery did begin to die out here and there in the
South; but the Union did not fight to end it except in American History for
Tiny Tots. Whether workers gained better working conditions from violent
strikes and work stoppages is moot. But whether better working
conditions could
have been obtained through reasoned discourse might also have been
possible. To
object that the great American Capitalists were greedy knaves, not amenable to
reasoned appeals from those whom they believed to be incapable of reason only
shows that then and there 'reason' might not have worked. It no more
shows that
violence is the only way to get social goods than does that fact that
there was
no reasoning with Hitler show that in order to reach an agreement about
importing timber to the US from British Columbia, shows that there is no
reasoning with Canadians, and that razing Vancouver is the only effective
course.
With the end of the last European Civil War (i.e., World War II)
weren't the basic structures of pan-European cooperation built?
Perhaps it was because I spent the war on the West Coast, that I did not see
World War II as a 'European Civil War.'
Isn't it more likely that violence routinely brings forth bad things
but also allows good things to emerge? If not, why not?
It may 'allow' them to emerge, just as a serious fall in rock climbing
may lead
to the development of more reliable ropes and pitons, but to the family of the
dead guy at the base of the cliff this is thin comfort. 'Isn't it more likely
that reasoned discourse and analysis allows good things to emerge, and that if
bad things emerge, they are corrigible in light of the same procedures?'
Robert Paul
Reed College
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