On Liberty and Peace - Part 2

Matt Edge

Description

The author writes:In this project I set out to provide an answer to two fundamental questions of political philosophy. How can human beings (living, as we do now, in a globalised world) live together, in conditions of co-operation over time, enjoying what Immanuel Kant famously called 'perpetual peace'? And how much individual freedom can we expect to enjoy, and to what degree can we expect that individual freedom to be equal, whilst engaged in the enterprise described by the first question? These may be age-old questions, but I aim, in this project, to offer a new approach to answering them.In part two of this project, I aim to actually provide my own answer to the two fundamental questions with which I began and according to the structure I outline in Liberty. Which is to say, this is the answer I provide to you (and everyone else) to judge regarding how successfully it answers those age old political questions. In short, I argue that these are the changes in actual, material, human conditions - the necessary set of 'alterable human practices' to borrow a phrase of Isaiah Berlin's - required to create an enduring, desirable and just 'perpetual peace' on earth. In other words, this is not, in Kant's phrase, a 'philosophical sketch' on how perpetual peace might be attained, but, by focusing on the everyday, material, relationships and conditions which create and foster conflict and injustice across the globe today, I hope to provide a 'material sketch' as to how human beings might live in successfully together in conditions of peaceful cooperation and freedom over time.

Sujets

• Philosophie et théologie
• Human rights

Informations

• Publié par: Andrews UK
• Date de parution: 08 août 2016
• Nombre de lectures: 0
• EAN13: 9781845407070
• Langue: English

Extrait

Title page
On Liberty and Peace
Part Two
Peace
Matt Edge
SOCIETAS
essays in political
& cultural criticism
imprint-academic.com



Publisher information
Copyright © Matt Edge 2011, 2016
The moral rights of the author have been asserted.
No part of this publication may be reproduced in any form without permission, except for the quotation of brief passages in criticism and discussion.
Imprint Academic, PO Box 200, Exeter EX5 5YX, UK



Dedication
To Katie Jacobs
Whether or not the world will ever change,
or whether or not it may become what
either of us might want it to be,
you are the only one I wish to share that world with.



Quotations
‘We are a culture without the will to seriously examine our own problems. We eschew that which is complex , contradictory or confusing. As a culture, we seek simple solutions. We enjoy being provoked and titillated, but resist the rigorous, painstaking examination of issues that might, in the end, bring us to the point of recognizing our problems, which is the essential first step to solving any of them.’
David Simon
‘The Philosophers have only interpreted the world, in various ways; the point is to change it.’
Karl Marx, Theses on Feuerbach
‘Won’t you help to sing ... These songs of freedom ...’
Bob Marley



Preface
How can human beings live, together, in conditions of peace over time? If there is any question which has dominated the history of political thought, or is central to the discipline itself, it is this. The present project is designed to contribute to this debate, to build, in other words, a theory of perpetual peace, the success of which is to be judged by you, alongside everyone else.
The first part of this project, Liberty , provided an argument as to why it should be you, together with everyone else, and not any representative, politician, parliamentarian , dictator, political philosopher, or junta, judging this matter. Readers interested in this argument can turn to Liberty , since it cannot be my purpose to repeat it here (nor do I have the space to do so). The present work builds upon this structure. For, here, I propose, to you (and everyone else) a theory of perpetual peace, to be judged, according to how well you, as a rational and/or moral being, think I have provided an account of socio-political structures in order to successfully realise our shared political and ethical values. These values include ‘peace’, ‘liberty’, ‘justice’, ‘democracy’ and ‘equality’. Do I succeed in describing a world - to you - which reflects those values, the shared terrain of our political and ethical life, in a genuine, and just, way? That is for you to judge.
Allow me to give a concise overview of the project. In Liberty , as I say, I argued that it should be down to us, you and me (and everyone else), to judge the fundamental questions of political philosophy. Based on the principle of first- person authority, this was a way of saying that we should live in a participatory democracy, and also a way of outlining a participatory political philosophy, one relevant to, and judged by, all human beings. [1]
Central to this was, and is, Donald Davidson’s theory of ‘triangulation’, which provides a brilliant, third-person, approach to a theory of knowledge. I have borrowed this theory of triangulation to provide a third-person approach to political philosophy, one which takes place, in other words, in the real world, between you and I, as we respond to, and interact with, in a unique and stimulating way, the moral and political fabric of the world. The political theorist, in this story, is merely one leg of a tripod, the other legs being you, [2] and the common world, the common ethical and political world in our case, we inhabit, and share, as human beings. [3] Without the other legs, the political theory topples.
The political theorist, in this story, is simply an interpreter , [4] an interpreter of that shared world. Without the second person (the role played by you, and everyone else), there is no way of judging the success of the theory. The final corollary is that the political and ethical theorist must be a good interpreter - he or she must be able to provide an effective account - to you, and everyone else - of our shared moral and political world. In an altogether different context, Davidson writes that role of the interpreter ‘ requires that the interpreter correlate his own responses and those of the speaker by reference to the mutually salient causes in the world of which they speak.’ [5] Without an effective interpretation of the moral universe we inhabit together, [6] the theory is doomed. Its words would be scarcely recognisable to you as responses to shared causal threads in the world. My attempt at interpretation, of interpreting our shared moral and political concepts and ordering them in an account of political justice then presented to you, would fail, and fail miserably.
The point, in other words, is that it is, in all likelihood, impossible to change the world without first offering an interpretation of it, without first showing (to borrow a messy phrase) ‘what is in the world’ to you, and everyone else, in these triangular exchanges, one of which we are engaged in now. For, if I am right, a good interpretation will find the clues which can help to make change possible and, indeed, successful. In other words, looking into the world of our inherited normative concepts - freedom, justice, peace, equality and the like - gives us a ‘leg up’ on change. [7] And this, in the case of our shared political and moral concepts, will be an investigation into language. In other words, materialism of a unique and linguistic kind. To quote Davidson, ‘meaning is entirely determined by observable behaviour, even readily observable behaviour. That meanings are decipherable is not a matter of luck; public availability is a constitutive aspect of language’. [8] I explored obvious problems with this in chapter three of Liberty , particularly in relation to how our shared language(s) are open to uncertainty and manipulation, and in relation to how our normative concepts might have different linguistic uses (if not meanings) from how they are generally employed today, but uncertainty can only go so far. As Hume realised, and Davidson has, at great length, explained, even division and dispute must be built on something. [9] Language is the greatest resource we have for political change, and language is what ties you and me, in the here and now, to each other, and to the passing show, to the beautiful and chaotic world which these pages attempt to describe. This is also why, if it needed saying, you and me are, in so many ways, the key to political change.
It is at this point where the present work comes in. I am now proposing my interpretation of our shared moral and political universe to you (and everyone else). Different accounts of the political will offer different theories of perpetual peace, and of justice. These will include liberalism, anarchism, conservatism, socialism, communism, and any number of other ideologies. Further, of course, each of these ideologies can hardly be said to possess a concrete and shared doctrine and so could offer, under their umbrellas, so to speak, any number of theories of peace and justice.
What follows below is my own attempt to provide a theory of peace. It is, I suppose, down to you to decide under what ideological umbrella it sits (if it sits under any), though I refer to it as a communistic theory of peace, because, essentially, it is based on the abolition of finance and financial exchange and the abolition of private property (which some possible exceptions). I call this, in chapter one, a ‘material sketch’ of perpetual peace because it confronts the everyday, empirical, relationships amongst human beings which cause, and nourish, conflict across the globe. In other words, a theory of peace, which focuses solely on the global interactions of modern nation states is not far reaching enough, since it concentrates on only one form of conflict, global war (or national civil wars). Yet, conflicts are much more endemic, more everyday, than this under nation-state capitalism. The answer I propose here requires a free and open cosmopolitan globe of free movement , and an equal access to choices and opportunities, for all humanity. I term this theory ‘egalitarian equal liberty’. However, could it not be objected that this is a misnomer, for what could constitute inegalitarian equal liberty? The answer - the present system of nation-state, liberal, capitalism , which offers human beings vastly unequal packages, or bundles, of individual liberty across the globe, [10] whilst, at the same time, proclaiming ‘equal liberty’ through a catalogue of equal basic rights. The equal liberty on offer here, however, is a different animal entirely, a much wider realm of free movement than simply the basic rights (though these, importantly, are included in all of our bundles of freedom ), where my realm, or bundle, of individual liberty equals yours in a genuine, material, and everyday way.
Key, then, to my theory of peace is a theory of freedom. [11] This, in turn, is based on the principle of equal treatment. The best hope, I think, we have for a lasting, just, and desirable peace on the earth is to offer all human beings, regardless of wherever they are in the globe, equal treatment. And equal treatment, since there is no one way human beings should live, nor any one way in which they actually like to live, one way in which all can, without exception, find happiness , must, then, be based on a genuine, empirical, equal liberty. This means that the freedom available to me, must equal that available to you - my ‘freedom-bundl