Justifying the Obligation to Die : War, Ethics, and Political Obligation with Illustrations from Zionism 9780739129753, 9780739129739

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Justifying the Obligation to Die

Justifying the Obligation to Die War, Ethics, and Political Obligation with Illustrations from Zionism

Ilan Zvi Baron

LEXINGTON BOOKS A division of ROWMAN & LITTLEFIELD PUBLISHERS, INC.

Lanham • Boulder • New York • Toronto • Plymouth, UK

LEXINGTON BOOKS A division of Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, Inc. A wholly owned subsidiary of The Rowman & Littlefield Publishing Group, Inc. 4501 Forbes Boulevard, Suite 200 Lanham, MD 20706 Estover Road Plymouth PL6 7PY United Kingdom Copyright © 2009 by Lexington Books All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without the prior permission of the publisher. British Library Cataloguing in Publication Information Available Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Baron, Ilan Zvi, 1978Justifying the obligation to die : war, ethics, and political obligation with illustrations from Zionism / Ilan Zvi Baron. p. cm. Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN 978-0-7391-2973-9 (hbk. : alk. paper) — ISBN 978-0-7391-2975-3 (ebookr) 1. Political obligation. 2. War—Moral and ethical aspects. 3. Death—Political aspects. 4. Zionism—Case studies. I. Title. JC329.5.B37 2009 172'.42—dc22 2008054747 Printed in the United States of America

⬁ ™ The paper used in this publication meets the minimum requirements of American National Standard for Information Sciences—Permanence of Paper for Printed Library Materials, ANSI/NISO Z39.48-1992.

Contents

Acknowledgments

vii

Introduction

ix

1

Just War and Obligation

1

2

The Jewish Question and Zionism

13

3

Aristotle, War, the Good Life, and Zionism

31

4

For the State

57

5

Salvation

97

6

Wishful Thinking: Consent, Contract, and the Obligation to Die

135

Justifying the Obligation to Die

183

Conclusion: The Obligation to Die

233

Bibliography

249

Index

265

About the Author

271

7

v

Acknowledgments

While I alone claim responsibility for this work, I could not have completed it without the assistance and guidance of many others. In particular, I want to thank Hidemi Suganami for his exceptional support, generosity, interest in my project and guidance, and Ian Clark for his commitment to my project, his advice and for always having the time to listen to my troubles and read my work. As PhD supervisors they both made a tremendous effort on my behalf and worked above and beyond the call of duty, and I was exceptionally fortunate to have such dedicated and honorable mentors. This book is based on my PhD that I completed at what was, when I started, the University of Wales, Aberystwyth, but became, when I submitted, Aberystwyth University. I would like to thank the Department of International Politics at the University of Wales, Aberystwyth, as well as Universities UK who made it possible for me to continue my post-graduate training in the UK, and at one of if not the best place to research International Relations. In the Department I was fortunate to find much advice and support, and would like to express my gratitude to Andrew Linklater, R. Gerald Hughes, and Lucy Taylor. I also wish to thank my examiners, Howard Williams and John Williams. Before I became a PhD student, I was fortunate to have gained much advice and support from another inspirational academic and generous individual, Christopher Coker, my supervisor when I was a graduate student at the London School of Economics and Political Science. The inspiration for my research remains my grandfather, Hillel Meyerhof, who passed away when I had just recently begun my life as a graduate student at the LSE. It is a great sadness that out of all the essays I wrote as a student and that he read, he did not live long enough to read this one. I want to thank my mother, Sassona Baron, who has constantly supported me. My writing vii

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would have remained incomprehensible and ingeniously creative in its avantgarde syntactic structures without years of help (and patience) from my stepfather Mark Kunen. I want to thank my uncle, Robert Baron, for his help at difficult times. I would also like to mention my younger brother Avi, who finds my work exceptionally boring but will listen to me nonetheless, for a short while at least. I also wish to thank my friends Jono, Rocky, Aaron, Dave and Alessia Biegel, Daniela and Michael Kröll, Stephanie Ward, Silviya Lechner, Sebastian Kaempf, and Carla Barqueiro. However, it is unlikely that I would have survived the stress of PhD life without Jennifer Ince, a tremendous help and source of constant support and encouragement. Academic work is often judged in terms of research, but it is as teachers that some of our most important work is done. Consequently, I would be seriously amiss if I were not to thank a few of my teachers who really stood out when I began my life as a post-secondary student at Camosun College and at the University of Victoria: Ross Lambertson who introduced me to the study of political science; Rob Walker as one of the best teachers I have ever had and whom I continue to learn from; and Warren Magnusson, my honors supervisor, a great teacher, and an inspiring thinker. This book is about a problem that concerns me for ethical and political reasons, but is not a problem that I have any experience of. However, many people do and I want to take a moment to acknowledge my many good friends and family in Israel who have had to confront the difficult moral and political problems involved in military service, including the possibility of an obligation to die. There are many others whom I want to thank, including Fred Halliday who has provided wise counsel and cheerfully volunteered to read one of the more difficult chapters of this book. Finally, thank you to all who kindly read various sections of this manuscript and offered me their comments on it, to my editor, Joseph Parry of Lexington Books. For those of you who I have not mentioned by name, please forgive me.

Introduction

To hold different opinions and to be aware that other people think differently on the same issue shields us from that god-like certainty which stops all discussion and reduces social relationships to those of an ant heap. —Hannah Arendt1

“IF ONLY I COULD DIE FOR HIM . . .” The ability of the state, polis, or sovereign to oblige its citizens to risk their lives for its sake is a presumed aspect of any polity that has the facility to wage war. However, how is this obligation justified? Is this obligation a required feature of a political community? Does the obliged have a choice? Why would there be a choice, and could it be a fair choice? Virtually all contemporary accounts of the ethics of war, and of political obligation, presume that the state or sovereign may justifiably oblige its citizens to risk their lives on its behalf by being sent into war without first justifying this obligation. Following Michael Walzer, I am calling this obligation the obligation to die.2 The obligation is not specifically about sending someone to die as it is about sending someone to his/her possible death in war. In the words of Samuel Pufendorf: Force on the part of an external enemy has often to be met by force or we may need to use violence in claiming our right. In either case the sovereign authority may compel the citizens to perform this kind of service, where it is not a question of deliberately sending them to death but only exposing them to the danger of death.3 ix

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The focus of this book is, accordingly, to inquire into the justifiability of this obligation. Specifically, I am concerned with addressing the question, “How can the sovereign justifiably oblige its subjects to risk their lives by being sent into war?” This obligation is both political in the most blatant of senses (the sovereign is obliging) and moral since the stakes of the obligation involve not just one’s life, but the normative principles which serve to justify the sovereign’s ability to oblige and to oblige in such a way that life itself is at stake. As Pufendorf states, the obligation at issue is an obligation to risk one’s life by being sent into war. The obligation is technically not an obligation to die, even if this is what Walzer calls it. Indeed, as a term or phrase, the obligation to die might be more suited to capital punishment or martyrdom, not being sent to war. Walzer notes these and other distinctions that question the accuracy of his phrase, “the obligation to die.” Whether he chooses this term for its rhetorical power or because he thinks it best describes the problem at issue is unclear. According to Walzer, “the obligation to die” addresses the following question: “Can an individual citizen be obligated to make the safety of the state the motive of his voluntary death?”4 However, is it not more accurate to say that the obligation is not a voluntary death, but the voluntary risking of one’s life? After all, one might not die in battle. A more suitable situation is with capital punishment, where there is an obligation to die, as Socrates knew. Walzer notes this connection, but he also suggests that there may be differences in such obligations, since dying in war is, ostensibly, for the betterment of the state and is not done as a form of legal punishment, whereas being executed by the state is a legal punishment. The Socratic example is, however, an example of both legal punishment and dying for the benefit of the state. Socrates notes as much5 and for this reason, the execution of Socrates is somewhat unique in that it is an example of the obligation to die as Walzer defines it. Walzer’s choice of terminology may have something to do with the Vietnam War and a political atmosphere in America in which conscription very often did involve dying in this War. Yet, being conscripted, for example, does not necessarily carry with it an obligation to risk one’s life by heading onto the battlefield. One might be conscripted to be a cook or engineer. However, insofar as conscription is concerned, one does not know what role one will be given until it is too late. The risk of an obligation to die is present at the moment of conscription. The odds of dying will change according to one’s station in war, but that is all it can do. The chance of being sent into battle remains, as does the chance of being in a combat zone. In this regard, Walzer notes that there is a difference between “risking one’s life in war . . . [and] losing it. . . .”6 The difference is one of risk, but since Walzer is concerned with the moral problem of actually losing one’s life in war, the issue of risk is irrelevant to his ar-

Introduction

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gument. In this regard, I will follow Walzer’s choice of terms, not only because of its rhetorical power, but because it reflects the ultimate seriousness of the obligation at issue. To risk one’s life is, in a sense, not the same problem as being faced with the possibility of losing it. People risk their lives in a variety of ways, in some countries simply driving to the food market carries the great risk of dying in a traffic accident. The point of using this term is to identify a political obligation that is based on the need for people to lay down their lives for the well-being of the state or its equivalent. Most of the time, when we think about the application of morality to warfare, the key terms that one can use pertain to either going to war or fighting a war and how killing another human being in war is not an act of murder. That killing is more of a moral problem than dying may at first appear obvious, since killing is an act of extreme violence against another person whereas dying is in a sense an individual affair. There are many good reasons for these approaches, not least that war involves many human beings trying to kill other human beings. However, dying is just as much of a moral problem as killing, especially when one is obliged to do so. Indeed, there is another element to the morality of warfare that is just as crucial as this problem of killing, and that is the problem of dying. That soldiers sent into war are being sent to their possible death or permanent injury is not a novel statement. Yet the morality of being sent to one’s possible death is not a problem that garners much academic attention and in the contemporary literature is rarely considered from the perspectives of the morality or ethics of war.7 This general silence is odd since dying in war would have to occur just as often as killing in war. Yet it is with killing that our ethical concerns are primarily engaged. Indeed, our ethics would be seriously awry if we were not to think in this way. Morals or ethics are by definition about how one’s actions impact another person, even if one of the most basic of all moral propositions is to universalize how one would want to be treated. This is the famous or infamous Kantian “moral law within me” or the Socratic argument about being true to oneself. This basic paradox of how morality is always about the other but often understood as an issue of the self might contribute to why, in war, killing is habitually seen to be a greater moral problem than dying. So long as morality is internalized in this way the basic problem becomes living with oneself, which cannot happen once one is dead. If morality is based on a dialogue with oneself, it would be curious how morality relates to death since in death this conversation would cease. In death, one can no longer morally judge oneself. As such, death might pose a problem for the traditional language of moral thought that is based on self-initiated judgements. However, it does not mean that one should ignore the question of dying in war just because the moral

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problem of killing in war is so important. There can be little doubt that death is a moral issue, and this book is an exploration of the normative arguments for being sent to one’s possible death in war. Nevertheless, while the moral issue of dying is serious, the obligation to die is a problem that has received remarkably little academic interest since the modern international project of trying to outlaw war and especially in the last century.8 Nowhere is the absence more obvious than in the literature on the ethics of war. For example, Alex Bellamy’s recently published and exceptionally detailed account of just war theory is devoid of comment on the obligation to die.9 The obligation to die is visible in the classic texts, but is for the most part absent in contemporary ones, and as Peter Paret implies in an article on military service, is a problem in need of further study.10 The literature on political obligation shares a similar fate. Principal philosophical texts from Plato to Hegel take the obligation to die to be a serious problem, yet in the twentieth and twenty-first centuries political obligation has become restricted to the morality and/or politics of obeying or consenting to authority in a liberal democracy. Thus, for example, Margaret Gilbert references as a classic example of the problem of political obligation the death of Socrates.11 Yet, she never goes back to this example of an obligation to die, an obligation that Socrates himself compared to being prepared to die in battle, and she is instead interested in trying to provide a theory of political obligation in a liberal state. However, this obligation is especially important in thinking about the ethics of war and is crucial for any theory of state. One very broad indication of the significance of this obligation is in the disparate but notable sources of literature in which it has appeared over time. The obligation to die appears in classics such as Homer’s Iliad, Leo Tolstoy’s War and Pace, Ernest Hemingway’s For Whom the Bell Tolls, and the Vietnam War book by Tim O’Brien, If I Die in a Combat Zone. Less famously, Zionist poems also reference this obligation, as in a poem by David Shimonovitz where he writes, “No! We shall not allow our blood to be shed in vain.”12 In these literary examples, dying for the state or its equivalent is an obligation, something that one may not want to do, but feels somehow compelled to. Indeed, historically the obligation to die has been justified according to a mixture of moral theorizing about the individual and war, and has been addressed in various defenses of political obligation. Sometimes the obligation is justified because of an individual’s desire to achieve heroism on the battlefield, but at other times individual greatness has nothing to do with it. For example, in Tolstoy’s classic, War and Peace, one of the lead characters, Nikolay Rostov, expresses a strong desire to die for the Tsar, “Oh, if only I could die for him!” after seeing the Tsar during a regimental inspection.13

Introduction

xiii

Yet, after discovering that the Tsar can be wounded the romance of dying is replaced by a gritty realism suggesting that somehow like the Tsar, he too should not be worried about his mortal being. “‘It makes no difference now! If the Emperor’s wounded why should I save my skin?’ He thought. He rode into a patch of land where more men had been killed running away from Pratzen than anywhere else.”14 This change of attitude, Rostov’s reluctant acceptance that his death might be meaningless whereas previously he felt it to be a glorious demonstration of devotion to the Tsar, is evidence of how dying in war is a complicated phenomenon. Whereas initially it may be individually justified by the romance of a heroic death, when Rostov resigned himself to his possible death he did not question why he would risk his life, he simply accepted that he should. Heroism was replaced by something else, something unromantic but obligatory. Tolstoy’s brief reference to the obligation to die focuses on three possible justifying arguments: individual heroics, individual will, and necessity. Out of these three justifications the first and second kind are of greater interest since they are more clearly related to the problem of political obligation than the first. The problem of political obligation, of why anybody would obey somebody else, or more specifically, of why a citizen or member of the political community “has a moral obligation to obey those who claim political authority”15 has been a fundamental question throughout the history of political thought. This is especially true for medieval philosophers and theologians who were greatly concerned with explaining the order of the human world and the need to obey the proper authorities. Consequently, it is no surprise that the problem of obligation was taken up in relation to war, and, accordingly, this book is primarily focused on the intersection between political obligation and the ethics of war. From Augustine onward, the medieval Christian just war tradition was concerned with how to justify the obligation to die, of how the proper authorities could justifiably send their subjects to their possible death in war. Prior to St. Augustine, there are illustrations in ancient Greek philosophy and mythology of how dying in war could be justified. Modern references to the obligation to die can be found in Spinoza, Hobbes, Rousseau, Kant, and others. Consequently, in order to critically analyze the obligation to die, the ethics of war need to be examined for arguments justifying political obligation and the problem of political obligation needs to be read alongside an account of the ethics of war. In these pages I am not concerned with what makes a war just. There is already a substantial body of work on this issue and on related questions applying the just war tradition to particular conflicts.16 Rather, I am concerned about the fundamental issue of the foundation for the obligation to die and what justifications have historically existed for this political obligation. This

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obligation is important because without it states would be profoundly different creatures than they are today or have been. The ability to wage war has consistently been a hallmark of sovereign authority, and thus to question the obligation to die is to question the basic underpinnings of theories of state. The obligation to die is also important because if it is possible to ask questions about the justifiability of any particular war or to apply just war theory to empirical cases, there needs to be an explanation of how the state can justifiably send its citizens into war. Without such a justification it is difficult to think of how any war could be justified according to any of the just war tenets.

US FIGHT? BUT WE’RE JEWISH! It is conventional wisdom to recognize that the state is a violent entity, and any political theory needs to take into account this side of the state’s character. But what happens when a people has no history of statehood, and has not had to come to terms with how to justify moral practice with political necessity. Since 70 B.C.E. this is the story of the Jews, until Zionism emerged. Zionism emerged in the 1880s with the goal of establishing a Jewish nation-state, presumably but not necessarily in what was then called Palestine. In responding to a history that hardly ever considered Jews becoming involved in the political affairs of the state, or even using violence, Zionism had to provide a justification for both. For Jews, political participation and violence have traditionally been linked to the Jewish exile and the destruction of the Second Temple in Jerusalem by the Romans. In effect, traditional post-exile religious Jewish teachings have been strongly against any political participation and have been especially critical of the use of political violence. Zionist Jews effectively rewrote Jewish history in order to explain how Jews as Jews could fight and die for the Jewish people, for the Jewish state. One of the ways they did this was to take the old messianic idea of redemption and secularize it by claiming that the Jew of the Old Country was weak and impoverished, and that the future of the Jews lay with a new Jew, strong and powerful, a participant in global history and political life. What Zionism did was claim that not only would Jews need to respond as Jews in order to combat anti-Jewish attacks, but that the only way they could successfully defend themselves against any anti-Jewish ideology was by living in their own nation-state, and thus take on the powers of the state themselves, including the use of force and the obligations that go with it. This historical revisionism is how the great tragedy of mass suicide at Massada becomes an act of heroism instead of a sign against resorting to armed force and a tragic tale of surrender to the Romans.

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Zionism’s origins did not include so much an obligation to die as an obligation for self-defense. The early Zionists in Russia were reacting against pogroms and were not concerned with the problem of political obligation. Zionism could not survive, however, if it did not come to include an account of political obligation; and when in the late nineteenth century Theodor Herzl became the de facto leader and diplomat of Zionism, political obligation was becoming an increasingly important part in Zionist thought and practice. At first, when the obligation to die emerged in Zionist writings it was in fiction and was a romantic obligation, chosen by persecuted individual Jewish characters who sought to regain the honour and dignity of the Jewish people. Herzl and the onetime famous social critic Max Nordau both produced plays where, in this vein, the Jewish protagonist goes to his death in a duel. When Zionism started to take on a great material reality through the settling of Jewish communities in Palestine, the obligation to die took on increasing significance and became a poignant example of the independent and fiercely strong Jewish settler, far removed from the stereotype of the weak ghetto Jew of Europe. Even for the Zionists who sought primarily to remake themselves according to an ethos of manual labour, the idea of Jews fighting and dying for the sake of the Jewish state took on a symbolism of unprecedented significance. The more militant Zionists adopted without hesitation Biblical myths and stories of Jewish resistance against the Romans to exaggerate the historical significance, Jewish relevance, and heroics of the Zionist dying for the sake of Zionism. By the late 1940s, these ideas were so firmly implanted in the Zionist psyche that when the time came there was little ideological or moral resistance to establishing a forced draft of eligible conscripts in the Jewish Displaced Persons Camps in Germany and Austria after the War. Zionism provides a useful site to explore the obligation to die because the Zionists had to explain and justify this obligation. For example, in 1936 Palestinian Arabs rebelled against the Zionist project of establishing a Jewish homeland. The immediate reaction of many Zionists in Palestine facing such an obligation was by and large one of surprise. Suddenly, so it seemed, the Zionists had to respond to widespread violent Arab opposition to their plans. As a result of the Arab revolt, a defensive ethos became an increasingly pronounced aspect of Zionism. Of particular note was the displacement of the traditional Jewish objection to violence and the shedding of human blood by the new “principle that the Jew was obliged to defend his life and dignity.”17 Included in this principle was the relatively new idea to Jews that they had a political obligation to risk their lives for the Jewish settlements in Palestine, to risk their lives for the sake of Zionism, that is, to risk their lives as Jews for a political project. These Jews redefined themselves in the mold of the European nationalist tradition that sought to merge nation and state. As a consequence of this

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merger, Zionism found itself in the novel position of having to justify Jewish resorts to force, including a justification of an obligation to die. Dying for the Jewish nation became a remarkable, exceptional, and heroic event, and is something that Israel has sought to mythologize in a series of museums and memorials which dot the landscape, and which are a testament not to the power of the sovereign state to oblige, but to the Jews fighting and especially, dying for themselves before there even was a Jewish state. Jewish political life in the modern world was the focus of the Jewish Question. The Jewish Question was about the possibilities for Jewish participation in the political spaces of a world made of European nation-states. Its two modern and humane answers,18 Zionism and assimilationism, were products of their time and good examples of the Zeitgeist of the modern nation-state mode of political life. The Zionist answer to the Jewish Question and to a certain degree the assimilationist answer as well, provide numerous and diverse illustrations of how the obligation to die can be justified and incorporated into a political project. The Jewish Question, but particularly Zionism, helps the following critical analysis of the obligation to die for three reasons. First, the two modern and humane answers to the Question reinscribe the basic assumptions and arguments for justifications of the state, of a particular kind of political life. The Jewish Question was about Jews articulating a modern account of political obligation and thus provides a case where political obligations had to be argued and not assumed. Previously, Jewish thought frowned upon Jews becoming active agents in political life. The Jewish Question, however, ushered in a new mode of thought in which Jews actively sought as Jews the opportunities to place themselves in situations requiring political obligations. Second, for Jews, searching to find a political space was not just about politics but about survival. It is, consequently, logical that the Jewish Question took politics to refer to life itself. The violent pogroms, for example, fuelled Eastern European Jewry into active resistance, including armed resistance and Zionist activism. Zionism was, as such, a means for Jews to save themselves in such a way that life as a Jew was no longer placed in the hands of non-Jewish elites or the local mob. The Jews who struggled to answer the Jewish Question felt that the life of the Jews was at risk if they could not find a way into the political spaces of modernity, seen as the modern nation-state. As such, the Jewish Question framed politics as a question to do with life itself, and this formulation mirrors that of the obligation to die. The obligation to die, if it is an obligation at all, is an obligation that reinforces sovereign power because it grants sovereignty the possibility to control not just what kind of life is possible, but life itself. The Jewish Question, by way of Jewish experience, saw political sovereignty in this way and sought a means for the

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Jews to become involved in political sovereignty so that their lives would not be at the whim of others. In this regard, both the obligation to die and the Jewish Question exist at the point where sovereign authority is seemingly necessary, because it makes life possible (or at least, a life worth living), and is also called into doubt, because when life itself is at stake, there is bound to be some doubt as to the legitimacy of that which could place one in mortal danger. Third, a major advantage in looking at the Jewish Question and Zionism is that the Zionist answer had to argue why anybody should fight and possibly die as a Jew for a Jew. During the Second World War even Hannah Arendt, who became involved in the early Zionist peace movement, called for the formation of a Jewish army to fight the Nazis.19 Zionism could not take it for granted that the Jews would accept an obligation to die and thus had to provide such an argument. Moreover, by turning to the modern nation-state, Zionism replicated the political philosophical language that has often been used to justify the obligation to die. In brief, the Zionist answer to the Jewish Question illustrates how the obligation to die is argued in practice, and provides insight into the problems involved in justifying the obligation to die. There are numerous types of Zionism, including Zionist critiques of Zionism, which gives Zionism a suitable theoretical position in which to critique political obligation from the inside, and to challenge the arguments justifying political obligation on their own terms.

ARGUMENT STRUCTURE The argument that begins in the next chapter seeks to address how the obligation to die can become, in part, justifiable. It is not suggested that the obligation can be entirely just, but in following with the basic assumption behind the just war tradition that moral considerations are important in evaluating being sent into war. The question that guides this research is how it is that the state is, in principle, the kind of entity that can oblige its citizens that they risk their lives by being sent into war. What is it that the state provides that gives it the ability to justify an obligation to die? There are six related questions that pertain to how the obligation can become justified. First, does it make any sense to presume that the state is worth dying for? Second, can any state, by virtue of what it is, justifiably oblige its inhabitants to die in war? Third, assuming that humans have a right to life, what is the role of choice and/or consent in the obligation to die? Fourth, what does the state make possible that gives it the ability to override this right to life in relation to war? Fifth, what is it about membership in a polity or state that could justify this obligation

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and, sixth, how does the value of membership in the polity or state justify the obligation? In regard to the first and second questions, I take a sceptical approach and presume that there is nothing inherently obvious about the state or polity that makes it worth dying for. Consequently, I examine how different political philosophers have contextualized the state or polity so that it can justify an obligation to die. One of the most important philosophers in this regard is Aristotle, whose claim that the city-state exists for the purpose of achieving the good life remains a paradigmatic way of thinking about the normative character of the state. The third question is about the place of consent and choice, and whether or not consent is necessary and if so, how consent functions in the obligation to die. The fourth, fifth, and sixth questions are about theories of state, of what it is about the state, or about membership in a bounded political community that justifies the obligation to die. The following argument will not suggest that the obligation to die can ever be entirely just. Ultimately, the aim is to provide an account of politics that could contribute to explaining how membership in the polity could involve a justifiable obligation to be sent into war. Justifying this obligation requires sustained reflection on many difficult questions involving, for example, moral philosophy, the justifiability of going to war and to what extent the way the war is fought is justified. The limited aim in these pages is to examine the account of obligation that exists in justifying the obligation to die. To this end, by way of a sustained critique this book will address key themes that are necessary for this obligation to become at least partly justified. These themes pertain to the kind of subject that is obliged, the relation between subject and sovereign, the normative purpose(s) of the sovereign, and the kind of politics that exist inside the state or political community. I argue that the obligation to die can become justifiable if the polity that one is being sent to possibly die for is pluralistic, enables a particular kind of political life that respects human differences, recognizes the importance of speech in political life, and respects human spontaneity. I also argue that the polity or state needs to restrict violence both inside the state and between states so that when the obligation to die arises, it is one of necessity for the survival of a just community. What makes the state able to oblige is its ability to restrict violence and enable a political life. The politics that the polity enables exist for the benefit of humanity, and not just for the citizens of a particular state. This reading of politics and violence is inspired by Hannah Arendt, who is used because her political thought is relevant to both the Jewish Question and the political problem of being obliged to risk one’s life for the polity in war.

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Arendt’s original thinking and her ability to discover hidden contradictions in modern political thought makes her an appealing thinker to use even though she was and remains a hotly contested and polarising figure.20 Her reputation as a thinker has also been questioned, such as in an article by the historian Walter Laqueur where he challenged not just the value of her thought, but her character.21 Yet, the strengths in Arendt’s thought are often what marked her as a target. As she wrote to Gershom Scholem in response to his highly critical commentary on her Eichmann book, “What confuses you is that my arguments and my approach are different from what you are used to; in other words, the trouble is that I am independent.”22 In a completely different exchange with Hans Morgenthau, who asked, “What are you? Are you a conservative? Are you a liberal? Where is your position within the contemporary possibilities?”23 She replied, I don’t know. I really don’t know and I’ve never known. And I supposed I never had any such position. You know the left think I am a conservative, and the conservatives sometimes think I am of the left or I am a maverick or God knows what. And I must say I couldn’t care less.24

In response to her detractors, one could say that her suggestions indicate a possible alternative vision of politics and one that is just as realistic as any other form that has graced the unpredictable human experience of life on Earth. Indeed for these and other reasons that become clearer, Arendt’s political thought plays an important part in the following argument and critical exposition. Arendt does not provide an account of political obligation, and her political thinking was by and large critical of a tradition often obsessed with the problem of political obligation. Using Arendt to think through the obligation to die is to read with Arendt, but also to read contra Arendt. Arendt brings to this project a political and moral voice to a political and moral problem that requires the same kind of seriousness that she saw in politics and the same kind of ingenuity and insight that she brought to the study of political theory. The argument contained in the following seven chapters follows a series of moves designed to illuminate key themes contained within the historical arguments justifying the obligation the die. Four primary historical arguments justifying this obligation are identified: (i) for the good life, (ii) for the state, (iii) because of salvation, (iv) because of consent. The first has its origins in Aristotle and is the claim that the state provides the possibility for the (or a) good life. This argument is based on what the state enables its citizens to achieve by living in the state, and finds various manifestations across time, turning into the second historical argument. In the medieval period Thomas

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Aquinas co-opted Aristotle into Christian natural law. Modern philosophy, notably Hegel’s, took the Aristotelian idea that the state has transcendental qualities that help citizens achieve a higher level of existence and used it as a basis justifying the state and thus, political obligation. With Aquinas and Hegel we see a medieval and a modern version of Aristotle’s argument that claims that the obligation to die is just because of the value of the state. The third and significantly different argument is found with Saint Augustine who uses the Christian concept of individual salvation to justify political obligation. Aquinas also uses this argument, although in a substantially different way from Augustine due to Aquinas’ use of Aristotle. The fourth historical argument is based on modern consent theory, and claims in general that political obligations are just because the individual is consenting to an authority that the individual establishes. However, as will be demonstrated in subsequent chapters, all of these arguments are laced with serious deficiencies that focus on three questions about polity, plurality and politics, and choice. What normative understanding of the polity justifies its ability for the obligation to die? As a political obligation, what conception of politics is needed to justify the obligation to die? How, over time and specifically in relation to the modern nation-state, do difference and pluralism relate to the political foundations of an obligation to die? What makes the obligation justified as a political obligation, that is to say, as an obligation based on a political life in the state? What is the role of choice in the obligation to die, or, in other words, how does consent apply to the obligation to die? From the four historical arguments, a fifth emerges that pertains to the normative conditions of politics that exist in the bounded community. Chapter one addresses how and why the obligation to die has come to be ignored in contemporary just war thought. Chapter two is a historical introduction to the Jewish Question and to Zionism. Chapter three begins the examination of arguments justifying the obligation to die. This chapter explores the good life argument and raises a series of themes that become increasingly important in subsequent chapters. This chapter also demonstrates how Zionist thought and practice relate to the examination of the obligation to die. The subsequent chapters are specific critiques of particular arguments justifying the obligation to die. Chapter four looks at a medieval and a modern argument that use the value of the state. This chapter examines Aquinas’ argument for the common good and Hegel’s political philosophy of the common or ethical life. Chapter five focuses on the religious argument by turning to two primary Christian just war thinkers: Saint Augustine and Saint Thomas Aquinas. Aquinas’ thought is critiqued in two chapters in order to avoid confusion by respecting his classification of the different types of law he uses in his justi-

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fication for the obligation to die. Chapter six looks at the consent argument and surveys how consent has been used in the thought of Hobbes, Rousseau, Kant and Michael Walzer to justify or explain the obligation to die. Chapter seven, starting with Socrates and then moving to Hannah Arendt, focuses on the fifth argument, on the normative conditions contained in a political life among others in a bounded community. This chapter provides an argument for how the obligation to die could become justifiable. This book is primarily focused on European thought and history in its examination of political thought. There are undoubtedly other non-European sources that could be examined to provide illustrations for the obligation to die. Considering the religious violence between Buddhists and Shintoists in Japanese history, for example, there are clearly other non-European examples to study.25 However, it is not the purpose of this project to provide a world history of how the obligation to die has been justified. Throughout these pages I will be using a variety of terms to refer to the political entity doing the obliging. The source of the obligation in the ancient world was the polis, in the medieval world the city-state, commonwealth, or sovereign, and in the modern world the state, sovereign, or even the autonomous individual. These are not synonyms, yet insofar as the obligation to die is concerned they might as well be. The term sovereign can be used to refer to them all, for as R. B. J. Walker points out, sovereignty has at least five different definitional uses: as a problem of how an authority becomes sovereign; as a boundary making discourse; as an identifier of the modern state in a system of states; as manifest in particular institutions that reproduce sovereign authority; and finally, being located in the modern subject through the production of particular identities such as citizen, nation, human being with human rights, and so forth.26 Being able to cogently articulate an argument about political obligation will inevitably involve making reference to some, if not all, of these problems (sometimes simultaneously), which is why I will often use the term sovereign instead of state or polis. Regardless of which term is used, the focus is on one basic feature that remains the same: that the sovereign, state or polis, is able to oblige its subjects (be they citizens or something else) to risk their lives by sending them into war.

NOTES 1. Hannah Arendt, The Jew as Pariah, ed. Ron H. Feldman (New York: Grove Press, 1978), 182. 2. Michael Walzer, Obligations: Essays on Disobedience, War and Citizenship (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1970).

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3. Samuel Pufendorf, On the Duty of Man and Citizen, ed. James Tully, trans. Michael Silverthorne (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1991), 158. 4. Walzer, Obligations, 80. 5. Plato, The Last Days of Socrates: Euthyphro, Apology, Crito, Phaedo, trans. Hugh Tredennick and Harold Tarrant (London: Penguin Books, 2003). 6. Walzer, Obligations, 83. 7. Throughout this book the terms moral and ethical will be used interchangeably, except when referring to Hegel who made a distinction between the two. 8. There are, of course, a few exceptions, but considering how significant this obligation is, and of how much literature is published on the ethics of war, the few texts are the exceptions that prove the rule. The exceptions are, Walzer, Obligations, Geoffrey B. Levey, “Judaism and the Obligation to Die for the State,” in Law, Politics, and Morality in Judaism, ed. Michael Walzer (Princeton and Oxford: Princeton University Press, 2006), Cheyney C. Ryan, “Self-Defense and the Obligations to Kill and to Die,” Ethics and International Affairs 18, no. 1 (2004), George Kateb, The Inner Ocean: Individualism and Democratic Culture (Ithaca, N.Y.; London: Cornell University Press, 1992), John T. Sanders and Jan Narveson, For and against the State: New Philosophical Readings, Studies in Social, Political, and Legal Philosophy (Lanham, Md.; London: Rowman & Littlefield, 1996), Francis H. Bradley, Ethical Studies (Bristol: Thoemmes Antiquarian Books, 1990). Walzer’s is the most detailed account of the obligation to die and his argument is examined in chapter 6. Other than Walzer’s and Levey’s respective texts, the time devoted to this problem in these other sources is minimal. 9. Alex J. Bellamy, Just Wars: From Cicero to Iraq (Cambridge: Polity Press, 2006). In an otherwise exceptionally well-researched book, Bellamy’s treatment of the Zionist/Palestinian conflict is especially contentious. On page 151, he claims that Israel “owes its identity to a campaign of random murder against Arabs.” This politically charged observation is based on his analysis of the possibility that the Zionist leadership conducted a policy of ethnic cleansing against the local Palestinian population, a population that Bellamy correctly notes had been the majority of inhabitants for a millennium. Bellamy’s analysis is, however, missing any reference to the classic text on the subject by Benny Morris where Morris claims that the refugee problem emerged because of war. See, Benny Morris, The Birth of the Palestinian Refugee Problem Revisited, 2nd ed. (Cambridge; New York: Cambridge University Press, 2004). For that matter, Bellamy’s research on this issue is lacking most of the key historical texts on the subject. Had he paid more attention to the literature he would have considered more seriously that by this time a civil war was going on in Palestine, which should not lessen any moral disgust at some of the tactics used by Zionist militia groups, but certainly places them in a different analytical light. In an analysis of just war application, Bellamy questions not an Arab/Israeli war, but the civil war that took place between Zionists, Palestinians, and the British during the Mandate period, a conflict that he decides is a good test case to examine how just war thinking could be applied to terrorism. Yet, Bellamy provides little analysis of why his readers should presume this to be an example of terrorism and not one of civil war.

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10. Peter Paret, “Justifying the Obligation of Military Service,” The Journal of Military History 57, no. 5 (1993). The article is rich in detail and is a good historical critique, but offers little in the way of argument about the obligation to die. However, Paret rightfully notes that the obligation is not something to be taken for granted. Paret also wrote a similar article published in Military Affairs, 34, no.1 (1970) called, Nationalism and the Sense of Military Obligation, and which was reprinted in, Peter Paret, Understanding War: Essays on Clausewitz and the History of Military Power (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1992), 39–52. 11. Margaret Gilbert, A Theory of Political Obligation: Membership, Commitment, and the Bonds of Society (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 2006). 12. Quoted in, Anita Shapira, Land and Power: The Zionist Resort to Force, 1881–1948 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1992; reprint, Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1999), 238–39. 13. Leo Tolstoy, War and Peace, trans. Anthony Briggs (London: Penguin Books, 2005), 262. 14. Tolstoy, War, 305. In 1805, Pratzen was the main field of battle during the Napoleonic battle of Austerlitz and is North of Vienna. 15. Rolf Sartorius, “Political Authority and Political Obligation,” Virginia Law Review 67, no. 1 (1981): 3. 16. See for example, Bellamy, Just Wars; Douglas P. Lackey, The Ethics of War and Peace (Englewood Cliffs, N.J.; London: Prentice Hall International, 1989); Jean Bethke Elshtain, ed., Just War Theory (Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1992); Jean Bethke Elshtain, Just War against Terror: The Burden of American Power in a Violent World (New York: Basic Books, 2004); Jean Bethke Elshtain and David E. DeCosse, But Was It Just? Reflections on the Morality of the Persian Gulf War (London; New York: Doubleday, 1992); James Turner Johnson, Can Modern War Be Just? (London: Yale University Press, 1984); James Turner Johnson, The War to Oust Saddam Hussein: Just War and the New Face of Conflict (Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, 2005); James Turner Johnson and George Weigel, Just War and the Gulf War (Washington, D.C.; Lanham, MD: Ethics and Public Policy Center, Distributed by arrangement with University Press of America, 1991); William Vincent O’Brien, Law and Morality in Israel’s War with the Plo (London; New York: Routledge, 1991); William Vincent O’Brien, The Conduct of Just and Limited War (New York, N.Y.: Praeger, 1981); Oliver O’Donovan, The Just War Revisited (Cambridge; New York: Cambridge University Press, 2003); Paul Ramsey, The Just War: Force and Political Responsibility, Updated ed. (Lanham, Md. Oxford: Rowman & Littlefield, 2002); Richard J. Regan, Just War: Principles and Cases (Washington, D.C.: Catholic University of America Press, 1996); Michael Walzer, Just and Unjust Wars: A Moral Argument with Historical Illustrations, 3rd ed. (New York: Basic Books, 2000). 17. Shapira, Land and Power, 238. 18. This is the terminology used by Michael Walzer in, Michael Walzer, ed., Law, Politics, and Morality in Judaism (Princeton and Oxford: Princeton University Press, 2006). The inhumane answer was the Nazi final solution. 19. Hannah Arendt, Jewish Writings, ed. Jerome Kohn and Ron H. Feldman (New York: Schocken Books, 2007).

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20. Her publication, The Origins of Totalitarianism, has been questioned by historians for its accuracy, and her book, Eichmann in Jerusalem, was greeted with tremendous controversy and condemned in the most vitriolic of academic debates. The postEichmann infamy of Arendt seemingly had no bounds. In the weeks before the 1967 Six-Day War, Israeli Prime Minister Levi Eshkol said, “Must we allow ourselves to be worn down and killed bit by bit, if not destroyed in a future all-out war, as promised by Nasser? Must we wait for Hannah Arendt to write articles about our failure to resist?” Quoted in, David Remnick, “The Seventh Day,” The New Yorker, May 28, 2007. For a recent critique of Arendt from what might be called an Israeli perspective see, Elhanan Yakira, “Hannah Arendt, the Holocaust, and Zionism: A Story of a Failure,” Israel Studies 11, no. 3 (2006). The odd thing about this article, and which is shared by many critics of Arendt, is to portray Arendt as supremely arrogant, as if to presume that arrogance and academia are antithetical to each other and that ad hominem arguments are legitimate, and, more importantly, to ignore Arendt’s ethical thought and thus place her political statements out of the normative context from which they emerge. Furthermore, it is telling that this side of Arendt is not shared in the accounts of her provided by her students, such as in, Elisabeth Young-Bruehl, Hannah Arendt: For Love of the World, 2nd ed. (New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 2004). 21. Walter Laqueur writes of her political thinking that, “She had no constructive advice to follow to prevent a conflict, nor was she willing to shut up.” Walter Laqueur, “The Arendt Cult: Hannah Arendt as Political Commentator,” Journal of Contemporary History 33, no. 4 (1998): 289. 22. Arendt, The Jew as Pariah, 250. While they were friends before the publication of this book, this friendship ended afterward. 23. Anthony F. Lang Jr. and John Williams, eds., Hannah Arendt and International Relations: Reading across the Lines (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2005), 3. Quoted in, Margaret Canovan, “Hannah Arendt as a Conservative Thinker,” in Larry May and Jerome Kohn (eds.), Hannah Arendt: Twenty Years Later (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1997), 11. 24. Land and Williams, Hannah Arendt, 3. 25. One recent book on this topic is, Mikael S. Adolphson, The Teeth and Claws of the Buddha: Monastic Warriors and Sohei in Japanese History (Honolulu: University of Hawai’i Press, 2007). 26. R. B. J. Walker, “After the Future: Enclosures, Connections, Politics,” in Reframing the International: Law, Culture, Politics, ed. Richard Falk, Lester Edwin J. Ruiz, and R. B. J. Walker (New York and London: Routledge, 2002), 14.

Chapter One

Just War and Obligation

AN INTRODUCTION TO POLITICAL OBLIGATION AND JUST WAR The problem of political obligation has been called “the central [problem/ question] of political philosophy.”1 In an essay on the state of political theory, Isaiah Berlin suggests that, “The most fundamental of all political questions” is, “Why should anyone obey anyone else?”2 A. P. d’Entrèves claims that, “The history of political theory is to me first and foremost the history of the attempts to solve the problem of political obligation.”3 The problem of political obligation is not just about why anybody would obey somebody else, but what it is about the state that makes it possible to oblige its inhabitants. The problem is not just about obeying another person, but about obeying the authority of the state. Consent accounts of political obligation tend to avoid the term obey to characterize political obligation, although as addressed in chapter 6 considering the inherent lack of choice in most consent accounts, the term “obey” may still be the most accurate way to think about the problem of political obligation in traditional political theory. Hannah Arendt makes a similar distinction when she claims that rulers “give commands” while the ruled “obey.”4 What Arendt is trying to point out by this distinction is what she sees to be the mistake of confusing consent with obedience. In this work I will disagree with Arendt on this point. Often consent is used to mean obedience. However, I agree with Arendt that such distinctions are a problem. The problem of trying to separate obligation from obedience can sometimes hinge on the agent involved, so a subject obeys whereas the sovereign obliges, for example. But this formula does not necessarily allow for an explanation of 1

2

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what being obliged is, and how being obliged is significantly different from obeying. The idea of an obligation is often differentiated from the term obedience in moral terms that do not reflect the political problems at stake in the problem of political obligation (for more on this see in particular the section on Kant in chapter 6). In any case, arguments for political obligation vary greatly in scope since they are in effect theories of state, of why the state is necessary and why its authority should be accepted, or how the state is constituted, or why an individual would comply with state authority, or in Arendtian terms, how laws are supported. In A Theory of Political Obligation, Margaret Gilbert uses a few sentences to describe the problem of political obligation, including, “Must one obey the commands of one’s country simply because it is one’s country?”5 She then rephrases her definition slightly to refer to being obliged to obey, although she respects that there are other ways of defining the problem. It is because of the scope covered by the problem of political obligation that it is such a contested term, and that it can become so confusing a term. Its use here is not intended to provide a theory of political obligation, but rather to explore different ways in which the problem of obligation has been used to justify risking one’s life for the state in war.6 In relation to war, the fundamental problem that relates to obligation is the ability of the state or its equivalent to oblige its inhabitants to go into battle and risk their lives in the process. As Michael Walzer writes, “When the state is in danger, its citizens rush to its defense, forgetful of all personal danger. They die willingly for the sake of the state, not because the state protects their lives—which would be as, Hegel argued, absurd—but because the state is their common life.”7 In this vein, there are a variety of different types of obligation at work. There is the obligating power of the authority and there is the obliging ability of the obliged. What concerns me here is the ability of the authority to justifiably oblige. In this regard, many of the classical just war thinkers were concerned with the problem of political obligation, and some of their arguments will be examined in future chapters. The origins of just war theory are in Christian political thought,8 although it has come to have less to do with political theology than with the ability to apply moral discourse to the problem of war. The phrase “just war” is the translation from the Latin iustum bellum, which is more accurately translated as “justified war.”9 The term “just” is not meant to connote justice per se, but is more attuned to the term justifiable. According to the tradition, a war is just if the criteria of “just cause, right intention, proper authority, last resort, effectiveness, proportionality, [and] discrimination” are met.10 These are the tenets that make up the just war tradition and are often distinguished by the two categories of ius ad bellum (the justice or laws of war) and ius in bello (the justice or laws in war), although initially there was no such distinction as

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all the issues of relevance fell into one, possibly overcrowded, ius ad bellum. The theory outlines the application of morality to war, and the contemporary literature generally uses the just war tradition to form sets of guidelines for the moral evaluation of a particular conflict or a particular type of conflict; sometimes the literature critiques one or more of these guidelines or explains the contribution to the tradition of certain thinkers.11 What is lacking in these accounts and what is needed is an account that examines what the just war theorists had to say about the obligation to die. Within just war discourse, it is most often under the tenet of proper authority that this obligation has been addressed. That the concept of proper authority is in some ways a theory of state is alluded to in key historical surveys of the tradition and other related texts.12 However, it remains to be addressed how it is possible to explain the justifiability of any particular war without explaining how individuals can be expected to risk their lives by being sent into this war. To my knowledge, there are only two essays explicitly on this subject, one by Michael Walzer and the other by Geoffrey Levey; the topic appears in two chapters, one by Cheyney Ryan and the other by George Kateb, in different books; F. H. Bradley mentions the problem in passing in a lengthy critique on individualist philosophy, and the obligation is referenced in an article by Peter Paret.13 The most important of these is Michael Walzer’s essay, “The Obligation to Die.”14 None of these texts notice the importance of this problem for the ethics of war, and even taken together they are overly brief on a subject worthy of significant attention.

FORGETTING ABOUT OBLIGATION The obligation to die is a problem that arises in most Western philosophical texts from Plato to Kant. However, it is not an obligation that has received much study and in the contemporary literature on either just war or political obligation and is usually taken for granted. This silence is odd. The absence of this issue in the political obligation literature of the twentieth and twenty-first centuries is curious and difficult to explain unless one presumes that as a problem related to war this obligation is not in the purview of political theory. However, this is not a satisfying answer since the few times the obligation is referred to in this literature has been in traditional political theory–type works. The silence is more readily explained in the ethics of war literature. Classical just war thinkers felt that the obligation to die needed to be justified if a war could be justified. However, most contemporary or modern just war thinkers are not so inclined, and for various reasons.

4

Chapter One

The just war tradition has historically been greatly concerned with the characteristics of the proper authority and how this authority could be considered to be justifiable in its resort to armed force, and thus oblige its subjects to risk their lives by being sent into war. Contemporary usages of just war theory take for granted that there is a clear reason why the state is, under the appropriate circumstances, allowed to demand that its citizens go to war and risk their lives. Historically, the just war tradition does not support this assumption. Traditional just war theorists found it necessary to explain why the state is entitled to send its members to die. Consequently, how is it that this key issue in just war thinking has become either ignored or taken for granted? One part of the answer has to do with the way in which just war thinking developed as an international theory. The proper authority tenet served to legitimize states as the only actors who could wage war. That is, this tenet legitimized states with specific powers in relation to other states. The proper authority tenet was not seen to provide a foundation for justifying the authority of the state in relation to its inhabitants, but in relation to other states. By linking together the state with the ability to legitimately declare war, the tenet of proper authority establishes a community of agents with similar abilities in relation to each other, thus restricting who may enter into the community of nations, who may wage war, conduct relevant treaty negotiations and so on. Consequently, while it was important for early just war theorists such as St. Augustine and St. Thomas Aquinas to justify the authority in relation to its domestic constituents, this feature became overshadowed by a process of reading this tenet as a feature explaining an international system. This shift became increasingly pronounced in modern international law. The international lawyer Yoram Dinstein notes that contemporary international legal literature does not engage with ius ad bellum. Ius ad bellum, along with its philosophical and theological referents, are not the kinds of issues that international lawyers engage with anymore.15 According to Dinstein, one of the reasons for this absence within the international legal community has to do with how the issues behind the legality of war are of a philosophical, moral, and possibly theological character. International law has, so it seems, solved the ius ad bellum problem by trying to outlaw war and claiming that any legal resort to violence has to be of a defensive nature. A war, consequently, can become justified provided that it is a response to an illegal act of aggression. Just war theorists thus have an excuse not to critique the ius ad bellum components. The philosopher Robert Holmes notes that, “Most modern theorists . . . devote little attention to the question of whether a war is justified; they assume that it is and ask only under what conditions it is justified and how it is to be conducted justly.”16 To a certain degree this as-

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sumption is not surprising, although post September 11, 2001, this assumption is becoming increasingly challenged (especially when debating the war in Iraq).17 Such challenges notwithstanding, if war is rendered illegal by international law, then what matters is not the question of resorting to force, but how responses to illegal resorts to force can be kept within the moral codes that led to the outlaw of war in the first place. According to Dinstein, “In the nineteenth and (and early part of the twentieth) century, the attempt to differentiate between just and unjust wars in positive international law was discredited and abandoned.”18 W. E. Hall gives two reasons behind this abandonment in his famous, Treatise on International Law. First, disputes or causes leading to war are usually not based in “any fundamental principle of law,”19 and are consequently, “too complex to be judged with any certainty. . . .”20 The rules which jurists have made in regard to a just cause have been “mere abstract statements of principles, or perhaps of truisms, which it is unnecessary to reproduce.”21 Hall then references Ayala, Grotius, Vattel,22 and a few others as sources of such truisms and vague statements of principle. Hall’s second reason is that even if it were possible to determine which side in war was right and which side was wrong, it would still be futile to attempt to punish the aggressor since there exists no enforcement mechanism. “The obedience which is paid to law must be a willing obedience, and when a state has taken up arms unjustly it is useless to expect it to acquiesce in the imposition of penalties for its act.”23 First published in 1880, Hall’s Treatise argues that any notion of just cause is not only legally useless, but also pointless. Even if it were possible to determine which side in war has the just cause, doing so does nothing to limit the possibilities for war. Moreover, because of the legal identity of states as parties of equal rights, it follows that any state has the legal right to wage war thus removing any legal need for a just cause. Hall writes, International law has consequently no alternative but to accept war, independent of its origin, as a relation which the parties to it may set up if they choose, and to busy itself only in regulating the effects of the relation. Hence, both parties to every war are regarded as being in an identical legal position, and consequently as being possessed of equal rights.24

In the nineteenth century opinion was, as exemplified by Hall, that ius ad bellum issues were not a problem due to the practices of states, viewed as equal agents, which made such concerns irrelevant. After WWI, however, this opinion changed, as concerns about legitimate causes became a dominant issue. This shift is demonstrated by the international community’s attempts to punish Germany and demand that Germany accept all culpability for the First World War.25 This shift continued with the development of positive law about

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legal and illegal wars, the Kellogg/Briand pact of 1928, and the UN Charter of 1945.26 Modern international law has tried to outlaw war (with varying degrees of success). International law started to formally limit the legality of war with Article 2 of the Hague Convention (I) of 1899 as well as that of 1907. The convention called for states to resort to arms only after non-violent means had been attempted. In 1919 the Covenant of the League of Nations attempted to further limit the possibilities of war by giving the League some powers to prevent war from breaking out. In 1928, the Kellogg/Briand Pact declared war illegal in principle.27 In 1945, the Charter of the United Nations continued this process of trying to outlaw war. Article 2 (Chapter 1) of the Charter states that, “All members shall refrain in their international relations from the threat or use of force against the territorial integrity or political independence of any state, or in any other manner inconsistent with the Purposes of the United Nations.”28 Chapter VII provides the legal options under which a war can be waged, which other than a war of self-defense, requires a resolution of the Security Council (in which case one wonders whether the term ‘war’ is accurate). The legal theorist Hans Kelsen illustrates this shift in international legal thinking by using the concept of aggression to identify the illegality of a war. He writes, The rules of international law by which “war” is forbidden, and accordingly, a “delict,” refer only to the action of one state, not to the counteraction of the other. This is usually expressed by the statement that only a war of aggression, that is, the war on the part of the state, which is the first to commit a hostile act of force, is forbidden, not the war waged by the state defending itself against the aggressor.29

Hedley Bull provides another example of this kind of theorizing about war when he identifies a Grotian approach that seeks to distinguish when a war is sanctioned by international society and when it is not.30 The attempt to outlaw war has effectively altered how war is thought of. Michael Walzer’s method in Just and Unjust Wars is to start with an account of aggression as the only real crime that exists between states. With a legal war requiring another to break the law with an act of aggression, to a significant degree ius ad bellum has in a sense been replaced by ius contra bellum (justice against war).31 International law is, of course, not so straightforward. A war or a similar resort to force could be legal under other sections of the Charter, or may be justified solely by reference to the purposes of the Charter. However, while approaches to the justifiability and legality of war have changed, the presumption about the authority of the state to wage war has not. The claim in the nineteenth century that war is a presumed prerogative of the

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state effectively meant that ius ad bellum issues were not a problem. In the twentieth century, this presumption was no longer accepted and positive international law became concerned with the legality or illegality of war. However, in both the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, as well as in the twentyfirst century, there was no debate about what it is about the state that makes it the authority that may justifiably, either because of convention or because of positive law, go to war. Outlawing aggression does not solve much, at least philosophically. Just war theory is not just a way of applying morality to war, it is also a series of claims about what the state may legitimately do and what it should not do. Read in this way, just war thinking also involves theories of state. To ignore this side of just war thinking is to presume that there is a divide between what makes a state, and the states’ ability to wage war. Yet the classical just war theorists did not make this presumption, which is why in addition to arguing about how morality applies to war, they also argued how the state could justifiably send its citizens into war. So long as the problem of proper authority is decided by international law and the crime of aggression, philosophical questions about the characteristics of this authority (other than its ability to wage war) are likely to be forgotten. Thus, it may not be that surprising that questions about political obligation and war have been generally ignored, since any question about these issues would challenge the prevailing assumptions about the proper authority.

CONCLUSION The problem of the obligation to die has been important in political thought at least since St. Augustine. Political obligation, more generally, has remained a debated topic in political theory, although the obligation to die has not. Instead, in the ethics of war literature, the moral problem that is most often addressed is how killing in war is not murder. The problem of being obliged to go to one’s possible death is no longer examined, even though the obligation to die is as morally important a problem as the challenge posed by killing in war. In the just war literature, the problem of obligation was addressed within what is called the proper authority tenet. This tenet was designed to restrict who could wage a war, and, consequently, it provided a way to legitimize the authority of the state. Over time, the significance of the proper authority tenet has been marginalized by a tradition of thought that grants the state the ability to wage war without sufficiently questioning why the state has this ability. The international project to outlaw war further contributed to a reduction in interest in the problems posed by the tenet of proper authority and the ques-

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tions that this tenet is supposed to answer. Consequently, there is a historical explanation of how this obligation has come to be presumed within the contemporary ethics of war literature. However, there is no similar case to be made for the contemporary political obligation literature that rarely examines the international relations of the state. Yet, considering that the classical texts in the just war tradition are also classical texts in political philosophy, this silence is extraordinary and requires redress. In the following chapters I choose the figures that I think are the best exponents of a particular argument for the obligation to die. I have selectively chosen principle just war theorists and key political philosophers in the Western tradition. The selected thinkers are intended to be best exponents of a particular argument. After providing a background history to Zionism and the Jewish Question in chapter 2, in chapter 3 I start with Aristotle who even though he was not greatly concerned with political obligation does provide insight into how the obligation to die can be justified, and what key theoretical issues need to be resolved in this regard. In addition, I will read Zionism within an Aristotelian framework in order to elaborate on the key issues that need to be addressed in justifying the obligation to die and thus further contextualize how Zionism and the Jewish Question are helpful sites for examining my research question.

NOTES 1. Richard K. Dagger, “What Is Political Obligation?” The American Political Science Review 71, no. 4 (1977); Karen Johnson, “Perspectives on Political Obligation: A Critique and a Proposal,” The Western Political Quarterly 27, no. 3 (1974); Thomas C. Pocklington, “Political Philosophy and Political Obligation,” Canadian Journal of Political Science 8, no. 4 (1975). 2. Isaiah Berlin, “Does Political Theory Still Exist?” in Philosophy, Politics and Society (Second Series), ed. Peter Laslett and W. G. Runciman (Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1969), 7. 3. Alessandro Passerin d’Entrèves, The Medieval Contribution to Political Thought: Thomas Aquinas, Marsilius of Padua, Richard Hooker (New York: Humanities Press, 1959), 3. 4. Hannah Arendt, Responsibility and Judgment, ed. Jerome Kohn (New York: Schocken Books, 2003), 46. 5. Margaret Gilbert, A Theory of Political Obligation: Membership, Commitment, and the Bonds of Society (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 2006), 12. 6. For texts that specifically address the problem of political obligation, see for example, Harry Beran, The Consent Theory of Political Obligation (London, New York and Sydney: Croom Helm, 1987); John Dunn, Political Obligation in Its Historical Context: Essays in Political Theory (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1980);

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Gilbert, A Theory of Political Obligation; Thomas Hill Green, P. Harris, and John Morrow, Lectures on the Principles of Political Obligation and Other Writings (London: Cambridge University Press, 1986); John Horton, “In Defense of Associative Political Obligations: Part Two,” Political Studies 55, no. 1 (2007); Johnson, “Perspectives on Political Obligation”; George Klosko, “Multiple Principles of Political Obligation,” Political Theory 32, no. 6 (2004); Thomas McPherson, Political Obligation (London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1967); Carole Pateman, The Problem of Political Obligation: A Critical Analysis of Liberal Theory (Chichester: Wiley, 1979); Hanna Pitkin, “Obligation and Consent,” in Philosophy, Politics and Society (Fourth Series), ed. Peter Laslett and W. G. R. Runciman and Quentin Skinner (Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1972); Michael Walzer, Obligations: Essays on Disobedience, War and Citizenship (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1970). John Horton, “In Defense of Associative Political Obligations: Part One,” Political Studies 54, no. 3 (2006). George Klosko, Political Obligations. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2005. A. John Simmons, Moral Principles and Political Obligation. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1980. 7. Walzer, Obligations, 92. However, one wonders to what degree the citizenry actually rush to the state’s defense. See Peter Paret, “Justifying the Obligation of Military Service,” The Journal of Military History 57, no. 5 (1993). 8. William Vincent O’Brien, The Conduct of Just and Limited War (New York, N.Y.: Praeger, 1981), 5 Paul Ramsey, “The Just War According to St. Augustine,” in Just War Theory, ed. Jean Bethke Elshtain (Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1992); Chris Brown, Sovereignty, Rights and Justice: International Political Theory Today (Oxford; Malden, MA: Blackwell Publishers, 2002); Elshtain, ed., Just War Theory. 9. Ramsey, “The Just War According to St. Augustine,” 8. 10. Brown, Sovereignty, Rights and Justice, 104. 11. For examples of these different ways of using just war theory see, Elshtain, ed., Just War Theory. 12. James Turner Johnson, Ideology, Reason, and the Limitation of War: Religious and Secular Concepts, 1200–1740 (Princeton; London: Princeton University Press, 1975); Richard Norman, Ethics, Killing and War (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1995); Jenny Teichman, Pacifism and the Just War: A Study in Applied Philosophy (Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1986); “Symposium on War and Self-Defense,” in Ethics and International Affairs (2004); A. J. Coates, The Ethics of War (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1997), Frederick H. Russell, The Just War in the Middle Ages (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1975). 13. Walzer, Obligations; Francis H. Bradley, Ethical Studies (Bristol: Thoemmes Antiquariam Books, 1990); Paret, “Justifying the Obligation of Military Service”; George Kateb, The Inner Ocean: Individualism and Democratic Culture (Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press, 1992); Cheyney Ryan, “The State and War Making,” in For and against the State: New Philosophical Readings, ed. John T. Sanders and Jan Narveson (Lanham, Md.; London: Rowman & Littlefield, 1996); Cheyney C. Ryan, “Self-Defense and the Obligations to Kill and to Die,” Ethics and International Affairs 18, no. 1 (2004); Geoffrey B. Levey, “Judaism and the Obligation to Die for the State,” in Law, Politics, and Morality in Judaism, ed. Michael Walzer (Princeton and Oxford: Princeton University Press, 2006). Kateb’s argument relies heavily on

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Walzer’s and is based on individual rights and the American Constitution. He argues that in theory conscription cannot be ruled out in all cases, but it is rarely permissible. Kateb does not, however, provide much detail about under what conditions the obligation is permissible other than to suggest that it requires a war of self-defense and must be based on a theory of individual rights. Ryan’s two essays are critical of how the obligation to die is approached by liberal theorists. See chapter 6 for more on Ryan’s critique. Bradley’s argument, and which is quoted by both Ryan and Kateb, is that the obligation to die cannot be explained or justified by contract (see chapter 6 fn. 31). There is also work done on why any individual will fight and die for the state, although this question is about individual psychology and not necessarily about political obligation and theories of state. For an example of this literature see, Paul C. Stern, “Why Do People Sacrifice for Their Nations?” Political Psychology 16, no. 2 (1995). 14. Walzer, Obligations. See chapter 6. 15. Yoram Dinstein, War, Aggression and Self-Defence, 3rd ed. (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2001), 63. 16. Robert L. Holmes, On War and Morality (Chichester; Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1989), 163. 17. Although post 9.11 and especially in regard to the war in Iraq, the debate has broadened over the justifiable causes for war. One of the most recent examples of this debate was panel WB26 (Jean Elsthtain’s Just War Against Terror: The Response from the Academy) at the International Studies Association Annual conference, Chicago, 2007. The panel participants included Michael Walzer, Cian D. O’Driscoll, Maja Zehfuss, and Jean Elshtain. Some of the papers presented will be published in a forthcoming issue of International Affairs. There is a growing literature that debates a possible expansion on the just causes of war. See, James Turner Johnson, The War to Oust Saddam Hussein: Just War and the New Face of Conflict (Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, 2005); Lee Feinstein and Anne-Marie Slaughter, “A Duty to Prevent,” Foreign Affairs 83, no. 1 (2004); Neta C. Crawford, “The Slippery Slope to Preventive War,” Ethics and International Affairs 17, no. 1 (2003); Whitley Kaufman, “What’s Wrong with Preventive War? The Moral and Legal Basis for the Preventive Use of Force,” Ethics and International Affairs 19, no. 3 (2005); Jeff McMahan, “Just Cause for War,” Ethics and International Affairs 19, no. 3 (2005); Jeff McMahan, “War as Self-Defense,” Ethics and International Affairs 18, no. 1 (2004); Thomas M. Nichols, “Just War, Not Prevention,” Ethics and International Affairs 17, no. 1 (2003); Cian O’Driscoll, “Negotiating the Just War Tradition: Anticipation, Punishment, Humanitarianism and the Right to War after Iraq” (University of Wales, 2006); Elshtain, ed., Just War Theory; Michael Walzer, Arguing About War (New Haven, CT; London: Yale University Press, 2004). 18. Dinstein, War, Aggression and Self-Defence, 63. Dinstein references J. L. Brierly, “International Law and Resort to Armed Force,” Cambridge Journal of Law 4 (1930–32): 308.; in this article J. L. Brierly, in turn, references William Edward Hall, Treatise on International Law, ed. A. Pearce Higgins, 8th ed. (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1924), 81. 19. Hall, Treatise on International Law, 81.

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20. Hall, Treatise on International Law, 82. 21. Hall, Treatise on International Law, 82. 22. Ayala’s De Jure et Officiis Bellicis was published in 1582. Hugo Grotius lived from 1583–1645. Emmerich de Vattel lived from 1714–1767. 23. Hall, Treatise on International Law, 82. 24. Hall, Treatise on International Law, 82. 25. Hans Kelsen, Principles of International Law, ed. Robert W. Tucker, Second ed. (New York; London: Holt, Rinehart and Winston, Inc., 1966). 26. See chapter XXX in, Josef L. Kunz, The Changing Law of Nations: Essays on International Law (Columbus: Ohio State University Press, 1968). 27. Although Carl Schmitt argues that the Kellogg/Briand Pact actually sanctifies war. According to Schmitt, the Kellogg/Briand Pact (1928) “contains most important reservations—England’s national honor, self-defence, the League Covenant and Locarno, welfare and territorial integrities such as Egypt, Palestine, and so forth: for France: self-defense, the League Covenant, Locarno and neutrality treaties, above all the observance of the Kellogg Pact; for Poland: self-defense, observance of the Kellog Pact, the League. . . .” See, Carl Schmitt, The Concept of the Political (London; Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1996), 50 fn. 21. Alternatively, Hans Kelsen does not claim that the Kellogg/Briand pact sanctions war; rather he argues that the pact differentiates between types of war, so that “not every war of aggression is illegal and not every war of defense is legal.” The distinction, for Kelsen, rests with the significance of international treaties, so that if one state is attacked, an ally of this state may justifiably attack the initial aggressor and this aggressor has no legal right of defense. See, Kelsen, Principles of International Law, 27. 28. Dinstein, War, Aggression and Self-Defence, 80. The UN Charter can also be accessed online at, http://www.un.org/aboutun/charter/ 29. Kelsen, Principles of International Law, 25. See also pages 29–39 for his discussion of just war doctrine. 30. Bull’s “Grotian conception of international society” is presented in opposition to Oppenheim’s approach that takes war to be a prerogative of the state and claims that international law is concerned with the conduct of war and not the legality of going to war. See, Hedley Bull, “The Grotian Conception of International Society,” in Diplomatic Investigations: Essays in the Theory of International Politics, ed. Herbet Butterfield and Martin Wight (London: George Allen & Unwin Ltd., 1966). 31. Josef Kunz describes this shift as being from bellum justum to bellum legale. Kunz argues that the League of Nations Covenant replaced the justifiability and unjustifiability of war with formal legal rules about the legality or illegality of war. Thus a legal war could be fought by a state that had no just cause but had the formal approval of the League. The Kellog/Briand Pact furthered this distinction by declaring war to be, in principle, an illegal means to pursue foreign policy. See, Kunz, The Changing Law of Nations, 580.

Chapter Two

The Jewish Question and Zionism

What [the Jews] needed was not only a guide to reality, but reality itself; not simply a key to history, but the experience itself of history. —Hannah Arendt1 The Jews in Dispersion have not the possibility of proclaiming their own truth to mankind; but I believe that when they once have a free Commonwealth, with schools and universities of their own where they can speak out safely, we shall be able to learn what it is that the Jewish people have to say to us. —J. J. Rousseau, 17622

“The creation of a new State is neither ridiculous nor impossible.”3 So wrote Theodor Herzl in his pamphlet, The Jewish State. In order to build this state Herzl envisaged a large Jewish corporation to oversee immigration and economic development. A constitution would also be needed, and a small army. “The Jewish State is conceived as a neutral one. It will therefore require only a professional army, equipped, of course, with every requisite of modern warfare, to preserve order internally and externally.”4 With this argument Herzl introduced one of the first examples of a Jewish army since Biblical times. He did not delve into the specifics of the army, but as the army of the Jewish state its purpose is clear: to defend Jews from anti-Semitic attack. In this instance the obligation to die is based on a nationalist impulse for protection and the subsequent right of a state to be able to defend itself. However, Zionism has

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more to say about political obligation than a claim to nationalism might suggest. Zionism, as an answer to the Jewish Question, provides numerous illustrations of how the obligation to die can be justified. For most of their history, the Jews had not been involved in state politics, and thus had generally not been faced with having to justify the obligation to die. Zionism changed this and, consequently, in order to better understand and critique the obligation to die I turn to Zionism.5 On the Jewish Question Michael Walzer writes, There are two modern answers to what used to be called, “the Jewish Question.” I mean, two humane answers. . . . The question itself might be phrased as follows: What political space is there for Jews in the modern world? The first answer points toward citizenship in inclusive democratic states; the second answer points toward citizenship in “the land of Israel.”6

Both humane answers point toward citizenship, although to be accurate, there are actually three humane answers. The third one is the Jewish socialism of the Bund, although Walzer does not seem to consider this to be a modern answer. In any case, the Jewish Question was, as Hannah Arendt knew, the modern opportunity for Jews to discover a political space as Jews. Its most famous solutions, Zionism and assimilationism, have been realized. The process of emancipation brought Jews into democratic states as equal members; a vote at the United Nations and a war for independence brought Jews a state of their own. These achievements have encouraged changes to Jewish practice and a renewal of Jewish legal and moral discourse. Judaism and Jewish law (halakah) are in large part the products of exile and exclusion, and they reflect the experience of being ruled by Gentiles. Judaism and halakah have been shaped by a long and difficult adaptation to the harsh realities of homelessness and, according to Walzer, they must now be reshaped to accommodate two different ways of being “at home” in the modern political world.7 However, Zionism is more of a European ideology of nationalism than a specifically Jewish belief.8 Assimilationism is also more of a European political discourse than an explicitly Jewish one, since its goal was the assimilation of Jews into traditionally Christian nation-states. Thus, contained within both of these answers are traces of classically European political discourses and assumptions about what is politics, what is a state, and what is the role of the nation in world history. Zionism is an ideology made possible by the political ideologies and philosophies of eighteenth and nineteenth century Europe, enabled by the historical experiences of Jews in Eastern and Western Europe, and bound with a powerful reading of Jewish identity. Zionism is in its most basic formulation the belief or movement that calls for the self-determination of the Jews in their own state. For the political Zionists the actual location of the Jew-

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ish state was not as important as the fact of such a state. For the cultural Zionists the Jewish state could only be in the Biblical Land of Israel, in Palestine. More generally, Zionism, as an idea that grew out of the impoverished ghettos of Eastern Europe as well as such cosmopolitan centers as Vienna, became one of the most significant national movements of the twentieth century, and has significantly affected the geopolitical landscape of the Middle East in particular and international relations across numerous hemispheres. In its synthesis of Jewish thought and Western political philosophy, Zionism is a modern manifestation of a Jewish political tradition.9 Yet, Zionism is rarely approached in a theoretical or philosophical way. It is more often explored historically, attacked polemically, and defended stridently. However, reading Zionism as a political philosophy is profoundly illuminating since within Zionist thought and practice reside many of the assumed foundations of Western political thought. Consequently, using Zionism as an illustration and heuristic device to critique the obligation to die offers an opportunity to understand not just Zionism, but how certain aspects of Western political thought function in practice, and bring to light some of the problems contained within such thought and practice. Zionism is not a monolithic ideology. There are different types of Zionism and different reasons for being a Zionist. Yet one common denominator in all Zionist thought is the issue of obligation. In general, Zionism can be read as an argument about to whom the Jews should be obliged, to their place of residence or to the Jewish people? The Zionist answer is to the Jewish people, and this answer includes providing a new Jew or Jewish consciousness that is a presumed break with the traditional or perceived conventional Jewish identity of the time. Zionism takes it for granted that the highest site of human activity is contingent on the participation of equals in the political life of the community in a state among other states, and Zionists did all that they could to bring this dream to reality—or at least, this is a part of the Zionist myth. Zionism has also caused great inequalities and violence, but it is important to take the Zionist ideal at its word in order to understand the theories behind it.

MATERIAL AND IDEATIONAL ORIGINS The origins of Zionism come out of a variety of discriminatory experiences faced by Jews in Western and Eastern Europe, ultimately ending in the Shoah, the attempted destruction of the Jews by the Nazis.10 The scope of anti-Semitic attacks, called pogroms, in Eastern Europe in the early 1880s cannot be underestimated and were often conducted with the direct involvement of municipal authorities. Virtually every major Jewish community in Eastern Europe,

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including towns and villages in Ukraine, Russia, and Poland were victims of these attacks. The pogroms were quite brutal, characterized by beatings, murder, arson, pillaging, and rape; 20 000 Jews were made homeless, and another 100,000 were rendered destitute.11 In Romania, anti-Jewish sentiment was entrenched in a number of discriminatory laws, practices, and anti-Jewish campaigns in the press. Anti-Jewish violence and discrimination from 1880 onwards was particularly disturbing because many Jews felt that they were finally going to be welcomed into society according to the promises of Enlightenment emancipation, and the ideals of fraternity, liberty, and equality that were spread in the aftermath of the French Revolution. In response to this antiJewish violence in Eastern Europe, some Jews started to think about a mass Jewish emigration from Russia to Palestine. This proto-Zionist movement was called the “Lovers of Zion” or Hovevei Zion. In Western Europe, the case of the French Army Captain Alfred Dreyfus did much to enforce a sense of palpable and inevitable discrimination against Jews in the Enlightened West, and was a huge issue in its own right in France. Captain Dreyfus was a French officer who in 1894 was tried, convicted, and sentenced to life imprisonment on Devil’s Island for a crime he did not commit. He was tried in secret but humiliated by the state in public, and because he was Jewish was chosen as a scapegoat for the treason committed by others. After a massive campaign instigated in part by the novelist Emile Zola, he was brought back to stand a public trial in 1899 where the previous conviction was overturned.12 The Dreyfus Affair’s political significance in France at the time cannot be understated, and the future Zionist leader Theodor Herzl was covering the second trial for the Viennese newspaper, the Neeue Freie Presse. Regardless of any political, social, and cultural differences experienced by Western, Central, or Eastern European Jewry, the history of Jewish persecution is significant in thinking about Zionism because it was a very real backdrop to how the Zionist intellectuals approached their conceptions of political obligation—even if the Jews from the West and the Jews from the East felt differently about what it meant to be Jewish. Consequently, the origins of Zionism are generally assumed to lie in European anti-Semitism—this argument is accurate, but incomplete. Arthur Hertzberg says as much when he identifies two features of Zionism: “Zionism was created out of anti-Semitism. It was created out of the desire to be like other men.”13 The Jewish Question was not just about finding any kind of political space, but a particular kind of space. To be like other men was to gain the rights and privileges of citizenship, preferably in their own Jewish state where they could participate in world history as a nation among nations. Zionism is, therefore, a Jewish attempt to link nationhood to the state, since this was seen to be the only option open for Jews to become “like other men.”14

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It is the merging of nation and state by the Zionists that is, as Avineri puts it, illustrative of the Zeitgeist at the end of the nineteenth century.15 Avineri writes that Zionism was “a response to the challenges of liberalism and nationalism much more than a response merely to anti-Semitism, and for this reason it could not have occurred at any time before the nineteenth and twentieth centuries.”16 He argues convincingly that “both liberalism and nationalism created in these [secular, modern] Jews the beginning of a new self-awareness, no longer determined by any religious terms, but coeval to the emergence of modern, secular nationalism in Europe.”17 Jews believed that once the state welcomed them as citizens with rights—preferably their own state—the state would be there to protect them too.18 Many also believed in a cosmopolitan understanding of political identity, where one’s religious background is irrelevant. Before they became Zionists, collectively, the Zionist thinkers truly believed in the promises of political and social emancipation in their states of residence (if not in the modern nation-state generally), but eventually came to recognize, or were forced to recognize, the empty nature of these promises. Consequently, Zionism came about in part because of what Elie Kedourie calls the “deep insult of Diaspora life.”19 The discrimination against Jews during the Middle Ages (and then again after the Enlightenment) inhabiting European countries included limitations on movement, language, occupation, place of residence, prohibition of land-ownership, and other impositions that ensured the impoverishment of most Jews. Jews experienced emancipation from political and economic restrictions from time to time, but at the whim of a monarch and such reforms could never be assumed to be permanent. With either faith in the political emancipation of the Jews or actual emancipation came the belief that being Jewish was not antithetical to living a secure life.20 Improvements in Jewish living conditions in the aftermath of the Enlightenment were also sporadic, and faith in them was founded primarily in ideals of human progress and belief in the accuracy contained in the Universal Rights of Man, but conditions varied widely from Western to Eastern Europe. Ultimately, the ideal of the nation-state was presumed to provide the long awaited equality of condition that Jews sought as citizens. Yet while it was the nation-state that ultimately led to the most horrific persecution of Jews, the Zionists felt that the problem was not something innate to the state, but rather was a problem external to the state and internal to the condition of Diaspora life. Zionism, as any nationalist movement would, always focused on the benefits of the nation-state and never took into account the negative features inherent in the state. Indeed, the ideal of being an equal citizen in the modern nation-state was often more important to Jews than Zionism. With the concept of the modern citizen, Jews found a new way to respond to persecution. State citizenship, with its legal rights and privileges,

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its perceived guarantee of security and ability to have some political control over one’s life, became the highest elevation of political identity in Europe. In 1789 Jewish rights were included in the call of the French liberal politicians/revolutionaries in their claims about national state-citizenship rights.21 Indeed, after 1789 Jews experienced or hoped for a more humane and tolerant Europe as the ideas of the Enlightenment and the French Revolution spread across the continent. For the first time Jews were citizens of the state.22 This new egalitarian philosophy spread to nationalist thought, and in the late 1700s the nationalist philosopher Johann Gottfried Herder predicted a time when no European would ask whether one was a Jew or a Christian.23 When in the late 1890s, Jews in Russia were being increasingly persecuted by the Tsarist state, including expulsion and educational quotas limiting Jewish enrolment, Russian literary figures such as Vladimir Solovev, Vladimir Korolenko, and Leo Tolstoy publicly protested these anti-Jewish policies.24 Consequently, it is not surprising that Zionism was, for most of its preIsrael existence, not a popular movement. Jews in Western Europe tended to argue for increased political rights and some saw Zionism as a dangerous joke. Anti-Zionist Jews had bought into the promises of post-Enlightenment political emancipation. These assimilationist Jews echoed the claims made by the famous Enlightenment Jewish philosopher Moses Mendelssohn who, in his 1783 work Jerusalem, argues that the state may not coerce people’s belief or conscience.25 The church (or other religious authority) also may not coerce, and while the state may coerce in matters of contract it cannot in matters of belief.26 For the assimilationists, there was no Jewish nation, and Zionism was “a momentary inebriation of morbid minds.”27 Nevertheless, the nonZionist Jews were conscious of the problems facing the Jews in Europe; their rejection of Zionism was not out of ignorance of anti-Semitism, it was out of a concern that Zionism would only make things worse and that, in any case, Zionism was unrealistic. Both the Zionists and the assimilationists believed that the nation-state could, eventually, protect the Jews. In both cases Jews were faced with an obligatory relationship to either their state of residence or to the Jewish people, if not both. Consequently, Zionist thought involves a paradox whereby the Zionist ideologues bought into the same system that led to the systematic persecution of Jews in Europe. The Zionist solution to the Jewish Question did not question whether or not there was an innate problem in the construction of the nationstate. Zionism bought into a discourse about community that, as Aristotle pointed out centuries before, is based on a normative policy of inclusion and exclusion, where the goals of one group are made possible at the expense of others, and where the polity itself serves as a normative condition for the betterment of the included group. Some Zionists went so far as to argue that the

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Jewish state was necessary for the betterment not just of Jews but for all of humanity. Not only did Zionists carry high hopes for a Jewish national future, but for the world as well.

ZIONISMS, OBLIGATION, REDEMPTION Zionism has a variety of different manifestations including religious, secular, political, cultural or spiritual, militaristic, and socialist. Nevertheless, it is possible to divide Zionism into two very general categories. Nahum Goldmann, the famous Jewish statesman (and long-time President of the World Jewish Congress) writes that, “There have always been two conflicting conceptions of Zionism.”28 Goldmann is making the distinction between the political Zionism of Theodor Herzl, who “had adopted the European concept of a sovereign state as expressed by Hegel, grafted on the old idea of the return to Zion,”29 and the cultural Zionism of Ahad Ha’am. Theodor Herzl is without doubt the leader of political Zionism. He brought Zionism to the world stage, set up some of its most important institutions (the Zionist weekly Die Welt as well as the Zionist Organization), and provided Zionism with the political leader that it needed. Herzl is so important that his grave was moved to Jerusalem, and he now rests on Har (mount) Herzl, where Israel’s prime ministers and famous state and military leaders are buried.30 Ahad Ha’am, whose real name was Asher Ginzberg (Ahad Ha’am was his pen name and translates as one of the people), can be safely called the leader of cultural Zionism. Herzl and Ha’am met only twice, could not tolerate each other, and led drastically different lives. Herzl was a diplomat, Ha’am a reserved un-talkative man. Nevertheless, while Ha’am did not take a public Zionist office he was such an important figure that when he lived in Tel Aviv, not only was the street he lived on named after him, but it was closed to traffic during his afternoon siesta.31 Herzl claimed that it was the Dreyfus Affair that turned him into a Zionist. He believed that the way to secure a Jewish state was to gain the support of the great international powers, and to this end he lobbied European and Turkish leaders in the hope that they would sign over to the Jews a territory to call their own. Herzl knew remarkably little about Judaism, in contrast to Ha’am who was dedicated to Jewish rediscovery of the Jewish soul through life in the Land of Israel. For Ha’am, the Jewish ‘national spirit’ dictated a normative behaviour. Once revived, secularized, and geographically centralized in the Holy Land this spiritual reawakening would translate into a code of behaviour no less comprehensive and creative (and, arguably, a good deal more so) than any rabbinic Judaism of the past.32 It is the combination of the secularization of belief and the

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revitalization of the Jewish spirit, both of which could happen only in Palestine, that characterizes most succinctly Ha’am’s Zionism. The Political/Cultural divide in Zionism glosses over a notable variant of political Zionism called revisionist Zionism. Herzl’s importance for Zionism cannot be understated. However, insofar as political obligation is concerned, Vladimir Jabotinsky’s Zionism is a more comprehensive site in which to understand many of the misconceptions about, and underlying assumptions contained within Zionism more generally. Jabotinsky is possibly the most controversial Zionist figure of all time. He is famous or infamous for a great may things, and David Ben-Gurion (future Prime Minister of Israel) once called him “Vladimir Hitler.”33 His followers sometimes revered him like a prophet of great wisdom and humane compassion.34 Among other activities, Jabotinsky was heavily involved in the drive to create Jewish units in the Allied armies during WWI, achieving considerable success. In 1917 the British Government announced the creation of a Jewish regiment called the Judeans or the Jewish Legion (the 38th, 39th, and 40th Battalions of the Royal Fusiliers—Jabotinsky was a lieutenant in the 38th).35 After WWI he was involved in the creation of the Haganah (an armed Jewish defense force in Palestine). He led the Haganah during the Palestinian riots in 1920, and was arrested by the British authorities on an “illegal” weapons charge. Jabotinsky was greatly disturbed by the occasional policy of the British in Palestine of imprisoning Jewish residents who were training themselves for armed combat or armed self-defense.36 He was promptly released from prison (his sentence of fifteen years was revoked and he was pardoned) due to a massive outcry on his behalf. In the late 1930s, he left the Haganah to form the Irgun,37 another Jewish paramilitary organization. He also created a youth movement, Betar, whose anthem started with the couplet, “It is good to die for our country, Jabotinsky is our leader.”38 Jabotinsky’s account of political obligation is fundamentally tied to the belief that only within a Jewish state can the Jews live in peace and security. Hence, when he advocates the use of physical force it is out of necessity. “I would even concede,” writes Jabotinsky, “that it is very sad for us Jews at a time like this to be forced to learn to shoot. But we are forced to it, and it is futile to argue against the compulsion of a historical reality.”39 He continues to argue that, “The force of historical reality teaches us a very simple lesson.”40 Regardless of how successful the Zionist settlers are at learning Hebrew, farming, or understanding Jewish nationalist literature, it will all be for nothing if they do not learn how fight. It is a historical reality that the Jews need their own state and need to learn how to fight because the two are inevitably linked. At its most basic, Jabotinsky’s argument is that history has

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proven the need for a Jewish state; history has shown that a state cannot be won by pacifist means; consequently, history proves that force and statehood are necessarily linked. However, Jabotinsky is not arguing that force and political community are naturally joined. He considers war and military service to be “abnormal things” and he writes that, “I firmly believe that some day there will remain no trace of either.”41 Rather, the use of force is a political necessity. “[Everyone] fully understands that of all the necessities of national rebirth, shooting is the most important of all.”42 Jabotinsky is often thought of as a Zionist fascist. However, to describe Jabotinsky’s account of political obligation as fascist is not particularly helpful since he supported constitutional democracy. For example, on the Arab inhabitants of Palestine, Jabotinsky felt that once the Jewish state existed the Arabs would ultimately understand the futility of resisting the Zionist project and would choose to become minority members of the new Jewish state. “Jabotinsky wrote in his programme that in the Jewish state there would be ‘absolute equality’ between Jews and Arabs, that if one part of the population were destitute, the whole country would suffer.”43 His assumption here may be misguided, possibly even delusional, but it is not fascist. Nevertheless, his political philosophy was characterized by the need to show strength, to act from a position of strength and never show any weakness.44 Like most Zionist thinkers, Jabotinsky believed in a strong Jewish identity, a new Jew that was far removed from the weak and pathetic stereotype of the Ghetto Jew. For Jabotinsky, and most other Zionists, the identity of the Jewish subject was always a national one; the idea of a personal Jewish identity was always overwhelmed by the imagination of a Jewish nation. An exaggerated version of this identity is Samson, the protagonist in Jabotinsky’s novel of the same name that is able to tease and fight a wild panther.45 The dialogue in this fight is a bit ridiculous: “I have decided to become a barber, and I am finding out how to handle this razor [his sword]—you shall have the first shave! Come here!” Samson, however, gets tired of his sword and decides that it is preferable to fight the panther without it, managing with the help of a bag of mustard to vanquish the panther. The novel, with its Biblical references and Hebrew names can be read as a political novel about identity, war and community, and is a good example of the type of strong (Zionist) Jewish subject that Jabotinsky, and most Zionists, believed in. The Maccabean revolt is another reference point in Zionist justifications of militancy and political obligation. Zionist ideologues took openly to stories about obedience to wage war for the Jewish people, and have, in contradiction

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to traditional rabbinical teachings, read the story of the Maccabean revolt in this way. Michael Walzer writes, The gentile kings under whose rule they live must be disobeyed, exactly like Jewish kings, if they command violations of God’s law . . . but there is no question of overthrowing them. Indeed, the focus of rabbinic literature, as of popular religious writing throughout the Middle Ages, is on martyrdom, not resistance or rebellion. Modern Zionist writers have sought to reverse this order of interests, celebrating the Maccabean revolt, for example, as a legitimate and heroic struggle against a foreign ruler. The rabbis are surprisingly reluctant to offer a similar endorsement, even in their own terms: they would presumably describe the struggle as a commanded war (to defend the land and oppose idolatry within it). But they are more concerned to stress God’s miraculous intervention . . . than to describe the fight itself. . . . 46

Jewish political thought has always been troubled by the concept of an obligation to a political superior since for most of Jewish history, these superiors have not been sympathetic to Jewish values or belief systems. Moses Maimonides is one of the few Jewish philosophers to touch on issues of political obligation.47 He argues that one should obey one’s superior, provided that one does not disobey God’s commandments. However, because there has been no Jewish state, or specifically Jewish authorities in charge of temporal matters since the destruction of the Second Temple in 70 C.E., accounts of political obligation have had to deal with the condition of exile, where there was no Jewish political (as in state) authority. There is also a limited quantity of explicitly Jewish (as in religious) thinking about obligation or ethics in relation to war. Historically (at least in the post-Biblical and post-Temple era), there was no Jewish state that could wage a war and thus Judaism required no systematic thought about the ethics of war. Walzer writes, But a Jewish war was, for almost two thousand years, a mythical beast. There are no examples; none of the rabbis after Akiba (who may have participated in the Bar Kochba revolt) had any experience of warmaking. This is one of the meanings of exile: Jews are the victims, not the agents of war. And without a state or an army, they are also not the theorists of war. It is an interesting outcome of their exile that Jewish writers, religious and secular, played an important part in working out the idea of oppression but virtually no part at all in working out the idea of aggression. Their attention was focused on justice in domestic society, where they had an uncertain and subordinate place, not on justice in international society, where they had no place at all.48

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Historically, Judaism did not provide an obligation to die for the state. It could not have since not only was there no Jewish state but political violence was highly frowned upon. Once the search for statehood was seriously underway, however, it started to make sense for Zionists to think about a sovereign place in international society, about the ethics of war and a way to provide a justification for the obligation to die. The state of Israel has used archeology to establish such links justifying Israel’s resorts to force with reference to Jewish history. An example is when the Israeli politician and diplomat Yaacov Herzog made a link, in an Independence Day speech in 1961 shortly after the Dead Sea Scrolls were discovered, between the Bar Kochba revolt and the strength of modern Jewish nationalism.49 Before 1948, however, the most important characteristic of Jewish thought was the acceptance that Jews lived in a state of violence, not in the Hobbesian sense, but in the sense of living in exile, doomed to an uncertain life since the destruction of the Temple and waiting for peace with the arrival of the messiah.50 While there does exist Jewish thinking about the ethics of war,51 there is no equivalent in the Jewish tradition to the just war tradition. Zionism became modern Judaism’s most direct path to thinking about the ethics of war and of political obligation, and consequently, because Zionism had to build up a theory of political obligation the absence of a Jewish just war tradition is unimportant. From the beginning, Zionism has been an effort to resolve or end this absence of a political philosophy in modern Judaism and thus do away with a perceived insecurity in Judaism and Jewish identity that is not comfortable thinking about sovereign power. Zionism’s solution is to create a new Jewish identity and provide a Jewish foundation for an obligation to fight and die for the Jewish state. The new Jew, the settler, builder, guard, and fighter is treated in Zionist thought as a total break with the past Jewish experience of life in exile. In order to maintain a Jewish character, some Zionists reinterpreted militant biblical stories to suit their political ideals and instead of presenting such stories as accounts against rebellion and in support of obedience to the authorities, these stories are recast as examples of Jewish heroism. Zionism thus combines various Biblical moral values; it takes away any claim to an obligation to obey a Gentile kingdom or ruler, replaces it with an obligation to fight for a Jewish state, and thus tries to recast the obligation of the past Jew as one of servitude. Zionism’s secular origins do not negate religious influences. Judaism has always been important for the Zionist value system. However, Zionism’s emphasis is not so much about Jewish faith as it is about Jewish cultural identity, and biblical stories are used/interpreted not for theological purposes, but to provide a more complete construction of a Zionist Jewish identity.

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Nahman Syrkin, one of the earliest socialist Zionists after Moses Hess, made quite clear the connection between a secularized messianic redemption and the Zionist project. In The Jewish Problem and the Socialist-Jewish State, Syrkin writes, The Jewish state can come about only if it is socialist. . . . All Jews will be involved in the success of Zionism, and none will be indifferent. The messianic hope, which was always the greatest dream of exiled Jewry, will be transformed into political action. The Jewish people, presently living in misery, will gain lofty content. The Jews were historically the nation, which caused division and strife; it will now become the most revolutionary of all nations. From the humblest and most oppressed of all peoples it will be transformed to the proudest and the greatest.52

The utopian socialism of Syrkin illustrates a basis for thinking through Zionist accounts of obligation. The Zionists are not just Jewish nationalists, but participants in a great expedition that will bring about a better age. The idea of the Jews being integral to social justice is a hallmark of the Zionist political outlook and of Zionist morality. Consequently, Zionism has always carried with it a sense of righteousness that related not just to its Jewish cause, but sometimes to humanity as well. For the Zionists, theirs was a specifically moral project: “There was not the slightest doubt among the Zionist leaders that what they were doing in Palestine was right, fully in accordance with the Jewish sense of justice—‘otherwise we would never have undertaken it’ (Sokolow).”53 The Jewish state was supposed to bring to the world a truly just community, as only the Jews could. CONCLUSION It is not as if there is no Jewish political thought, but it is not obvious that there is a Jewish political tradition, and the issue of a Jewish political tradition has involved serious scholarly debate, with opinions ranging widely.54 Historically, Jews were often labelled as a nation without any political ties since they had no state—a characteristic that defenders of Jewish rights argued would thus dispose Jews of not being a threat to the state because they would be loyal to their place of residence.55 This apolitical condition, insofar as state politics is concerned, is partly why there is debate over the possibility of a Jewish political tradition. Nevertheless, the absence of an explicitly Jewish political tradition made it possible for Zionism to write an account of political obligation that could be both Jewish and contemporary with nineteenth century European political thought and values. Zionism did not accept the judgement that not having a state would encourage Jewish loyalty to their place of residence.

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Zionism called for Jews to build their own state, to become equal human beings with the rest of the civilized world and thus become participants in history. Consequently, Zionism took Jewish imaginings about a return to Zion and combined this belief with European nationalism. Indeed, while Avineri rightly points out that Zionism was a product of its time and place, without some kind of Jewish political thought to fall back on, it would have been difficult for Zionists to claim that theirs was a Jewish political project. Judaism has always addressed political problems, but rarely in relation to state politics and in this regard it was the absence of Jewish political practice that Zionism sought to end. Consequently, Zionism provides a series of political claims that are both theoretical and practical, and in this regard, Zionism is a useful site to examine political obligation in theory and practice. Without a political tradition based on the experience of statehood to fall back on, Zionists had to explain or defend political obligations, including the obligation to die, and they did so in a variety of ways, with the arguments becoming increasingly pragmatic, and less romantic, as time went on. Zionism is a unique combination of European political thought and Jewish history. It is the first explicitly Jewish political project, with previous attempts ending in disaster, either with the destruction of the Temple or the entire Shabatai Tzvi episode that led to a profound crisis in Judaism thanks to this false messiah.56 The Zionist project carried within it many layers of historical experiences, religious influences, cultural desires, and political expectations. To examine Zionism is to examine one of the primary political projects of modernity, the joining of nation and state. The different versions of Zionism all contribute to a historical and theoretical richness that makes Zionism a helpful site in which to explore and critique the obligation to die. The various types of Zionism, political, revisionist, cultural, socialist, labor, and religious, all found ways in which to justify the obligation to die, often replicating underlying claims in the traditional arguments for this obligation found in Western political thought. In subsequent chapters I will introduce and use some of their arguments to demonstrate how the obligation to die can be argued in practice and what some of the problems contained in these arguments are.

NOTES 1. Hannah Arendt, The Jew as Pariah, ed. Ron H. Feldman (New York: Grove Press, 1978), 168. 2. Quoted in, S. Levenberg, The Jews and Palestine: A Study in Labour Zionism (London: Poale Zion, Jewish Socialist Labour Party, published by the Narod Press, 1945), 40.

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3. Theodor Herzl, The Jewish State (New York; London: Dover; Constable, 1988), 92. 4. Herzl, The Jewish State, 147. 5. This chapter is neither a history of the origins of Zionism, nor a historical account of how Zionism came to include thinking about violence and war. For such historical texts see, Ehud Luz, “The Moral Price of Sovereignty: The Dispute About the Use of Military Power within Zionism,” Modern Judaism 7, no. 1 (1987); Anita Shapira, Land and Power: The Zionist Resort to Force, 1881–1984 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1992. Reprint, Standord: Standord University Press, 1999). 6. Michael Walzer, ed., Law, Politics, and Morality in Judaism (Princeton and Oxford: Princeton University Press, 2006), vii. 7. Walzer, ed., Law, Politics, and Morality in Judaism, vii.. 8. Shlomo Avineri, The Making of Modern Zionism: Intellectual Origins of the Jewish State (London: Weidenfeld and Nicolson, 1981). 9. There is some academic debate about whether or not there is a Jewish political tradition. Yeshayahu Leibowtiz argues that there is no such thing as a Jewish political thought. He writes, “There is no Jewish ethic, no Jewish policy, no Jewish concept of society. Jews and Gentiles alike differ on all these matters, and the dividing line is not between Jews and non-Jews but between man and man.” (Abraham Melamed, “Is There a Jewish Political Thought? The Medieval Case Reconsidered,” Hebraic Political Studies 1, no. 1 (2005): 26) An alternative view on Jewish political though is from Abraham Melamed, who writes, “. . . Even if we accept Leibowitz’s assumption that Judaism is characterized solely by the acceptance of the Torah and the commandments, then since this involves accepting the authority of divine law, constituting a relationship of government between God and man, Judaism must deal with the questions of politics in a theological context.” (Melamed, “Is There a Jewish Political Thought?” 27.) The fact that there is doubt as to whether there is a Jewish tradition of political thought is itself interesting, and in one respect owes its roots to the privileging of Western political thought. Shlomo Avineri has gone as far to argue that, “Political thought in the strict sense of the word did not exist—nor could it have existed—in the ancient Eastern world or in one of the pre-classical societies.” (Quoted in, Melamed, “Is There a Jewish Political Thought?” 28). Walzer’s, Lorberbaum’s, and Zohar’s edited collections on the Jewish political thought are one attempt to demonstrate that there is such a tradition, and recent work by David Novak, among others, has sought to provide a modern take on Jewish political thought in relation to contract theory. See, Michael Walzer et al., eds., The Jewish Political Tradition: Membership, vol. 2 (New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 2003); Michael Walzer, Menachem Lorberbaum, and Noam J. Zohar, eds., The Jewish Political Tradition: Authority, vol. I (New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 2000); David Novak, The Jewish Social Contract: An Essay in Political Theology (Princeton and Oxford: Princeton University Press, 2005). 10. However, it is mistaken to think that Zionism emerged out of the Holocaust (or Shoah, which refers specifically to the Jewish victims of Hitler’s campaign of mass annihilation). Zionism has a troubled relationship with this part of Jewish history. The Shoah itself was for some leading Zionists not particularly important in understanding

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the history of European Jewry and Zionist ideology. The Shoah has been used politically by some Zionists in a variety of ways, and many Zionists at first treated the survivors of Hitler’s insane program with contempt. The Shoah may demonstrate the need for Zionism and for a Jewish state, and while it is impossible to deny the significance of the Shoah for the importance of Zionism, this is not a straightforward issue. One of the most famous or infamous critiques of how the Shoah has been cynically used is, Norman G. Finkelstein, The Holocaust Industry: Reflections on the Exploitation of Jewish Suffering (London; New York: Verso, 2000). See also, Tim Cole, Selling the Holocaust: From Auschwitz to Schindler: How History Is Bought, Packaged, and Sold (New York: Routledge, 1999); Yosef Grodzinsky, In the Shadow of the Holocaust: The Struggle between Jews and Zionists in the Aftermath of World War II (Monroe, Maine: Common Courage Press, 2004); Steven T. Katz, Historicism, the Holocaust, and Zionism: Critical Studies in Modern Jewish Thought and History (New York: New York University Press, 1992); Judith Miller, One, by One, by One: Facing the Holocaust (London: Weidenfeld & Nicolson, 1990); Tom Segev, The Seventh Million: The Israelis and the Holocaust (New York: Hill and Wang, 1993); Idith Zertal, Israel’s Holocaust and the Politics of Nationhood (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2005). 11. David Vital, The Origins of Zionism (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1975), 52. 12. For a synopsis of the Dreyfus Affair/trial written at the time see, “Alfred Dreyfus,” Harvard Law Review 13, no. 3 (1889). For a history of the affair as it relates to Jewish history see, David Vital, A People Apart: A Political History of the Jews in Europe, 1789–1939 (London; New York: Oxford University Press, 2001), 540–66. 13. “Discussion,” (paper presented at the Self-Views in Historical Perspective in Egypt and Israel, Tel Aviv, 1980), 101. 14. On how Jews in Europe responded to differing conceptions of the nation see, George L. Mosse, Confronting the Nation: Jewish and Western Nationalism (Hanover and London: Brandeis University Press published by University Press of New England, 1993). In this book Mosse generally treats the nation as akin to a civic religion. See also pages 505–800 (‘Part Three: The Dynamics of Emancipation’) in, Nahum N. Glatzer, ed., The Judaic Tradition (New York: Behrman House Inc., 1969). 15. Avineri, The Making of Modern Zionism. 16. Avineri, The Making of Modern Zionism, 13. 17. Avineri, The Making of Modern Zionism, 12. 18. Avineri, The Making of Modern Zionism, 12. For more about anti-Jewish ideology in relation to the identity associated with belonging to a state see, Zygmunt Bauman, Modernity and the Holocaust (Ithaca, N.Y: Cornell University Press, 1991). 19. Quoted in, Benny Morris, Righteous Victims: A History of the Zionist-Arab Conflict 1881–2001 (New York: Random House, 2001), 14. 20. For a discussion of Jewish understandings of assimilation in France see, Phyllis Cohen Albert, Israelite and Jew: How Did Nineteenth-Century French Jews Understand Assimilation, ed. Jonathan Frankel and Steven J. Zipperstein, Assimilation and Community: The Jews in Nineteenth-Century Europe (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1992), 88–109. Writing about Jews in England Todd Endelman has written that, “Most Jewish historians until recently looked to the German Jewish experience as the

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paradigm for the transformation of European Jewry . . . [But] to paraphrase Marx—and to put the matter crudely—German Jews were thinking what Jews elsewhere, and in England in particular, were already doing. . . In England acculturation and integration were well advanced before the 1770s.” Quoted in, Jonathan Frankel, Assimilation and the Jews in Nineteenth-Century Europe: Towards a New Historiography? ed. Jonathan Frankel and Steven J. Zipperstein (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1992), 19. 21. Walter Laqueur, The History of Zionism, 3rd. ed. (London and New York: I.B. Tauris & Co Ltd, 2003). Paul R. Mendes-Flohr and Jehuda Reinharz, The Jew in the Modern World: A Documentary History, 2nd ed. (New York; Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1995). 22. The political emancipation of the Jews in France started, legally, with the Declaration of the Rights of Man and of the Citizen (August 26, 1789), although Jews were not automatically included in this Declaration. Rather, the rights of Jews were debated in the National Assembly and on January 28, 1790, Sephardic Jews were recognized as French citizens, and on September 28, 1791, Ashkenazi Jews were recognized as French citizens. Mendes-Flohr and Reinharz, The Jew in the Modern World, 114–18. 23. Laqueur, The History of Zionism. 24. Michael Stanislawski, Zionism and the Fin De Siècle: Cosmopolitanism and Nationalism from Nordau to Jabotinsky (Berkeley, Los Angeles and London: University of California Press, 2001). 25. Moses Mendelssohn, Jerusalem or on Religious Power and Judaism, trans. Allan Arkush (Hanover and London: University Press of New England published for Brandeis University Press, 1983). 26. Mendelssohn, Jerusalem. 27. Laqueur, The History of Zionism, 402. 28. Nahum Goldmann, The Jewish Paradox, trans. Steve Cox (London: Weidenfeld and Nicolson, 1978), 88. 29. Goldmann, The Jewish Paradox, 89. 30. It is interesting to note that Vladimir Jabotinsky is also buried on Har Herzl, which is somewhat contentious since he was not a leader of Israel, having died before its declaration of independence, and is a highly controversial figure. 31. Arthur Hertzberg, The Zionist Idea: A Historical Analysis and Reader (Westport, Conn: Greenwood Press, 1975), 251. 32. Steven J. Zipperstein, Elusive Prophet: Ahad Ha’am and the Origins of Zionism, ed. Arthur Hertzberg, Jewish Thinkers (London: Peter Halban, 1993), 121. 33. Laqueur, The History of Zionism, 368. This accusation was made before the full scope of Hitler’s horrifying plans and policies were known. 34. See for example his biography, Joseph Nedava, Vladimir Jabotinsky: The Man and His Struggles, trans. Shimshon Feder and Menachem Bloch (Tel Aviv: Jabotinsky Institute of Israel, 1986). 35. The Jewish Legion, however, was of little if any military use in WWI, and was more important for the Zionists than the British. See, Tom Segev, One Palestine,

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Complete: Jews and Arabs under the British Mandate, trans. Haim Watzman (London: Little, Brown and Company, 1999, 2000), 43. 36. Vladimir Jabotinsky, The Jewish War Front (Westport, Connecticut: Greenwood Press, 1975), 172–73. 37. Irgun Zvai Leumi or National Military Organization. 38. Quoted in, Stanislawski, Zionism and the Fin De Siècle, 209. 39. Vladimir Jabotinsky, The Political and Social Philosophy of Ze’ev Jabotinsky: Selected Writings, ed. Mordechai Sarig, trans. Shimshon Feder (London and Portland, Oregon: Vallentine Mitchell, 1999), 36. (Italics in original) 40. Jabotinsky, Political and Social Philosophy, 36. 41. Jabotinsky, Political and Social Philosophy, 28. 42. Jabotinsky, Political and Social Philosophy, 36. 43. Laqueur, The History of Zionism, 348. 44. Avi Shlaim, The Iron Wall: Israel and the Arab World (London: Penguin Books, 2000), 13. 45. Ze’ev (Vladimir) Jabotinsky, Samson, trans. Cyrus Brooks (New York and Miami: Judea Publishing Company, 1986 ), 36. This book was also published as Judge and Fool (1930) and Prelude to Delilah (1945). 46. Michael Walzer, “War, Peace, and Jewish Tradition,” in The Ethics of War and Peace: Religious and Secular Perspectives, ed. Terry Nardin (Princeton, N.J: Princeton University Press, 1996), 103. The Maccabees led a successful twenty-year revolt against Antiochus, at the end of which, in 142 B.C.E., Palestine was under Jewish control. 47. Moses Maimonides, The Guide for the Perplexed, trans. M. Friedländer, 2nd ed. (New York: Dover Publications Inc., 1956). Walzer, Lorberbaum, and Zohar, eds., The Jewish Political Tradition, Vol. I. 48. Walzer, “War, Peace, and Jewish Tradition,” 96. The Bar Kochba revolt (132–135 C.E.) was a revolt against the oppressive Roman rule in Palestine at the time of Hadrian. Rabbi Akiba (more often written in English as Akiva) gave the leader of this revolt, Simeon bar Kosiba the name bar Kochba (“son of a star”). Some, including Rabbi Akiba, thought Kochba to be the messiah; see, R. J. Zwi Werblowsky, “Messianism in Jewish History,” in Jewish Society Throughout the Ages, ed. H. H. Ben-Sasson and S. Ettinger (London: Vallentine, Mitchell, 1969), 36. 49. Yaacov Herzog, A People That Dwells Alone: Speeches and Writings of Yaacov Herzog (London: Weidenfeld and Nicolson, 1975), 170. 50. This state of uncertainty is conceptualized in Hebrew by the term eivah, meaning roughly enmity. 51. George Wilkes, “Judaism and Justice in War,” in Just War in Comparative Perspective, ed. Paul Robinson (Burlington, Vt.; Aldershot: Ashgate, 2003). Susan Niditch, War in the Hebrew Bible: A Study in the Ethics of Violence (New York: Oxford University Press, 1993). 52. Hertzberg, The Zionist Idea, 350. 53. Laqueur, The History of Zionism, 243.

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54. See above, fn. 8. 55. Mendes-Flohr and Reinharz, The Jew in the Modern World. 56. In the seventeenth century, in what is now Turkey, Shabatai Tzvi claimed to be the Jewish Messiah. Even though many Rabbis disputed his claim, a significant amount of Jews (including religious authority figures) believed him, and he subsequently stirred up enough social unrest in the Ottoman Empire (incidentally, his fame spread to Jewish communities outside of the Empire in Europe) that he was arrested, and under threat of torture he converted to Islam.

Chapter Three

Aristotle, War, the Good Life, and Zionism

From the Nicomachean Ethics to Cicero, ethics or morals were part of politics, that part that dealt not with the institutions but with the citizen, and all the virtues in Greece or in Rome are definitely political virtues. The question is never whether an individual is good but whether his conduct is good for the world he lives in. —Hannah Arendt1

Zionism sought to convince European Jewry that they could live a safe and productive life only inside a state of their own. Moreover, Zionism tended to argue that life in the Jewish state would provide Jews with an ability to participate in world history or global justice. In this regard, Zionism framed political obligation in grandiose transcendent terms. The obligation to die often involves similar reasoning in its justifications, notably with the idea that by dying for the state one will survive in the collective memory of the community to a degree otherwise unachievable. The first philosopher to link these various ideas of transcending the state, achieving individual greatness, and of the state providing some kind of good life for its citizens is Aristotle. This chapter introduces a set of themes that I will explore and critique at greater length in future chapters. For now I introduce one of the earliest philosophical justifications for the obligation to die. This argument is found in Aristotle’s political philosophy, where he argues that the city exists in part to enable the citizens to achieve the good life. However, Aristotle also introduces a variety of issues or concepts that are important for understanding how the obligation to die can be

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justified, how the obligation to die has been justified by past thinkers, and he provides a philosophical framework for contextualizing Zionism as a political philosophic project. As used in this chapter, Aristotle introduces seven themes, posed here as questions, that become increasingly important in subsequent chapters for understanding how the obligation to die has been and how it can be justified. First, what kind of subject can be obliged? Is the self a fragmented one or a whole; does, for example, the mind and the soul need to be as one, is there such a distinction and if so why does it matter? Second, what conception of politics is required for justifying the obligation to die? Third, what kind of political identity is the obligation to die predicated on? Is the obligation based on the requirements of citizenship, or on the basic condition of being a human being? Fourth, what is the place of politics in the obligation to die? Fifth, what is the relationship between the individual and the state? Sixth, how is violence justified in justifying the obligation to die, if indeed, violence can be justified? Seventh, what moral discourses have been used to justify the obligation to die? For example, how have means/ends moral arguments been used in this regard? In this chapter these seven sets of questions are examined using Aristotle’s political theory, Aristotle’s thinking about war, and Zionism (particularly labor Zionism). There are four reasons for using Aristotle here. First, Aristotle is important in the history of the just war tradition. Second, Aristotle raises important questions about or aspects of the sovereign/subject relationship that are relevant to this study. His argument that the state enables the citizens to pursue the good life is key to understanding how the sovereign may be presumed to oblige its subjects to risk their lives by being sent to war. Aristotle defined the good life as, in part, the ability to participate in the political life of the state. Third, even though the problem of obligation does not take up much of Aristotle’s attention, he sets up an especially influential question that concerns the problem of political obligation: Is it possible for the good of the individual and of the state to be the same? Fourth, Aristotle’s political thought is significant in thinking about the Jewish Question. Aristotle’s relevance in thinking about the Jewish Question is articulated in the writings of Hannah Arendt who often turned to the classical political philosophy of antiquity to understand what is politics. Thus, when she turned to the Jewish Question, she also turned to classical political thought. Elisabeth Young-Bruehl wrote in the forward to her biography of Arendt that, “When she asked herself the theoretical question ‘What is politics?’ her answers echoed years of wondering what Jewish politics might or should be.”2 As the philosopher and (along with Young-Bruehl) former student of Hannah Arendt, Richard J. Bernstein argues, it was the Jewish Question that over-

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shadowed Arendt’s political thought, and it was her struggle to find an account of politics that could respond to the Jewish Question that led her to think so fondly of an Aristotelian account of political life.3 The Jewish Question, at the lowest common denominator, is a question about political obligation as well as political participation. It is, thus, an account of the values of political life itself that led Jews to think about this question, is a question that concerned Arend, and it is precisely such an account of politics that is provided by Aristotle.4 It is theoretically not surprising that Aristotle should have something to say about the Jewish Question. A problem that the Jewish Question posed appears already in The Politics where Aristotle comments on the question of whether or not it is possible for the normative desires of the individual and the state to correlate, or in his own words, “whether the happiness of the individual is the same as that of the state, or different.”5 The importance of this question is clear, “Since the good of the state and not of the individual is the proper subject of political thought and speculation. . . .”6 The parallel here with the Jewish Question is that Aristotle is essentially posing the question of whether or not it is possible for the happiness or well-being of the individual to be the same as that of the citizen, thereby posing a classical version of asking what kind of political space exists for “man” in the world. Since Aristotle proceeds to answer the question by examining different types of government it is clear that this dichotomy is between the individual person and the citizen. The dichotomy has since been reformulated by Rousseau and Kant to be between humanity and citizenship. Unlike either Rousseau or Kant, however, Aristotle is more concerned with the state, or with the citizen. The Jewish Question also favored the state and citizenship—the problem was how to best enable Jewish citizenship rights and obligations. Zionism, an answer to the Jewish Question, is about framing of the possibilities for political life as if they are exclusively based in a bounded community. By definition, a bounded community includes boundary maintenance, which may include war or some other related form of institutionalized violence. Both Zionism and the just war tradition are about thinking through the possibilities of political obligation as they exist in the conditions of possibility set by the politico-philosophical foundations of what has come to be known as the nation-state. Just war thinking is primarily about the ethics of conflict between bounded communities. Zionism represents a stream of thought that takes the European state-model and the promises of the European Enlightenment as paradigms to replicate, but paradoxically, it was because of these paradigms that Zionism became necessary in the first place. Just war thinking came from a remarkably different issue, an issue that could only matter to sovereign political entities. Yet, there are some similarities between just war thinking and Zionism. As a theory about the morality of and in

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war, just war thinking is a political philosophy about the state and about its relations between states in time of war, issues that pertain to Zionism as well. In this regard, Aristotle makes important observations and arguments that speak to the bounded politics of Zionism and to the just war tradition. ARISTOTLE AND THE JUST WAR TRADITION The just war tradition may be a Christian one, but it is not without nonChristian influence. Before Saint Augustine wrote about justified war in The City of God, Aristotle wrote about justice and war in The Politics, and offers a non-Christian alternative for thinking about the justificd war.7 According to Frederick Russell, Aristotle is the person who coins the term just war.8 As Aristotle writes in The Politics, “And so, from one point of view, the art of war is a natural art of acquisition, for the art of acquisition includes hunting, an art which we ought to practice against wild beasts, and against men, who, though intended by nature to be governed, will not submit; for such a war is naturally just.”9 Aristotle’s connection to the just war tradition is further emphasized by turning to his other writings and his influence on future just war thinkers. Russell writes that Aquinas cites “Aristotle’s observation (Ethics 10, 7) that no one would be so foolish as to make war for its own sake, since he would thereby turn his friends into enemies to be killed.”10 The development of just war thinking was in large part due to the influence of Aristotle on Saint Thomas Aquinas.11 Aquinas adopts Aristotle’s ideas supporting the defense of the common good, and he uses Aristotle’s political thought to justify the right of the prince to wage war. Adopting the Aristotelian claim that politics is an activity designed for the betterment of human life means that force may be justifiably used to protect the political community. Aristotle’s thinking on war was, like later Christian just war theory, not universal. His thinking about the justice of war prejudiced non-Hellenic “barbarians” and thus could not be read as being universally just in any sense.12 According to Russell, Aristotle argues that, Men should only resort to war to prevent their own enslavement, that is, in selfdefense, or to obtain an empire for the benefit of the governed or to enslave those non-Hellenes deserving of slavery. In Aristotelian terms warfare was thus not an end in itself but a means to such higher goals as peace, glory and strength. When defense of a city was justified, any means of defense was licit. . . . Yet when any city-state made war an end rather than a means it was destined to fail. Aristotle’s just war furthered the moral ends of peace and justice.13

Russell accurately describes Aristotle’s thinking on war, but Aristotle’s thinking on war is not made in such a straightforward way. Aristotle does not state

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that one will be obliged to die because of the value of the city in enabling the good life, but this silence is because this obligation is taken for granted as a duty of the citizen.14 It is likely, however, that if pressed for a political justifying feature for the obligation to die Aristotle would comment on the value of the city enabling the good life of political participation, and that as a citizen this good life is worth risking one’s life for in war. However, Aristotle’s most straightforward account of the ethics involved in somebody going to die in war is in fact not made with reference to the city at all, but in a chapter on friendship. A “good man” will die in war because he will gain nobility. It is true of the good man that he does many acts for the sake of his friends and his country, and if necessary die for them; for he will throw away both wealth and honours and in general the goods that are objects of competition, gaining for himself nobility; since he would prefer a short period of intense pleasure to a long one of mild enjoyment, a twelvemonth of noble life to many years of humdrum existence, and one great and noble action to many trivial ones. Now those who die for others doubtless attain this result; it is therefore a great prize that they choose for themselves.15

However, this selfish morality is not the one that Aristotle explores when he writes about war more generally. In The Politics Aristotle was not thinking about the justice of war per se but about other issues that war is relevant to. It is in this regard that Aristotle’s political philosophy is important to both the Christian just war tradition and Zionism because his writings are not so much about the justice of war or about war itself, as they are about justice and the normative conditions of the community or city.

ARISTOTLE AND THE JUSTICE OF WAR “Just” in just war can mean many things. As Michael Walzer writes, “just is a term of art here; it means justifiable, defensible, even morally necessary (given the alternatives)—and that is all it means.”16 Walzer does not include “justice” in this list, but for Aristotle, the justifiability of war could only be understood in terms of justice. Aristotle notes that the right to go to war is something that should be kept in mind by the statesman who makes the laws,17 but this right or ability does not imply the justice of going to war. He remarks that others before him have debated the justice of war, a debate that continues to this day in terms not far removed from those that Aristotle identifies here: The origin of the dispute, and what makes the views invade each other’s territory, is as follows: in some sense excellence, when furnished with means, has actually the greatest power of exercising force: and as superior power is only

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found where there is superior excellence of some kind, power seems to imply excellence, and the dispute to be simply one about justice (for it is due to one party identifying justice with goodwill, while the other identifies it with the mere rule of the stronger).18

It seems that little has changed since Aristotle’s day, as those engaged in the relevant debates still seem focused on the ethics of power. However, it would be a mistake to argue that Aristotle here foreshadows the realist/just war divide. It is how justice is understood that delineates much of how just war thinking is responded to by its critics and advocates, but this modern debate does not understand justice in the same way that Aristotle does. Aristotle is interested in knowing what justice is; there is an essence to justice that defines it, and this way of thinking about justice is alien to contemporary international relations thought. Consequently, it is neither power that Aristotle is emphasizing here, nor the justice of power that Aristotle is interested in. It is justice (and excellence or arete) that Aristotle is concerned with. For Aristotle, the justice at stake was a much more abstract version than the procedural notions of justice that came later and could be qualified into law. Consequently, Aristotle highlights a tension between the laws of nature and other socially constructed laws in thinking about the justice of war. For example, it would be unjust to wage a war that is not fought for the right reasons, since such a war could result in the enslavement of people who are not meant to be slaves.19 For Aristotle, it is the purpose or end (telos) of anything that determines any possible social or political truths and serves as the basis for thinking about justice. Consequently, it would be unjust to wage a war that resulted in the enslavement of people who are not by nature meant to be slaves. If these people are meant by their nature to be slaves, then the war may be considered just. Some people are meant to be slaves so that other people, people whose nature is directed toward other pursuits, can put their energies where they should belong, into intellectual activity and the governing of the polis. Their energies should go into these activities because it is in such activity that one can find the good life, or happiness/felicity (eudaimonia). However, according to Frederick Russell, Aristotle was unable to provide an argument that could distinguish a just war from a successful war, which is where, in a sense, the later Christian just war thinkers came in. In summary, Aristotle justifies the obligation to die by asserting the value of a heroic death. He also implies that the obligation to die could be justified because of the value of life in the city or state, as enabling the good life. War is justified according to a teleological conception of justice. However, it is his account of the relationship between the individual citizen and the state that is especially important in understanding how it can be possible to justify the obligation to die.

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THE SUBJECT IN A NORMATIVE SPACE According to Aristotle, the city exists to serve the telos of the human individual. The purpose of the city is tied to a particular method of political life, one that ideally involves regular civic participation in public spaces. The highest end or purpose of the individual may be contemplation, but in achieving this end, the individual “transcends the city.”20 The good of the individual is thus greater than the good of the city, or the purpose of the city. In other words, “The moral virtues cannot be understood as being for the sake of the city since the city must be understood as being for the sake of the practice of moral virtue.”21 Aristotle’s famous claim that, “man is by nature a political animal,”22 remains relevant in that one of the most constant of political struggles in history is to gain access to the political decision-making processes of the community. There are two interrelated points here that I want to highlight, each of which relates in some way to the normative and moral view of the community. First, the conception of the subject that is engaged in the pursuit of politics is important; second, political participation is understood to be possible only within a bounded sovereign space. Aristotle’s political animal is not everybody. He restricts who is able to participate in the pursuit of political life. The significance here is that Aristotle is sensitive to the fact that political activity involves a subject that is capable of such activity. That people have been excluded from political life because of unfair and unjust discrimination is a pattern in human history, and one of especial significance to Jewish history. However, what I want to highlight is that in the abstract sense, any theory about political life needs to think of a subject as one that can engage in political life. Sometimes this subject is framed according to the nomenclature of the nation, of class, religion, ethnicity, or universal individuality. Ultimately, however, the subject needs to be understood as one that can participate in political life which requires that the subject have some kind of innate right or direct ability to political participation with the relevant obligations incurred. Thus, Aristotle delineates the limits of a certain kind of political life, one marked by subjects that are by definition tied to the normative conditions of the community, and are either capable of or involved in direct participation in the politics of the community. The subject is, in effect, existentially tied to the city, since the meaning of his23 existence is made possible by participation in political life. People require the city in order to live, since no single person is entirely self-sufficient and the city enables a better life than one outside of the community. Furthermore, the city makes possible the ability to pursue the good life. In addition, because of this existential connection between subject and city, the city itself takes on additional normative characteristics. The city does not just exist for

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the survival of individuals and of their families; it exists both for the betterment of its inhabitants by giving its citizens (or at least, of some of its more privileged inhabitants) the opportunity to participate in the governing of the polis and makes possible the identity of these inhabitants as citizens. Historically, however, restrictions on citizenship or of political and economic rights made this type of Aristotelian individual an impossibility for European Jewry; they could not be citizens, they could not pursue the good life, and since the Enlightenment it was these issues that characterized Jewish political thought and formed the basis for the Jewish Question. Modern Jews were aware of the significance of national identity in the construction of European states and sought to participate in this construction, either as Zionists or as citizens in their respective countries of residence,24 even though and in spite of the lack of any historically significant Jewish precedent for this kind of participation. A primary stipulation in just war thinking is that the state is a political community that is entitled to send its members into war, to fight, kill, and risk being killed. The history of Jews is interesting in this regard. For centuries Jews did not have this obligation as Jews; some did as subjects and then as citizens, but a modern history of European Jewry cannot escape the fact that, against their historical tradition, some Jews called for a politically Jewish identity that entailed or involved an obligation to fight and possibly die for the Jews. When approached from this angle, it is clearer that this obligation is a normative one. Political communities are normative communities in thought and deed, which is precisely how Aristotle treats the city, as a normative entity. It is a combination of a normative view of the polity and the role of the members or individuals in relation to the polity that opens up Zionism as such a powerful example of Western political thought in practice. Max Weber’s famous explanation of the state as an entity that has the “monopoly of legitimate physical violence” is descriptive not only of what the Zionists desired but also of what just war thinkers assumed.25 Yet, Weber’s statement here should not be read as a description of the state; it is a clarification of a normative understanding of the state. If there are going to be possibilities for violence, either within states or between them, then the state should have this monopoly in order to control it as best as is humanly possible. Violence is a part of any political community, and has always been linked in some way to sovereignty. Zionism’s eventual defense of violence was possible only after it had some claim to sovereign authority, or some commonly shared sovereign reference point within the Zionist community. Within Zionist thought and practice, there was always a recognition that Zionism either implied or required some account of sovereignty, even if sovereignty was treated as but one part of the

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Zionist project and regardless of whether the issue at hand was political or cultural Zionism.26 For Zionists active before the Declaration of the State of Israel on May 15, 1948, the sovereign was in part the Jewish people, and the obligation was inevitably based on some understanding of the collective experiences of the Jewish people. Treating the Jews as a nation has been read as an early paradigm of the Western idea of a nation.27 A Royal Institute of International Affairs study group chaired by E. H. Carr “remarked that as a consequence of varied historical conditions the Jews assumed ‘at an exceptionally early date, some of the characteristics which have since become associated most closely with the modern concept of a ‘nation.’”28 It is not much of a stretch for any ideological movement to treat a nation as a sovereign people. Building the nation into a claim for sovereign statehood is a characteristic of the European nation-state model, one that Zionism embraced without hesitation. The Zionist project itself incorporated explicitly European ideals about the nation and state. Herzl, for example, wanted to create a European style aristocratic republic.29 Zionism was clearly a European-style project, forged by Jews faced with a paradox: should they struggle to join the political societies that had persecuted them for so long? Before his Zionist epiphany, Herzl dreamed of a huge mass conversion of all Jews to Christianity, marked by a ringing of church bells at the same hour all across Europe, and overseen by the Pope himself.30 The Jews of Western Europe were trying to figure out how to merge their Jewish identity into, at first, the Christian communities they lived in, and then, along with their Eastern European Jewish neighbours, into the cosmopolitan ideal that they dreamed of and that the Enlightenment (and the French Revolution) promised. It is also possible to argue that the Yishuv, the Jewish community in Palestine, became the Zionist sovereign, supplementing the idea of the Jewish people. The Yishuv was the political center of Zionist life in Palestine, and it eventually involved many of the trappings of a state, including a labor union and defense forces (such as the Haganah). The Zionist sovereign has also been a discursive claim shared by all national self-determination movements, the demand of the right to live within the confines of their own state. In this way, the cause of national self-determination replaces the territorialized political sovereignty of statehood.31 The idea of the Jewish people was a part of this foundation, but so too were the political ideals for a real political emancipation hoped for by the various Jewish communities in Europe. To this end, it is possible to read into almost every Zionist claim the desire for securing the possibilities of a modern equivalent of the “good life,” of an equal citizenry within the confines of a sovereign nation-state. Zionist ideology has more often than not involved building into Jewish political thought and practice the claim that the Jews should (and might need to) have the obligation to

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fight and risk their lives on behalf of the Jewish people. However, the city or state exists for more than just this political obligation, even though, as I will demonstrate below, for some it is precisely this obligation that is important.

FROM ANCIENT GREEK THOUGHT TO MODERN ZIONISM Aristotle is not only relevant to the just war tradition; his thought is of particular interest in thinking about political obligations of life in the polity. According to Aristotle, it is necessary for human survival to live in a community, but the community serves an additional purpose beyond mere survival: to assist the individual to transcend an unfulfilled existence by making possible the good life. The city thus serves a purpose; the city is not a moral end in itself. These issues remain relevant across time and space, even if the various manifestations of the community and the subject change. Aristotle does not argue in support of a right of national self-determination; his thought is of relevance to Zionism in regard to the understanding of politics that many Zionists took for granted. Consequently, thinking Zionism “through” Aristotle illuminates some primary elements in Zionism. Living in a political community as a citizen or equal participant in political life is precisely what the Zionists wanted to achieve for the Jews, and achieve it to a degree where they would never again have to suffer the humiliation and danger of life in the Diaspora. As willing participants in the project to build a Jewish state, Zionists came face to face with how the individual member of the community relates to the community he or she is trying to build. It is the normative foundations of the city that serve to make sense out of an obligation to die for the sovereign, and while Aristotle makes this argument by referring to his abstract concepts of the good life and of justice, Zionism illustrates this argument in rhetoric and practice. Whereas Aristotle argues that the city makes it possible to achieve the good life and thus transcend the city, Zionism repeatedly claims that the achievement of a Jewish state would enable Jews to transcend their limited existence in the Diaspora, or as the Zionists called it, in exile. Consequently, while Zionist ideologues may not have explicitly referred to Aristotle, Aristotle’s ideas are in some ways the most helpful in thinking through the normative political philosophy of Zionism. At least since Aristotle, politics has involved a distinction between the public and the private realms. Jewish life in Europe reflected this division insofar as anti-Semitic attacks were, although often conducted with official support, primarily a private affair of Jewish suffering, while the ability to prevent such attacks was a public one of political participation. In other words, on the

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one hand the Jewish experience in Europe was marred by anti-Semitism, and on the other it featured a faith in a political process of emancipation that would include Jews and protect them from anti-Semitism.32 As such, from its very beginning, Zionism was concerned with the politics of the public/private realm. Moreover, since membership in the public life of state politics has historically not been available to Jews since the destruction of the Jewish Temple in Jerusalem, Jewish life and Jewish socio-political thought has consistently been focused on what in political theory is categorized as the private realm. Zionism changed this focus in a particular way. The Zionists were not the only modern Jews to think about the possibilities of Jewish political life, but they did so by treating the Jewish people as a nation unto itself. As such, they recognized a relationship between the national identity politics of the nation-state and the possibilities of and for political emancipation. One of the more important early Zionist thinkers, the Russian Jew Leo Pinsker raised both of these issues in his important pamphlet, AutoEmancipation. In this text he not only points out how the continuous nationalhomelessness of the Jews is a curse causing their persecution but also that the way forward for the Jews is to prove their nationality and thus their worth by claiming a state of their own. “National self-respect! Where can we obtain it? It is truly the greatest misfortune of our race that we do not constitute a nation, that we are merely Jews.”33 He writes, “[The Jewish people] is everywhere a guest, and nowhere at home. . . . We must prove that the misfortunes of the Jews are due, above all to their lack of desire for national independence. . . .”34 Pinsker notes that, “The great ideas of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries have not passed by our people without leaving a trace. We feel not only as Jews; we feel as men. As men, we, too, wish to live like other men and be a nation like the others. . . . The general history of the present day seems to be our ally.”35 Pinsker’s call for a national movement of Jews requires that the Jews become politically engaged, that they become “men” like other “men” who are capable of national politics. This account is, he argues, supported by the Zeitgeist—perhaps more so than he would have thought. Pinsker is referring to the ideals of national sovereignty, but he is also, without knowing it, referring to a conception of politics that just war thinking requires, and that ultimately the Zionists had to come to terms with, namely the issue of a political obligation to risk one’s life for the polity. The idea that Jews might have a political obligation to die for Jews is something that Zionism introduced into modern Jewry, but this introduction came out of a particular way of thinking about politics, which is where it becomes useful to turn back to political philosophy. Hannah Arendt traces this account of politics across the medieval world back to antiquity.36 She notes how the distinction in ancient Greece between

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the private and the public/political sphere made possible a conception of politics that was characterized by equal participation in public political life.37 This life was possible for the patriarch of the family thanks to the use of servants and women who would tend to matters at home, thereby giving the patriarch of the home the time to enjoy a dignified life of political participation. In the medieval era the public political realm was replaced with the authority of the church, and the private home life was replaced with secular realms in a feudal order.38 In both the medieval and ancient world, it is the absence of politics that characterizes the home life. Life outside of the home for the citizen revolved around the city/polity and “demanded courage” because political life involved the lives and survival of many people, not just one’s own life (and one’s immediate family).39 Consequently, “Whoever entered the political realm had first to be ready to risk his life, and too great a love for life obstructed freedom, was a sure sign of slavishness.”40 Thus involvement in politics meant caring for the city, for people other than one’s immediate family, and if one’s participation in political life was serious, it meant that one could not be too enamoured with one’s own life41 and must be willing to risk dying for the benefit of the city. Arendt is arguing that becoming active as an equal member or citizen comes with certain obligations—this is truer in ancient Greece than during the medieval period which was completely hierarchical and had no spaces available for equal political membership; nevertheless, the problem of being a member of a political society and the obligations that such membership entailed remained an issue in medieval political life (and thought). It is hardly surprising that the medieval (or post-Aristotle) just war thinkers continued to think about how to justify a political obligation to die, since this obligation is the most important obligation any member can have to the sovereign community. Involvement in political life demands an obligation to the polity, an obligation that, in classical, medieval, and in some cases modern terms supersedes all others; Aristotle knew this, the medieval philosophers struggled with providing legitimating reasons for the prioritizing of political obligations for subjects not privy to political participation, and the Zionists acted on it.

ZIONISM AS THE POLITICAL REALM: A JEWISH POLITICAL THEORY It is the ability to be in control of determining the conditions of and for any political obligation, as well as having the ability to be obliged as equal citizens that Pinsker demands in Auto-Emancipation. The obligation to risk dying for the city is one of these obligations because it is a political obligation

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that cannot be removed from claims to a nation-state. As such, the nationstate is assumed to be something greater, of greater worth, than any specific individual. The claim to a national Jewish consciousness was a novel and controversial move for many Jews, but it demonstrated a growing awareness by the Zionists that Jewish political thought needed to change if Jews were to engage productively in political life. This change was not just about building a Jewish state, but about rebuilding the Jewish subject into a Jew capable of having political obligations. It has become conventional wisdom to accept that the political community may demand of its members that they fight and die. As Jenny Edkins writes, “The contemporary form of political community, the state, relies for its existence on the assumption that it can compel its citizens to fight (and die) for its sovereignty. It proffers security in return for obedience.”42 Yet, it is not necessarily security that is returned for obedience, or at least, it is not necessarily only security that is returned—and I will explore this and other reasons for this “obedience” in future chapters. In Aristotle’s understanding of the political community it is not security per se that is returned by the polity, but the possibilities for a particular type of life. Arendt remarks that it is not security that makes this obligation but rather a fundamental feature of life in the political realm itself. What makes this obligation possible in Arendt’s Aristotelian inspired argument is the type of subject or the identity of the person who is able to take on such an obligation. In other words, it is not just a feature of the modern political community that it can obligate its citizens in this regard, it is a feature of the subject as well as the reasons for the community. In this regard, one of Zionism’s achievements has been to think of Jews who have the obligations of political subjects but toward the Jewish nation. Involvement in the life of the Jewish nation was presumed to involve the same obligations as life in the political realm. Even though the nation without a state could not provide the good life of political participation as citizens, it did provide a means to achieve a better life in the pursuit of this good life. Moreover, Zionist Jews who were active in settling Palestine tended to believe that the Zionist life itself provided a good life that involved a shift from the old ghetto Jew to the new pioneer/settler Jew (halutz or halutzim in the plural), and that this good life would improve with the establishment of the Jewish state. Moreover, while the happiness of life as a citizen did not yet exist, the transcendence that the citizen is supposed to experience as a part of eudaimonia by transcending the city through a life of contemplation was in essence duplicated by the halutzim who transcended the old Jewish identity through labour or other Zionist activities in Palestine. Zionism needs to be read as more than just a movement for national selfdetermination, but a movement fighting for a specific kind of understanding

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about political identity. It is the building up of a strong, powerful, free Jewish citizen that the Zionists argued for. Zionism took on the obligations of the political realm to such a degree that Zionists often invoked not just the betterment of the Jews as its raison d’être, but also faith that Zionism was something that could improve the world and contribute to humanity. Zionists argued, both explicitly and implicitly, that participation in the political life of a Jewish state (and in building one) was not an end in itself, but played a part in a greater project; thus the Zionist project to build a Jewish polity was in order for the Jews, or for humanity, to transcend their limited existence and come into a better world. This redemptive or messianic take on involvement in political life took two forms in Zionist thought, a religious form (which I will look at in chapter 5) and a secular form that was fundamental to the various socialist, Marxist, and Labour Zionist groups. The redemptive element in Zionist thought goes to the heart of how obligation is understood in Zionism, and is especially visible in Labour Zionism. While this aspect is visible in most accounts of Zionism, Labour Zionism was particularly influential in Zionist and Israeli history, and due to its prominence I will use it as the main Zionist example to illustrate the point of redemption and identity-construction in Zionism and of how this construction of identity relates to the obligation to die. The Labour Zionist ethos has elements of a secular messianism, tied to redemption and the coming of a better world. The Zionist use of a secular-messianic future is an important illustration of how a secular polity can be justified by quasi-religious imagery. This type of imagery is crucial to the Zionist political project that requires an obligation to put the city, state, or nation, first. Indeed, this prioritization is precisely what Arendt points out is built into the Aristotelian understanding of the city. Aristotle conceptualized the city as a place designed for its citizens to transcend its limits by making use of the city to pursue the good life—and the Zionists acted on this understanding of the community. One of early Zionism’s key characteristics is the idea that Zionism provides a means for redeeming the Jews of their suffering, impoverishment, and persecution. Thus, by leaving the Diaspora and settling in the Jewish state, the Jews will escape their weakened condition and enter a strong one. The idea of a Jewish state is, in this view, conceptualized as the condition of possibility for escaping one form of Jewish identity and of building a national (independent and strong) identity. The Jew is understood to transcend his (or her) previous identity and enter into something great. This outlook, often referred to as the negation of the Diaspora, provides the backdrop to the secular messianism and is supplemented in the case of the socialist and Marxist Zionists by the redemptive and emancipatory elements in socialism and Marxism.43 For the Marxists and so-

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cialists, their political obligations are built into the role of the proletariat in history, and consequently, Zionism is for them the ability to engage in history. The obligation to die for the sovereign as argued in Aristotelian terms about the good life is a bedrock of all Zionist accounts of obligation, and, like Aristotle, the Zionists often framed this obligation in a transcendental way. Whereas for Aristotle the individual citizen is supposed to transcend the city that serves to enable the good life, for the Zionists, Zionism itself involved transcending one understanding of European Jewish identity to become a Zionist pioneer, a builder of the Jewish state. Zionism’s transcendentalism is about transcending one identity for another and is consequently existential. The transcendental existentialism of Zionism is thus meant in the most basic of senses: the Jewish identity/existence of old is rebuilt, transcended into something better, into a stronger more assertive existence. At the same time, this transcendental existentialism is also redemptive, since the new Zionist Jew is saving him or herself from a life of exile. To remain in exile is to suffer in all senses, existentially as well as materially, politically, and spiritually. To join the Zionist project in Palestine is thus to redeem oneself by becoming a Jewish pioneer. Zionism, especially Labour Zionism, provides an illustration of how the individual subject can, as a modern citizen or citizen-in-themaking, be obliged, without taking obligation for granted, as contemporary just war thinking does, that individual subjects can have political obligations. Unlike the just war tradition, that was built around pre-existing theories of the state or community and its members, Zionism cannot take any assumptions about what it means to be a subject or citizen for granted; as a nationalist ideology for self-determination it has to make any such claim in explicit terms.

A ZIONIST OBLIGATION TO FIGHT One of the most famous examples of Jews going to fight and die for Zionism is the Trumpeldor myth. Joseph Trumpeldor was a Russian Jew who was trained as a dentist. He had been an officer in the Russian army during the Russo-Japanese war. He was instrumental in the formation of the Jewish Legion during the First World War and was an important Zionist leader. Trumpeldor was also one of the settlers at Tel Hai, a small Ha-Shomer44 settlement in the North of Palestine near the border (and technically within the French area as stipulated in the Sykes-Picot agreement). The myth surrounding Trumpeldor and Tel Hai is a prime example of a secular Zionist messianic fervor that I will explore in greater depth below and in future chapters. Declining security in this border region led the inhabitants of Metulla, a nearby farming settlement, to leave until the security situation improved. Those at

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Tel Hai, however, following in the words of one of its members, Aharon Sher, who in an otherwise forgotten article wrote, “A place once settled is not to be abandoned,”45 decided to stay, and requested support and assistance from the Jewish leadership in Palestine. The Zionist Commission did nothing and was uninterested. The Provisional Council of Jews in Palestine did little. Some saw the request as a move by the left-wing Zionists to gain political power. On the right, the leader of Revisionist Zionism (a Zionist group often characterized by its militancy), Vladimir Jabotinsky, argued that they should withdraw for the time being since they could not successfully defend themselves and he saw no reason or value in their martyrdom.46 Jabotinsky was partly correct. When some resources were finally sent to Tel Hai, the convoy met en route refugees from the settlement. Tel Hai had been attacked on March 1, 1920, resulting in the death of six of the settlers, including Joseph Trumpeldor. Jabotinsky underestimated, however, the importance of the battle itself. In death, Trumpeldor became a legend. The event at Tel Hai became a locus of jingoism or hard-line militant nationalism, a mythologized event demonstrating how for “the first time in Jewish history for two thousand years . . . Jews preferred to die in battle rather to retreat.”47 In the pursuit of the good life, of a national home for the Jews and the revitalization of Jewish identity, Zionism brought an obligation to risk one’s life as a Jew by going to fight. How did those at Tel Hai come to believe so strongly in Zionism that they chose to fight and die? As individuals, they all undoubtedly had their respective reasons, but as participants in the Labour Zionist movement, they illustrate how the normative (and transcendental) subject/sovereign relationship that Aristotle provides in his account of the city and of political life can function. The Labour Zionist subject itself was a transcendental subject, transcending both the discriminatory political life in Europe as well as, in their eyes at least, the impoverished private life of Ashkenazi Jewry. The act of manual labor in Palestine was also transcendental, since it was through labor that these Zionist Jews found themselves, and from which all their political ideology came. However, the move from the spiritual labor ethic, sometimes called the “conquest of labor,”48 to the need for defense should not be read as being determined by the logic of Labour Zionism—things just worked out that way for a variety of complicated reasons. Nevertheless, the move to defense fits within the Labour Zionist ethic for existential reasons. The ideology behind the conquest of labor in Labour Zionism implies that an obligation to Labour Zionism exists on an existential level—the transcendental politics of Zionism led naturally to an existential account of the participant, since the participant’s existence as a social and political being is tied to the participation in a project designed to transform his or her identity. Labour Zionism is existential be-

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cause it gives meaning to Jewish identity. Consequently, Labour Zionism may involve an obligation to risk dying for the Labour Zionist cause or for any particular Labour Zionist commune since one’s very concept of self is tied to both, and to risk either would be to risk one’s self-worth.49 The fact that the Labour Zionist movement characterized Jewish units during the Second World War as the first “suicide squads” or “commando units” in Palestine is illustrative of this existentialist outlook. These Jewish soldiers were “employed for specially daring enterprises,” and “earned the praise of all the British commanders of the battle fronts.”50 “They were the first in the storming of Keren, in Eretrea [sic]; in Syria, Jewish youth acted as scouts ahead of the British Army and were an example to others. At Tobruck, the Prime Minister told a unit of Jewish stevedores working there: ‘You are unloading history.’”51 However, the existentialism inherent in Labour Zionism was generally not intended to be aggressive, and in this regard, the majority of Zionist thought was, like the just war tradition, premised on the belief of its own moral justifiability, and was thus generally of a defensive character. For the most part, this defensive take on violence is illustrative of how Zionists saw themselves. Writing after hearing the Prime Minister of Israel Menahem Begin argue in 1982 on behalf of going to war in Lebanon, the Zionist scholar and historian Anita Shapira remarked, “Whenever [Zionist and Israeli leaders] deemed it necessary to engage in hostilities, they justified their decision by pointing to the deeds of the adversary, claiming that it was a question of survival. War was always viewed as unavoidable, a matter of necessity and not of choice.”52 Yet, the existential element in Zionist thought welcomed an obligation that could quite openly involve violence. The underlying point of contention here was whether or not the use of violence and force was antithetical to the Jewish identity, as Ahad Ha’am53 argued, or whether it was not, as Micha Joseph Berdichevsky claimed. Berdichevsky, educated in Jewish religion and a self-proclaimed follower of Nietzsche, enthusiastically understood Jewish identity to include some kind of militarism. He may have been the first to use the Massada story of collective suicide (led by Elazar ben Yair) as “a tale of Jewish heroism,” and to justify, defend or explain his militancy as a Jew he used previously marginalized Biblical stories that exemplified violence, death, and bravery.54 Berdichevsky writes, “Greater than those who fled out of the walls and hid in coffins were those who died by the sword.”55 Anita Shapira writes that Berdichevsky “saw life in the Diaspora as a process of constant and ongoing degeneration, from both the spiritual-intellectual and physical point of view.”56 Jewish life in the Diaspora was marked by weakness, something that he despised, and, contrary to Ha’am, he did not support of the idea of the Jews

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as a chosen people. Ahad Ha’am’s philosophy is based in large part on the claim that, “The Jewish people was morally superior to all other peoples. As a consequence, it had a natural disgust for physical power and its use.”57 For Ha’am, the Jewish state was to be a model for other nations, and he was sharply critical of Zionist accounts of Jews that went to fight and die for the sake of their nation. Ha’am took any such argument as a joke, arguing in response to Theodor Herzl’s and Max Nordau’s respective plays that had Jews die in a duel, that no Jew would be stupid enough to fight a duel and die for the sake of responding to some insult against the Jewish people.58 In contrast, Berdichevsky takes the position that, “When the people was a people like others, vital, creative, full of strength and courage, its veneration was not for righteous men but for heroes in war.”59 The extreme views of these two thinkers represents alternative conceptions of the Zionist Jew’s relationship to obligations involving dying and of the use of force. Within the Labour Zionist movement political obligations to risk dying were rarely argued in terms of the glory of death or the glory of battle and war, as an existential account of violence could imply, but were made in defensive terms. Note for example the following statement from a resolution adopted by the Poale Zion, one of the Labour Zionist groups, at an emergency meeting held in Great Britain on the tenth of July 1942: 1. This Executive views with great concern and anxiety the development of the battle in the Middle East. . . . The Jewish volunteers have distinguished themselves on all fronts in the Middle East, but they are not allowed to form a distinct Jewish force under British command. The request for full utilization of Jewish manpower and resources has hitherto been rejected. For Allied Nations an invasion of Palestine may mean only a temporary setback. For the Jewish people, Palestine is the last stronghold from which there is no retreat. . . . 2. This Executive, at the eleventh hour, therefore urges H.M. Government to unify all Jewish units, to enlarge their number, and to train and equip them so as to form a Jewish Fighting Force within the British Army. Tens of thousands of Jewish men of military age are eagerly awaiting this call to arms.60

This example is illustrative of Zionist obligations to fight and die, although the example comes from a meeting in London, where the war in Europe may have been more pressing to the Zionist ideologues than those living in Palestine. Nevertheless, in both locales various Labour Zionist groups and individuals were in speech and in deed, demonstrating a willingness to fight and die for Zionism. For Zionist activities in Palestine, when obligations to fight did arise, they arose primarily (but not exclusively) in regard to the local Arab population, and how to respond or deal with local Arab Palestinian resistance to Jewish

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settlement. The relationship between the Labour Zionists and the local Palestinian inhabitants is complicated, marked by insecurities, uncertainties, mistrust, misunderstandings, romanticism and idealism, and in general is explained rather well by reference to Edward Said’s famous concept of Orientalism.61 Political obligations by Zionists that involved fighting local Arabs were, consequently, not an act of overt bellicosity or racism (although such incidents and beliefs did exist). The obligation to obey the sovereign and die on behalf of some Zionist entity or cause was almost always conceptualized as being morally obliged to resort to violence as a last resort. The just war framework works quite well here, especially insofar as justified wars are supposed to be wars of last resort. Most Zionist defenses of the use of force also suggest that the turn to violence is a last resort, and complementing early just war thinkers, including Aristotle, Zionists granted considerable leeway for what kinds of reasons could be used to justify war that go far beyond contemporary claims about responding to acts of aggression.62 Zionists could see many things to be an act of aggression against them, even if the conditions for aggression emerging are Zionist practice against the local population. In this vein, Zionists by and large justified resorts to violence by claiming the violence was a last resort, required to protect Zionism. Justifying violence by suggesting its necessity as a last resort fits the Zionist belief that nothing should be done to risk the ends of Zionism succeeding. In this vein, the Labour Zionists and Zionism in general were characterized by means/ends thinking, with the ends justifying the means. There is a tension here pertaining to the means/ends moral quandary, one that I will not address here, but that will become increasingly important in future chapters. Aristotle was no means/ends moral thinker (even if Russell portrays Aristotle’s just war thinking in this way).63 Nevertheless, the means/ends category that became important to later just war theorists pertains quite well to Labour Zionism, if not Zionism in general. The young Labour Zionists, when pressed with questions about why the local Arab inhabitants would submit or accept Zionism when it was clearly not in their interests to do so, would reply that “if Palestine were not given to them, they would take it by force.”64 Such a force did not exist until the late 1940s,65 and to be fair to these young ideologues, they were not primarily interested in conquering anything or anybody by force. In fact, the idea of having professional guards or soldiers caused an ideological problem for people who believed that one should be first and foremost a laborer, and any activities that detracted from this view were inherently problematic if not wrong. However, this ideological problem was resolved by many Labour Zionists by romanticizing the warrior in the same fashion that they romanticized the laborer. Indeed, one important element in the Labour Zionist ethos was the

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“cultivation of symbols and myths of heroism,”66 which inevitably included romanticizing the warrior. Even carrying a weapon was special since it represented an independence and strength that Jews had not had in Europe. Indeed, some members within Poale Zion were involved in “the establishment of an organization of Jewish watchmen or guards (Ha-Shomer).67 The conquest of labor was a part of Poale Zion’s ideology, like the other Labour Zionist groups such as Hapoel Hatzair. Yet whereas Hapoel Hatzair and the more faithful followers of A. D. Gordon felt that their laboring was never intended to cause any harm to other people, the Labour Zionism of David Grin (later David Ben-Gurion, future Prime Minister of Israel), a leader of Poale Zion, and others, was sympathetic to the logical implications of this existential ideology based on labor. These Zionists were deeply sympathetic to the romanticism of being settler-pioneer-cowboy-types, and they moved to incorporate the need for violence (if necessary) into their Zionist politics. Dying in battle on behalf of Zionism, consequently, became an exceptional or remarkable event. Ha-Shomer was not supposed to be an offensive fighting force, but a group of guards, which was on its own highly symbolic. Jews risking their lives by doing guard duty demonstrated a novel and powerful construction of Jewish identity, and Jews who died in their duty as guards were heroes demanding a special type of remembrance.68 It is telling that the slogan of HaShomer was, “In blood and fire Judea fell, in blood and fire shall Judea rise again.”69

CONCLUSION In this chapter I have shown how Aristotle fits into the just war tradition, and explored his thinking on the application of morality to war. Aristotle’s political thought is based on the idea that the city exists in order to enable its citizens to pursue the good life and find eudaimonia (happiness/felicity). The obligation to die for the sovereign in war is thus based on the value of the city in enabling its citizens this opportunity for happiness. The city exists in order to allow its citizens to transcend the city in their pursuit of eudaimonia. The identity of the citizen is as such built on a transcendental ethic whereby the citizen transcends one form of existence into a better one while living in the city. Aristotle points out that any obligation to die for the sovereign is contingent on the political identity of the subject at stake, as well as on the character of the sovereign that obligates. Zionist thought and practice, in particular that of the socialist, Marxist and Labour Zionists, is constructed in the same way. The Jewish identity in exile in the Diaspora needs to be left behind. By becoming a Zionist pioneer the Jews transcend their impoverished, weak-

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ened, pathetic life in exile and become existentially stronger, independent, confident, and able-bodied members of society. Consequently, the Zionist must be prepared to defend, fight, and risk dying for the Zionist project because this project is intrinsic to the meaning of the Zionist’s very existence. Furthermore, in my analysis of Labour Zionism I have used Aristotle’s political thought to highlight some important themes. First, the identity of the subject being obliged is important in arguing why such a subject has an obligation to risk his or her life. Second, the relationship between the sovereign and the subject is a normative one. Third, an obligation to risk one’s life by going to fight is necessarily contingent on the happiness of the individual and of the state being the same, so that life inside the state makes possible the happiness of the individual, even if ultimately the happiness of the individual is greater than that of the state. Fourth, dying for the state is important because without the possibility of this obligation one cannot find the good life because this obligation can exist only if there is a political life to participate in.70 While Aristotle was not greatly concerned with the problem of political obligation, what his argument ultimately demonstrates is that political obligations are in great part justified by the person obligated being a participant in public political life. The reason that obligation was not such a problem for Aristotle is because he believed political obligations to be self-evident. By virtue of being a citizen, this individual incurs obligations to the city by default. For Aristotle, the definition of being a citizen means that there are obligations to the city, obligations that are primarily designed to achieve a life of political participation and intellectual contemplation. This is the good life of eudaimonia and it forms the basis for how Aristotle understood and valued political life, and implicitly is his justification for how political obligations are justified, because they are political in the sense of being a part of this good life. Aristotle’s version of politics is inherently exclusionary, but what he demonstrates is that politics could not take place without different people participating in the affairs of the community, including domestic duties. This emphasis on difference is, to be sure, overlooked by Aristotle who places more importance on the male citizens who participate in political life. However, these people could not engage in politics if others were not there to take up those jobs that would otherwise have taken time away from a life of politics. Difference is indeed crucial to politics. Moreover, Aristotle implies that any account of political obligation will be incomplete if it does not include respect for the different ways in which different people can be obliged. The type of subject is important. The obligations of a slave are inherently different than those of a citizen, and even if these obligations are presumably self-evident, they are so because of the definitional features of these, and other, identities. In modern life, this emphasis on the identity of the obliged subject remains important.

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I will return in subsequent chapters to this idea that a particular understanding of politics is necessary in order for the obligation to die to become justified. Over time, Aristotle’s philosophy has become an important reference point for justifying political obligation, and in the next chapter I turn to two different ways in which the Aristotelian argument on behalf of the normative good of the city has been used to justify the obligation to die.

NOTES 1. Hannah Arendt, Responsibility and Judgment, ed. Jerome Kohn (New York: Schocken Books, 2003), 151. 2. Elizabeth Young-Bruehl, Hannah Arendt: For Love of the World, 2nd ed. (New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 2004), xxxix. 3. Richard J. Bernstein, Hannah Arendt and the Jewish Question (Cambridge, Massachusetts: The MIT Press, 1996). 4. It is highly unlikely that the majority of classical Zionist thinkers were either knowledgeable or well versed in Aristotelian political philosophy. Jewish philosophers were familiar with Aristotle, but most Zionists were not philosophers, they were ideologues. Nevertheless, Aristotle’s political thought is a good entry point for thinking about Zionist ideology. 5. Aristotle, The Politics and the Constitution of Athens, ed. Stephen Everson (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996), 168 (Book VI, ii, 5). 6. Aristotle, The Politics, 168 (Book VI, ii, 18–19). 7. Nicholas Rengger, “The Judgment of War,” Review of International Studies 31, no. Special Issue (2005). 8. Frederick H. Russell, The Just War in the Middle Ages (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press 1975), 3. 9. Aristotle, The Politics. 10. Russell, The Just War in the Middle Ages, 263. 11. Insofar as the Christian just war tradition is concerned, it is Thomas Aquinas that introduces Aristotelian thought into thinking about the ethics of war. See, Russell, The Just War in the Middle Ages, 258–67. 12. Even though such exclusions were defended or defined by Aristotle and others according to perceived universal laws of nature. 13. Russell, The Just War in the Middle Ages, 3–4. 14. Which is not to say that in ancient Greece there were no debates over the method of conscription, of who was expected to serve. See, Matthew R. Christ, “Conscription of Hoplites in Classical Athens,” The Classical Quarterly, New Series 51, no. 2 (2001). 15. Aristotle, The Nicomachean Ethics, ed. J. L. Ackrill and J. O. Urmson, trans. David Ross (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1998), 237 (Book IX Ch. 8). 16. Michael Walzer, Arguing About War (New Haven, CT; London: Yale University Press, 2004), x. 17. Aristotle, The Politics, 187 (Book VII I333a 35–40). 18. Aristotle, The Politics, 18 (Book I 1255).

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19. Aristotle, The Politics, 19 (Book I 1255). 20. Leo Strauss, The City and Man (Chicago; London: University of Chicago Press, 1978), 49. This issue of transcending the city becomes quite important in Zionist thought and practice. However, due to the complicated nature of thinking about a transcendent politics I will use various terms, including (secular) messianism, to refer to this concept in relation to Zionism. 21. Strauss, The City and Man, 27. 22. A claim that he makes repeatedly throughout The Politics. The first reference is in Book III, 6:20. 23. For Aristotle, it was a he. Women were not participants in political life. 24. Accepting the Enlightenment cosmopolitanism of civic nationalism that favors a state which respects religious difference, was initially not only a more popular Jewish answer than Zionism, it also could be traced philosophically to the notable Enlightenment philosopher, and friend of Immanuel Kant, Moses Mendelssohn. Allan Arkush, Moses Mendelssohn and the Enlightenment (Albany: State University of New York Press, 1994); Moses Mendelssohn, Jerusalem or on Religious Power and Judaism, trans. Allan Arkush (Hanover and London: University Press of New England published for Brandeis University Press, 1983). A minority of Jews, however, came to disagree with the assimilationist case, claiming that there is a Jewish nation and that there should be a Jewish nation-state. These were the Zionists, and before them it was for the most part inconceivable that Jews could have an obligation as Jews to the state, with the exceptions of court Jews who held privileged government posts and who owed their political, social, and economic freedoms to the monarch. 25. Max Weber, Peter Lassman, and Ronald Speirs, Political Writings (Cambridge; New York: Cambridge University Press, 1994), 310–11. Walter Benjamin also provides a quick analytical survey of this argument in a short and most likely unfinished piece that was not published during his lifetime. See, Walter Benjamin, “The Right to Use Force,” in Walter Benjamin: Selected Writings ed. Marcus Bullock and Michael W. Jennings (Cambridge, Massachusetts; London, England: The Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 1996). 26. See, Ben Halpern, The Idea of the Jewish State, 2nd ed. (Cambridge, Massachusetts: Harvard University Press, 1969). In particular, Chapter 2, “Zionist conceptions of sovereignty,” pp. 20–54. 27. Arthur Hertzberg, “Jewish Modernity: Homegrown or Imposed? The Views of the Jewish Historians” (paper presented at the Self-Views in Historical Perspective in Egypt and Israel, Tel Aviv, 1981). Jacob L. Talmon, “The Jewish National Movement and European Nationalism” (paper presented at the Self-Views in Historical Perspective in Egypt and Israel, Tel Aviv, 1981, 1980). 28. Nationalism: A Report by a Study Group of Members of Members of the Royal Institute of International Affairs (London: Frank Cass, 1963 (originally Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1939)), 163. Quoted in, Elie Holzer, The Use of Military Force in the Religious Zionist Ideology of Rabbi Yitzhak Ya’akov Reines and His Successors, ed. Peter Y. Medding, vol. XVIII, Studies in Contemporary Jewry: Jews and Violence: Images Ideologies, Realities (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2002), 17. 29. Theodor Herzl, The Jewish State (New York; London: Dover, Constable, 1988).

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30. Theodor Herzl, The Diaries of Theodor Herzl, ed. Marvin Lowenthal, trans. Marvin Lowenthal (New York: The Dial Press, 1956). 31. Indeed, it is this understanding of sovereignty, as in sovereign authority, that is used in relation to the ethics of war as they pertain to independence movements. See chapter 5 in, A. J. Coates, The Ethics of War (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1997). 32. Whether Zionism came about because of anti-Semitism, as Herzl argued, or because all people are innately a nation and anti-Semitism was merely the catalyst for this national awakening, as Ahad Ha’am and Joseph Berdichesvky respectively argued was a serious debate within Zionism. See, Anita Shapira, Land and Power: The Zionist Resort to Force, 1881–1948 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1992. Reprint Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1999), 17–18. 33. Arthur Hertzberg, The Zionist Idea: A Historical Analysis and Reader (Westport, Conn.: Greenwood Press, 1975), 189. 34. Hertzberg, The Zionist Idea, 183–84. 35. Hertzberg, The Zionist Idea, 194–95. 36. Hannah Arendt, The Human Condition (London and Chicago: Chicago University Press, 1958). 37. Equal in the sense of an equal citizenry, which in ancient Greece was an exclusionary club. 38. These are issues that I will look at more fully in the chapters 4 and 5, both of which address medieval political philosophy. 39. Arendt, The Human Condition, 35, 36. 40. Arendt, The Human Condition, 36. 41. Arendt is making this argument in relation to Ancient Greek thought, but it is likely that St. Augustine’s thought is influential here too since he makes a similar argument against self-defense and Arendt was quite familiar with Augustine’s philosophy— her PhD dissertation was about St. Augustine. See, Hannah Arendt, Love and Saint Augustine, ed. Joanna Vecchiarelli Scott and Juditch Chelius Stark (Chicago and London: The University of Chicago Press, 1996). 42. Jenny Edkins, Trauma and the Memory of Politics (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2003), 6. 43. For an introduction to the “negation of the Diaspora” in relation to socialist or Labour Zionism see, Zeev Sternhell, The Founding Myths of Israel: Nationalism, Socialism, and the Making of the Jewish State, trans. David Maisel (Princeton, New Jersey: Princeton University Press, 1998), 48–51. 44. Ha-Shomer, “the guards,” was an outgrowth of a Russian socialist Zionist group. 45. Shapira, Land and Power, 99. 46. Shapira, Land and Power, 99. See also, Tom Segev, One Palestine, Complete: Jews and Arabs under the British Mandate, trans. Haim Watzman (London: Little Brown and Company, 1999, 2000), 123. 47. Shapira, Land and Power, 100. 48. Walter Laqueur, The History of Zionism, 3rd ed. (London and New York: I. B. Tauris & Co. Ltd.), 373.

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49. This worldview is similar to that of the logic behind the existential warrior that finds his identity in battle itself, and the meaning of his existence in death. The issue is how existentialism can work as a feature in legitimating and justifying force that may involve one’s death. See Christopher Coker’s Nietzschean inspired work on this issue. Christopher Coker, Waging War without Warriors? The Changing Culture of Military Conflict (Boulder, Colorado; London: Lynne Rienner Publishers, 2002). 50. S. Levenberg, The Jews and Palestine: A Study in Labour Zionism (London: Poale Zion, Jewish Socialist Labour Party, published by Nared Press, 1945), 52–53. 51. Levenberg, The Jews and Palestine, 53. 52. Shapira, Land and Power, vii. 53. Ahad Ha’am was the pen name of Asher Zvi Ginsberg and translates as “one of the people.” 54. Such as the story of Abimelech who demanded to be killed after injury by a woman, the story of Saul who along with his servant fell on his sword rather than suffer defeat, and the story of Samson who voluntarily chose death with the Philistines, and the story of the Maccabees and the Zealots. Shapira, Land and Power, 23. 55. Shapira, Land and Power, 23. 56. Shapira, Land and Power, 25. 57. Shapira, Land and Power, 20. 58. In Max Nordau’s play, Dr. Kohn, the protagonist Jewish doctor dies in a duel. Theodor Herzl also used, in his play The New Ghetto, the metaphor of the duel in describing the new Zionist Jewish identity. I examine Nordau’s play in detail in chapter 4. 59. Shapira, Land and Power, 24. Interestingly enough, one paradoxical feature of these two viewpoints between Ha’am and Berdichevsky is that the militant nationalist was supportive of engagement with the non-Jewish world, while the ethical, spiritual, humanist Ha’am was staunchly against it. 60. Levenberg, The Jews and Palestine: A Study in Labour Zionism, 346. The view that the Jews are at risk of being attacked and destroyed is a common perception in modern Jewish history, one that the Shoah validated and one that Zionism was supposed to remove. 61. Edward W. Said, Orientalism, Penguin Classics (London: Penguin, 2003). 62. Even the most aggressive of Zionist claims can be made to fit within Aristotelian just war terms. It is also possible that the Catholic Doctrine of double effect, with its relationship to just war thinking, is relevant here. In the medieval world, particularly in the thought of Aquinas, the distinction between means and ends starts to make some headway, as can be seen in his distinctions between ius ad bellum and ius in bello. Ius ad bellum involves the objectives of war, whereas ius in bello is concerned with the conduct or means of war. The means/ends distinction is, however, already apparent with Saint Augustine who emphasized that sometimes intention was more important than action and thus implied the possibility that how one acts may be more important than what s/he actually accomplishes. The ultimate ethical or moral standpoint is of salvation in the eyes of God. Therefore, he can claim that a woman who is sexually assaulted may not be guilty of a sin provided that she does not, in her mind at least, enjoy the assault. See, Augustine, The City

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of God against the Pagans, ed. R. W. Dyson, trans. R. W. Dyson (Cambridge; New York: Cambridge University Press, 1998). 63. For Aristotle this division would make no sense, due to his teleological naturalism, where everything has a purpose unto itself. 64. A reply that led the Territorialist (i.e., a Zionist who felt that any land would do—and in this case, felt that Palestine was unsuitable for Jewish settlement) Hillel Zeitlin to say, “They are forgetting one small thing, namely, that in order to take something by force, that force has to exist.” Shapira, Land and Power, 47. 65. Although, from 1921 onwards, the Jews and Arabs in Palestine were involved in what was essentially a civil war. 66. Shapira, Land and Power, 72. 67. Laqueur, The History of Zionism, 285. A famous example of this “pragmatism” was Ben-Gurion’s reaction to the White Paper, “We must assist the British army as though there were no White Paper; and we must oppose the White Paper as though there were no world war.” Shabtai Teveth, Ben-Gurion and the Palestinian Arabs: From Peace to War (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1985), 195. A slightly different translation is, “We must help the British in their struggle as if there were no White Paper, and we must resist the White Paper as if there were no war.” Shapira, Land and Power, 279. 68. Shapira, Land and Power, 72. 69. Shapira, Land and Power, 75. This line was taken from a poem by Yaakov Cahan. See chapter 5 for more about Cahan and this poem. 70. Jean-Jacques Rousseau provides a similar argument. See chapter 6.

Chapter Four

For the State

Much would be gained if we could eliminate this pernicious word “obedience” from our vocabulary of moral and political thought. If we think these matters through, we might regain some measure of self-confidence and even pride, that is, regain what former times called the dignity or the honour of man: not perhaps of mankind but of the status of being human. —Hannah Arendt1

Being obliged to risk one’s life for the state would most likely involve some account that emphasizes the value of the state, but what is it about the state that makes it so worthwile? In the history of just war thinking and political philosophy respectively, two voices stand out that have justified the obligation to die in this way. The first is that of Saint Thomas Aquinas. Aquinas’s argument for political obligation is based on a combination of natural law philosophy and Christian theology, and it is the former of these that I examine in this chapter. Aquinas claims that individual subjects must obey their sovereign in order to maintain the common good of the state. For Aquinas, and others who disregard the legitimacy of human choice and individual autonomy, the problem of political obligation is resolved by an appeal to obedience. The second version of the obligation to die examined here is that of G. W. F. Hegel. Hegel is no just war theorist, but he is especially important in thinking about the obligation to die as he places this obligation centrally in his political thought. Hegel also defends the obligation to die by reference to the value of the state, to the common life that the state makes possible.

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Aquinas and Hegel do not share much in common and it may seem odd to examine them side-by-side. For example, they do not have the same understanding of the state. Hegel’s understanding of the state is modern, with a consolidated sovereign authority and characterized by a bourgeois class that serves as the “roots of individualism, division of labour [and] diversity of religious beliefs.”2 For Aquinas the state is based on natural law and organized according to hierarchy and a complex system of political and legal jurisdictions. The most notable difference between the common good and the common life follows from Hegel’s critique of instrumentalism and from his conception of the people. While both emphasize the collective as opposed to the individual, for Hegel the people is made up of individuals that are autonomous and are a part of a society; there is also a psychology involved in his understanding of individuals, as he demonstrates with the concept of alienation. There is a level of consciousness at stake. For Aquinas, the people are a group, part of a commonwealth, but not members in any consciousness sharing historical enterprise. Indeed, Hegel and Aquinas are different types of thinkers and in order to be terminologically clear that Aquinas’ and Hegel’s arguments are different I will use the term “the common good” to refer to Aquinas’ natural law argument and “the common life” for Hegel’s. Both the common good and the common life pertain to ethical positions about the value of the community or state as such, but in different ways. The common life, as I am using it here, is a modern concept, whereas the common good is its medieval equivalent. Nevertheless, there is a notable similarity between them that makes it useful to examine both Aquinas and Hegel in the same chapter. What Aquinas and Hegel share is their emphasis of the value of the state as a foundational justifying feature of the obligation to die. Moreover, Aquinas and Hegel share a common link to Aristotle’s political philosophy, thereby providing examples of how Aristotle’s political thought is used by later philosophers to justify political obligation. In addition, placing Aquinas and Hegel in the same chapter provides a useful theoretical and historical counterbalance to the modern liberal emphasis on individuality as the basis for political obligation. The modern liberal approach is almost ubiquitous in contemporary political and moral thought, and it is important to keep in mind that there are notable alternative philosophies. This chapter is divided into four sections. I first examine the political thought of Saint Thomas, who marks a turning point in thinking about political obligation due to his synthesis of Aristotelian philosophy and Christian natural law. Aquinas’ nonautonomous view of the individual makes his theory unpalatable to modern sensibilities, and might immediately cause one to turn away from natural law claims. Yet there are resonances of natural law in

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the modern world. Similar claims are made in the modern world; they are merely reformulated with, for example “man” replacing “nature,” as Hobbes does, although Hobbes, of course, recognizes individuals to have certain rights.3 Consequently, it is worthwhile to examine the natural law arguments of Aquinas, but on its own terms there are some serious problems. There is something missing in Aquinas’ political theory that explains the role of difference in politics, and my contention is that this absence effectively means that his normative view of the state that justifies political obligation is hollow. Another difficulty to take into consideration is with how natural law dictates what it means to be human without taking into account social constructions. War is a social construct4 and thus the obligation to die should be one as well. It cannot be “natural,” even if we presume for a minute that we know what natural means, which we do not. Indeed, to base politics on nature alone is difficult, and, as I will demonstrate, can lead to questionable conclusions. In the second section I turn to the philosophy of Hegel, who is possibly the first to combine a modern understanding of the individual and the state, with a non-individualist account of political obligation. Hegel’s argument, however, is overly favorable on the side of the state without taking into account the importance of the individual. He recognizes that the individual should want to accept the obligation to die, but he also does not properly respect how difference is important for political life. As will be explained below, he presumes that metaphysics will be enough to justify the obligation to die. Yet it is unlikely that enough people, if any individual, could make such a connection. In the final section of this chapter, I will examine one example in Zionism where similar Hegelian ideals about history and individual spirit are used to justify the obligation to die.5 The third section turns to the interesting case of Max Nordau, famous Zionist, social critic, and mediocre playwright. Nordau provides examples of how an emphasis on the community can lead to a perverse situation involving an obligation to die. Nordau also illustrates what can happen if nature alone is used to explain the human condition. In this section I suggest that one way the idea of a universal truth to be found in nature was reformulated in the modern world was by replacing nature with science. Nordau provides an example of the obligation to die that has resonances with both Hegel’s and Aquinas’ political thought in the way that Nordau privileges the community over the individual—which in my mind is more of an Aquinasian trait than a Hegelian one. Nordau also provides a provocative demonstration of how the natural universalism that Aquinas uses can be altered to suit the modern mind, in this case, by replacing nature with science. In this regard, the universality of what nature reveals is replaced with a socio-political universal interpretation of what the scientific laws of biology

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are. This way of universalizing nature became increasingly malicious as science and circumstance allowed, with race theory eventually leading up to the attempted genocide of European Jewry.6 The fourth and final section of the chapter returns to Hegel, and by reference to the Zionism of Ahad Ha’am I illustrate how the ideas of history and spirit have been used to justify the obligation to die. Both Hegel and Aquinas present life in the state as necessary to the human condition, but they fail to take into account that a powerful state can overwhelm the diversity of the community. If the state exists for the benefit of its inhabitants, then it should exist for the benefit of all of its inhabitants. Modern and especially liberal accounts of political obligation are focused on the individual and tend to underemphasize the significance of the community or state, and even though their arguments are problematic, Aquinas and Hegel provide a useful counterweight to modern individualism.

THE COMMON GOOD: THOMAS AQUINAS Thomas Aquinas is a major thinker for the just war tradition. Aquinas is often used to provide the ius ad bellum and ius in bello set of criteria, or at least to provide an early indication of the emergence of this distinction.7 My aim here is to broaden the approach to Aquinas’ thought on war by examining his defense of the state and of political obligation. This aspect of Aquinas’ thought is more complex than the just war criteria that he provides might suggest. Aquinas defines human society as if humans do not have any agency but merely fit into a pre-ordained system, which they have to follow. There is something about medieval thought that is especially difficult to bring to bear on modern problems. It is not as if there are no remnants of medieval philosophy in modern philosophy. Rather, the problem is primarily that medieval philosophy’s central concerns are with order, even if medieval philosophy is often convoluted and vague. A. P. d’Entrèves argues that the problem of obligation “assumed in Christian political theory an importance unknown in the classical world.”8 Due to its emphasis on obeying the proper authorities, medieval Christian thought was greatly concerned with political obligation, and one of the normative ways it justified such obedience was by linking it to the idea of the common good. Michael Donelan defines the common good as follows: The common good is not collectivist or totalitarian. Simply, it contrasts with the good that individuals pursue privately; it consists of the goods that they pursue as a community. The common good expresses the principle of solidarity but accompanied by the principle of subsidiarity. The community has a good, which is

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prior to and superior to that of any particular individuals; but it is so because it consists of the conditions that are for the good of all the individuals.9

Donelan is, however, vague as to whether or not the common good is something that is according to a teleological account of natural law, or one that is more ontologically based. The community may “have a good,” but his readers are left in the dark as to whether or not this good is according to the nature of something as it will become or as it is. In natural law, the common good is just as vague a concept as nature. Both refer to a universal truth that exists before people are concerned, and, in addition to being supposedly selfevident, are impossible to qualify. One should remain highly sceptical of natural law arguments due to the bizarre and disturbing paths that they can lead to,10 and due to the philosophical problem of knowing what nature has to say about human socio-political life and thus ignoring or marginalizing the socially constructed realities that make up the human world. To claim that people should act socially and/or politically in a specific way because nature says that they should makes remarkably little sense. To argue, to use a few examples, that people need a king because the body needs a head or that human society needs a monarch because bees or ants have a queen, or because herbivorous mammals have a dominate male leader (who is dominant primarily at fighting off other suitors, the female generally sorts out everything else and runs the herd), is to seriously marginalize and misunderstand the political and social world. Such theorizing can never be as objective as it purports to be since nature is read in relation to the human world it is supposed to explain and, consequently, is anthropomorphized, with human socio-political (and gender) relations projected onto the animal world. The political and social world is inevitably characterized by choices made possible because the political and social world are human/social constructs. Natural laws invite determinism and minimize by too much the possibilities for choice or human agency. The medieval natural lawyers who argued in this way need to be read as products of their time, where the world was often seen in a cosmological way, where everything fit together according to a universal ordering system. The ordering of the known universe is what these thinkers struggled to maintain; they were not concerned with the radical doubt of the universe which came later—although this doubt is hinted at by Saint Augustine.11 Nevertheless, the natural law tradition has had a tremendous impact on the history of political and legal thought, and especially in international political theory insofar as war and international law are concerned. It was the natural lawyers who were some of the first to make legal arguments about the international realm.12

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As a just war thinker, Aquinas needs to demonstrate how the sovereign can justifiably demand that members of the state risk their lives by going to war. Aquinas makes this claim by using a combination of Christian natural law and Aristotelian political philosophy to justify the authority of the state and to legitimize the need for the members of the community to obey their political authorities. Political obligation as understood by Aquinas is related to the idea that the political community is a place for good, but this Aristotelian claim exists as a part of Aquinas’ understanding of natural law, so obligations exist not so much because of the ethical value of the community as they do because of the importance of maintaining the proper ordering of human life. It is participation in the eternal law by way of natural law that provides order. His basic argument is that because of natural law and in accordance with the orders of God, one must obey his or her superiors, even when one’s life is at stake. However, Aquinas does not explain what the role of politics is in justifying the obligation to die, which he should explain since he claims, following Aristotle, that people are political animals. For Aquinas, the divine legitimation of political life can be found in natural law. “St. Thomas’ theory of natural law is laid down as an interpretation of man’s nature and of his relation to God and to the universe. Natural law is unintelligible unless we realize its close link with the eternal divine order on which the whole of creation ultimately rests.”13 The intelligibility of natural law is a consequence of reason, and consequently, reason makes not only political life possible but morality as well. It is reason that distinguishes people from other animals and provides humans with the capacity for moral agency and enables humans to consciously participate in the divine order. R. W. Dyson writes, Inasmuch as mankind is a part of the order of the universe, it follows that there must be a portion or section of the eternal law which expresses God’s purposes for him specifically. This is the lex naturalis, the ‘natural law,’ the ‘law of nature’. . . . Because [men] have reason and free will—because we are able to participate in the natural law more fully, in a more sophisticated way, than nonrational creatures can. For St. Thomas . . . our rationality is what makes us moral agents.14

A political consequence of Aquinas’ synthesis of reason, natural law, and faith (and heavily inspired by Aristotle’s political philosophy) is his legitimation of secular rulers and makes possible his Aristotelian move away from Augustinian pessimism about the “state.” Augustine perceived that the need for human socio-political organization is a product of sin. Aquinas, however, sees the city as a positive element and corresponds to the laws of nature.

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It is natural for man to live in fellowship with many others, it is necessary for there to be some means whereby such a community of men may be ruled. For if many men were to live together with each providing only what is convenient for himself, the community would break up into its various parts unless one of them had responsibility for the good of the community as a whole, just as the body of a man and of any other animal would fall apart if there were not some general ruling force to sustain the body and secure the common good of all its parts.15

In its simplest form, Aquinas claims that the state exists because people need to live in a state in order to survive. He adopts Aristotle’s teleological understanding of the human condition, arguing that, “man is by nature a social and political animal, who lives in a community.”16 Crucially, Aquinas’ account of political obligation starts with the Aristotelian claim that humans are political animals, yet unlike Aristotle, Aquinas does not conceive of human beings having much to do with political life. Aquinas’ version of the political animal is to claim that humans need to live in a state for their own good—but in Aquinas’ version, this claim can hardly be seen to remain consistent with the Aristotelian idea of this good, or of politics. The political life is, for Aquinas, necessary in order to sustain human life, and is thus established as a part of God’s creation. However, by emphasizing the need to sustain the political life in order to ensure human life and thus enable humans to live according to the will of God, Aquinas marginalizes all human difference. This marginalization follows from the implied universalism of natural law. We must all be of the same type of human to live in Aquinas’ world of Christian natural law, whereas for Aristotle, people need to be different in order to be discriminated against in order to enable politics. Whereas Aristotle establishes differences for political life, Aquinas does not. Due to natural law universalism, Aquinas destroys the idea that difference is necessary for political life. If difference is destroyed, so is individuality. Either as a consequence of removing individuality, or in order to remain consistent with this move, Aquinas also claims that most people will not have anything to do with politics, since it is the vocation of most to obey the few who hold positions of political authority. Political obligation for Aquinas is hardly political even though he wants to suggest that such obligations are political because of the normative good of the state. For Aquinas this normative good is about maintaining sociopolitical order. This emphasis on order is emphasised in Aquinas’ account of political obligation, which is best described as an issue of obedience. The problem remains one of obligation, as d’Entrèves argues,17 but the answer is to argue for obedience because, first, Aquinas has no conception of the individual will that could refuse an obligation and, second, by arguing for obedience Aquinas is able to bypass the problem of whether or not political obligations are equally

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justified in different states. By claiming that individuals must obey their superiors, and by restricting the capacity of resistance, Aquinas can bypass concerns of what an individual should do in an unjust state. Obedience is so important that he even classifies different types of obedience: “one is sufficient for salvation, which obeys in those things where there is an obligation to do so; a second, perfect obedience, which obeys in all things lawful; and a third, indiscriminate obedience, which obeys even in things which are unlawful.”18 Aquinas did not (and could not) conceive of an individual with innate rights, organic to the individual person and there was no self/other construction for Aquinas. Individuals for Aquinas are not autonomous subjects, they exist as a part of a whole. “For since one man is a part of the community,” he writes in the Summa Theologiae, “each man belongs to the community in everything that he has and is, just as each part belongs to the whole in everything that it is.”19 Individuals fit into a system, a system or order created by God and ordered by the four types of law: eternal law, divine law, natural law, and human law. Consequently, the idea of an obligation for him and most medieval natural lawyers was really one of obeying the proper or legitimate authority. Yet claiming obedience does not negate that there is a problem with the obligation to die. Having to argue to this extreme is surely a sign that there is a serious issue at stake. While God may have given everybody the ability to grasp what moral behavior is, it is not assumed that everybody will have this ability to the same degree. There is no equality, which is how Aquinas justifies sending people into war to their possible death. It is this assumption about moral inequality that leads to the requirements for proper authorities to decide what others should do. Consequently, individuals cannot be expected to know what morality would call for them to do in particular cases.20 In one instance it appears as if Aquinas makes room for the possibility of individual disobedience. Aquinas allows for the possibility of revolt against a tyrant, for example, but he restricts who may revolt and he strongly discourages it. As R. W. Dyson writes, “[Aquinas] recognizes that extreme measures may be justified in extreme cases but should be avoided if at all possible and must, if taken at all, be taken by the proper agencies and with a proper and responsible intention.”21 Aquinas does not give individuals as individuals the ability (or right) to revolt. He writes in De Regimine Principum, “It seems, then, that steps are to be taken against the scourge of tyranny not by the private presumption of any persons, but through the public authority.”22 This argument effectively means that it is the public authority which would revolt against another part of the public authority (the tyrant). There is a theory of resistance here, but not one of revolution.23 Insofar as individual acts of disobedience are concerned, there is an obligation to obey

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the law, but there is also the possibility of unjust laws, and thus the possibility of disobeying an unjust law, although technically Aquinas would not accept an unjust law to be in fact a law. Aquinas understands government to be for the good of the community, and of the community being constituted by free men who may have some legal options for revolting against a tyrannical government. However, he argues that prayer may be the only suitable option for acting against a tyrant.24 Furthermore, there is no conception of the individual who makes up the community, the free men are not so much independent individuals, but people. In Aquinas’ political writings, “There is no mention of the need for explicit consent to law and government, and where he discusses participation, it is participation by corporate groups, not individuals, or by “the people” as a whole. . . .”25 For Aquinas the obedience formulation relates to his dismissal of human individuality in his account of political obligation. It is a bitter irony that this dismissal led to arguments in favor of human rights that refused human difference and, consequently, tended to enable further policies of persecution against different peoples. For example, Francisco de Vitoria, the Spanish jurist and teacher of Aquinas’ political theology, was clear in his argument for a universalist approach to what would today be called human rights. It was Vitoria who remarked that even though the “American Indians” did not share the same reason, customs or political structures of Europe, they could not be the victims of war for such differences.26 Vitoria, however, found other ways to potentially justify Spanish conquest, ranging from the Spanish right to travel to the protection of converts and a right to preach Christianity.27 This line of thinking that refused human individuality and favored the universals of natural law established a premise that became increasingly substantial and dangerous over time. A theory that emphasizes the value of the state or community in order to provide some kind of good life for its inhabitants and yet proceeds to ignore the individuality of its inhabitants cannot be presumed to enable the good that the state exists for. Yet, this is precisely what Aquinas tries to argue and is a contribution to one of the most pernicious ways of justifying discrimination, and, consequently provides considerable doubt to the merits of his account of political obligation. The possibly progressive aspect to his Christian natural law thinking carries within it pernicious qualities that became increasingly relevant by the eighteenth, nineteenth, and especially twentieth centuries. Aquinas is not to blame for what happened after him, but he should be held accountable for a foundational claim that is not necessarily as progressive as might be suggested by his suggestion that all humans share common natural laws and thus are all equal under the laws of nature. It could be argued that Aquinas provides an early account of how to justify equal political rights for humans, by taking what is true by nature and applying it human political, social,

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and legal life. Yet, there is a substantial flaw in this line of thinking, since it ignores a deeply disturbing alternative argument. The universality that Aquinas felt existed in nature was rewritten by the scientific thought of the modern world into race theory, particularly scientific racism.28 The natural law universalisms were one way in which it could be possible to see humans as sharing universal characteristics, which is one reason why there remain notable twentieth century theorists who see certain progressive traits in natural law.29 However, even when the universals of the medieval jurists was changed into modern Enlightenment universals that paved the way for human rights, there remained deeply troubling claims of a racist discriminatory character—even Kant made what would now be called racist claims.30 As observations about nature became increasingly sophisticated as scientific advances allowed, the old view of nature and of universal natural laws had to be revised. Observations about nature eventually became tied to biology, with the development of all sorts of seemingly bizarre fields of knowledge about how biology relates to human conduct and intelligence, such as phrenology and eugenics. As scientific knowledge challenged various historical misconceptions about the natural world, a similar change took place in relation to sociopolitical thought, as the case of scientific racism demonstrates. The shift from natural to scientific influence in sociopolitical thought is not altogether surprising, even if the duration of time between the fourteenth and eighteenth centuries implies otherwise. As Europeans travelled the world and found peoples whom it did know had existed, the presumed universality of natural law was challenged by the discovery of people who were physically different from the white European, and thus challenged what the universality contained in natural law meant, since it could clearly not refer to physical appearance.31 The perversity in this shift is, as Hannah Arendt argues in The Origins of Totalitarianism, that the idea of a universally accurate scientific or natural human being could not match reality, and thus differences had to be identified in order to impress how at the biological level, there are universal scientific laws at work. Arendt writes, “Ever since the European peoples made practical attempts to include all of the peoples of the earth in their conception of humanity, they have been irritated by the great physical differences between themselves and the peoples they found on other continents.”32 This issue already concerned Vitoria in the sixteenth century, who found himself caught in the middle of the natural law universals with the discovery of seemingly inferior peoples in the Americas. That it is possible to trace universal socio-political truths from observations taken from nature is at least as old as Aristotle. Aquinas developed significantly this way of understanding the world. The universals of nature were re-

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placed with universal laws of science, and as a consequence, visible differences could be explained by way of hidden biological laws. It, consequently, became possible to argue that people are either scientifically all the same or that those who deviate from the scientific universal laws need treatment, or even elimination. Biology cannot be changed, and thus anybody who was thought to deviate from the scientific laws of human biology would need to be cured, if at all possible, and those that could not be cured were deemed to be a lesser version of a human being.33 Following from this claim, it was possible to inverse the argument and describe a biologically superior type of human, who represented the apex of biological laws. Both of these problems came to be experienced by the Jews, who, before they found themselves faced with the destructive logic of scientific racism that was used to justify the attempt to exterminate them, used the logic of science to describe the strong, superior Zionist hero-type. One of the most famous of such descriptions is with Max Nordau’s “Muscle Jew,” but before turning to Max Nordau I want to return to the second serious deficiency in Aquinas’ argument for the obligation to die. The problem here is with how Aquinas justifies the obligation to die with the idea that humans are (by nature) political creatures and yet he provides no content by which to understand how humans are political creatures. In medieval Christian natural law, this good is far removed from the Aristotelian good life of political participation and individual contemplation. Medieval political thought was more concerned with maintaining the order of the universe than enabling humans to develop their intellectual or political skills. Thus the benefits of the state are not really benefits but requirements demanded in order to comply with the natural ordering of a world created by God. In this regard, what does it matter if people are different provided that they adhere to natural law? Yet politics requires some form of difference. Aristotle may have discriminated against vast swathes of the population in his argument for the good life, but at least in his account he recognized that the good life, as a life involving political participation, could not exist without different types of people. Individuality is absent here, but a respect that different constituencies are necessary for political life to take place is present, and this recognition is not sufficiently present in Aquinas’ political theory.34 The consequence of this absence is that it makes it questionable why the political animal could be justifiably obliged to die for the state that exists in part because humans are political animals but are excluded from all forms of political life. In other words, for Aquinas, a reason why the state may justifiably oblige its inhabitants to risk their lives in war is because the state exists because humans need it to exist by virtue of their being political animals. But if the state does not provide any spaces for political life, and in fact restricts

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them by demanding individual obedience, how then does this justification make any sense? What does it mean to be a political animal? Aquinas seems to be saying that being a political animal means primarily that the state is a positive development in human existence. But this argument is circular. Aquinas wants to claim that the state would exist even without the Fall. He does this by claiming that people are by nature political animals, and thus the state exists, in part, because of this nature. Why, however, are humans political animals? Aristotle claims that people (or at least, specific types of people) are political animals because of their purpose to achieve the good life, a life of political participation and intellectual contemplation. Aquinas, however has no such content to define why humans are political animals since his understanding of political life is constrained by an appeal to obeying the higher authorities. People are political animals because he needs a way to defend the state.35 In short, the state is good because people by nature need it, which makes the state a good according to nature, and people are political because they need the state. Aquinas needs humans to be political animals so he can defend the value of the state, but in doing so he should also provide a positive account of politics, when what he actually does is remove politics from human life. He does this by going against the Aristotelian idea that difference is necessary for politics. To a degree, human difference is deemed unimportant in medieval Christian thought because any issues of individuality became a social problem for the Church to deal with, not a political one, and consequently, politics lost its normative purpose of enabling citizens to find a better life.36 Aquinas reformulates the public/private distinction present in Aristotle and necessary for politics to take place. For Aquinas, religion replaces public political life while a secular life is given a place in the home, but the home life does not exist in order to enable a public political life, it exists in order to ensure the Church’s domination of public life and thus keep people out of politics.37 Consequently, it is possible for Aquinas to ignore that political life is made possible by different people and to presume instead that difference does not matter and thus assert that political obligation requires obedience because otherwise the state could collapse and the individual would be going against the laws of nature that require lessers to obey their superiors. The closest that Aquinas gets to respecting the need for human difference for political life is to recognize that different people are obligated in different ways: But in things pertaining to the disposing of actions and human affairs, a subject is bound to obey his superiors according to the scope of his authority; for example, a soldier must obey his commander in things pertaining to war, a servant to his master in things pertaining to the performance of his work as a servant, a

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son his father in things pertaining to the orderly conduct of his life and the care of the household; and so on.38

However, this argument does not refer to any need for human difference to enable a political life. Consequently, for Aquinas, the obligation to die is justified so long as politics are removed from the obligation, but this begs the question of why the obligation is just if humans are by nature political animals but are not really participants in political life. There is more to Aquinas than what is addressed in this section, but the religious side of his thought (which I address in the next chapter) does not change this inadequacy of his argument. The problem in Aquinas’ justification for the obligation to die is that the only way he could logically defend the obligation to die is by explaining what it means to be a political animal in such a way that the state exists to enable this animal to become political, and Aquinas does not provide such an argument. However, there is a lesson be taken from Aquinas, and that is that if it is possible to justify the obligation to die, it needs to be shown why the person being obliged can be obliged in the first place, and how politics takes place in this obligation. What is it, about being a member of the state, a citizen, subject, or constituent of a political community that makes this state or community justified to obligate this person to risk his or her life in war? I will explore this question by reference to how Max Nordau introduces the possibility of an obligation to die for a Jew, but first I turn to Hegel’s argument for the obligation to die.

THE COMMON LIFE: G. W. F. HEGEL Hegel justifies the obligation to die by reference to the value of life in the state. His emphasis on the state as the locus for thinking about the individual is in some ways reminiscent of natural law thinking, where political obligations are justified by reference to the common good.39 However, Hegel’s relationship with natural law is murky at best.40 A. P. d’Entrèves sees Hegel as marking the end of natural law: “. . . There can be no doubt that Hegel’s conception of history marks the end of natural law thinking altogether.”41 Yet, one of Hegel’s most political texts, Elements of the Philosophy of Right, has the revealing subtitle, Natural Law and Political Science in Outline. In the preface to this text (in an addition) he juxtaposes two kinds of law, laws of nature and laws of right, saying that both are known in the same way, that they are external to humans and are universal. However, he wants to place the laws of history above natural laws. Hegel does not jettison the idea that there are certain laws of nature; rather, he reformulates the significance and scope

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of such laws or rights42 to cover those laws “of the individual, which are based on his being an autonomous person.”43 The universalism of natural law is made to join the particularism of the modern self and is restricted in scope. Hegel is critical of natural law and natural right claims because they are intended to be self-evident arguments, and “theories of self-evidence . . . either conflate or fail properly to distinguish between being certain that something is true, and thus believing it, and something being true, and thus being certain of it.”44 Part of this reformulation comes about in response to the modern natural law of Hobbes, who replaces “nature” with a “man” that is provided with built in rights.45 An additional problem with self-evidential rights arguments is that they can be used for the sake of the individual at the expense of society, a situation that in Hegel’s political philosophy should and indeed could not occur. For Hegel, the problem in natural law is not just that it is philosophically problematic, but that it is potentially dangerous and because it is out of date and not in touch with the modern individual; the problem with the modern version of natural law, natural rights, is that in addition to it being self-evident, it is too individualistic and completely ignores the social. Hegel thus marks a juncture in political thought, where the importance of the individual over the social or the collective is at stake, and of how an individual can exist in civil society as an individual. Hegel’s political philosophical project was concerned with “the consciousness of belonging to a community, that feeling which would not view the community in merely instrumental terms.”46 Hegel was highly critical of theories that treat the state instrumentally. The state does not exist in order for people to belong to the community, the (rational) state serves the principle of achieving the absolute ethical life—the (rational) state is tied to the Spirit of God and allows the particular individual to join the universal life.47 In addition, Hegel held an idealized and romantic view of the ancient Greek polis, and sought a way not to revive it, but to develop a modern version of it.48 When Hegel wrote Elements of the Philosophy of Right he was in the process of formulating his own political philosophy that was “in conscious opposition” to Kant and others, and was a response to his deep dissatisfaction “with the individualistic conceptions of natural law and morality, and with the corresponding views about human nature. . . .”49 Consequently, Hegel turned toward ancient Greek philosophy and the view that “men form genuine communities only when they share the same conceptions of the good life, and identify themselves wholeheartedly with the basic moral ideals of their country or culture.”50 Hegel’s view of the state was heavily influenced by the Aristotelian notion of the city as the site of the good life.51 As Shlomo Avineri writes, Belonging to a such a community [the ancient polis], to a people, is for Hegel ‘absolute ethical life’ (absolute Sittlichkeit) not because the people represents as

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such any absolute ethical idea, but because this membership is absolute rather than relative, it is its own end rather than a mere means towards an end determined by self-interest, security, or the like.52

Consequently, if citizens go to fight and risk their lives because of some values tied to the common life—values tied to the ethical life made possible by the life in the modern state—then this political obligation is also a moral obligation, as Hegel points out by linking obligation to Sittlichkeit. The ethical features of obligation are alluded to by Hegel in two additional ways. First, he claims that it is better to risk one’s life than to fear death, thereby implying an ethical stance involved in being ready to risk life and not run away from death. Second, he writes that, “It is certainly the case that the individual person is a subordinate entity who must dedicate himself to the ethical whole. Consequently, if the state demands his life, the individual must surrender it.”53 The reason that the individual must surrender “his” life by going to war is because of the moral value of the state, and of life within the state—in a sense, the surrender is made for the conditions possible to achieve the modern equivalent of the good life. Hegel defines this life as an ethical activity of freedom, which in turn means being aware of spirit.54 Being in touch with spirit is a necessity for achieving the normative values of the human good. For Hegel, political obligations exist not because of the morality and rationality of the individual, but because of the features and purpose of the state. As such, Hegel’s explanation of political obligation helps clarify what is special about the obligation to die. He writes, “To risk one’s life is certainly superior to simply fearing death, but it is also purely negative and therefore indeterminate and valueless in itself. Only a positive end and content can give significance to such courage.”55 The obligation exists because of the abstract values of courage, honor and valor, which come about because of belonging to a sovereign state.56 “The significance of valour as a disposition lies in the true, absolute, and ultimate end, the sovereignty of the state.”57 Hegel needs to demonstrate that any individual will be readily willing to give up his (at that time it always was a he) life for the state, that the individual in dying is actually following his will, and is not coerced into risking his life. He recognizes that Hobbes has a problem in this regard, since in the Hobbesian account it makes no sense to sign a contract to protect one’s life only to then have to give up this life if the sovereign so orders.58 However, Hegel rightly recognizes that the modern individual needs to make this choice as an individual that is also a member of the state. Insofar as the individual is concerned, Hegel writes, “It is part of education, of thinking as consciousness of the individual in the form of universality, that I am apprehended as a universal person, in which [respect] all are identical. A human being counts as such because he is a human being, not because he is a Jew, Catholic, Protestant, German, Italian, etc.”59 The

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individual is universal, is important, and is a part of society. Consequently, political obligations need to relate and to a degree emanate from the individual, which also means emanate from society since the individual subject becomes an individual by living among others in the state or in civil society. Hegel recognizes that an individual in modern civil society is self-interested. Consequently, it becomes important to explain why these rational bourgeois individuals would consent to the obligation to die. Why would these people be willing to die for the state if they are self-interested beings concerned with property and unconnected to those around them? These people are unlike the citizens of the ancient Greek polis who, so assumes Hegel, do not fear death because the citizen knows that he is immortalized by participation in the polis, and if the polis lives on, so does a part of him, of his work, of his institutions.60 This is the puzzle that Hegel needs to resolve—a puzzle built on a historical dialectic involving the ancient Greeks and the modern self-interested individual. Hegel’s solution is to emphasize the importance of the state, to argue that the self-interested bourgeois needs society in order to be a self-interested bourgeois. The concrete person who, as a particular person, as a totality of needs and a mixture of natural necessity and arbitrariness, is his own end, is one principle of civil society. But this particular person stands essentially in relation to other similar particulars, and their relation is such that each asserts itself and gains satisfaction through the other. . . .61

The individual is made an individual by membership in the community, and thus would be willing to die for this community (for the state). Yet, if the bourgeoisie is self-interested, how could they be aware of a dialectic that emphasizes the importance of others? To presume this ability of a self-interested individual is theoretically unlikely. Hegel’s thought on war replicates this normative understanding of the state. He sees war as an ethical activity, although not in the sense used in the just war tradition, rather it is that war serves a normative purpose in the health of the state. Regardless of whether or not Hegel got his thinking about the conduct of war right, the “humane” conduct of war that Hegel predicts is one example of the normative values that can serve to underpin the political obligation to die because such values emphasize the normative role of the state in human history. In this vein, it is interesting that Hegel’s views on war presume that human conduct in war will be humane. Hegel thinks that war can be a source for good—against Kant he argues that a “perpetual peace” would cause a serious stagnation of the nation’s health.62 Hegel sees war as testing the health of the state,63 and he is credited, according to his student, K. G. von Griesheim, with claiming that, “Modern wars are . . . waged in a humane

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manner, and persons do not confront each other in hatred. At most, personal enmities will arise at military outposts, but in the army as such, hostility is something indeterminate which takes a second place to the duty which each respects in the other.”64 This claim about humane warfare certainly did not prove to be accurate in the twentieth century. Wars may not be humane, and technology may not humanize war, but the idea of humane warfare is important because it emphasizes the concepts of the duty and valor of those going to fight.65 Consequently, duty and valor also lie behind the obligation to die, not a nationalist hatred of the enemy. This argument replicates Aristotle’s claim that one die in war to achieve glory. Such arguments focus on individual motivation, and how the state enables humans to achieve certain political or historical desires. In short, even in defense of the heroic death as the justification for the obligation to die, there is an appeal to the ethical construction of the state as the repository of the common good, or at least as the normative structure enabling the possibility of a heroic death. In brief, Hegel justifies the obligation to die because of the value of the state which makes possible not only freedom and a life worth fighting for, but individual identity as well. Dying for the state is justified according to what the state enables and the ability of the individual to recognize this value, although Hegel is of course referring to a particular type of state (eighteenth century European Enlightenment ones).66 However, the risk with arguments which emphasize the community is that in the process of focusing on the community, they either risk devaluing the moral autonomy of the individual or do not recognize any such moral freedom in the first place. Hegel’s argument for the obligation to die hinges on metaphysics, and his account is more convincing than Aquinas’ since he emphasizes the value of the community for its individuals. However, it is difficult to conceive of a situation where an individual would accept metaphysics as the justification for the obligation to die. Moreover, there remains the problem of how the individual is valued as a member of the community. For Hegel, the individual cannot exist without living in a community whereby his or her individuality is recognizable, and the community requires a plethora of individuals in order to become a community. Different people come together to form a social collective, and in this process of forming or sustaining the community (and thus one’s self as an individual), political obligations emerge. The difficulty with this argument is that it tends toward extremes and encourages arguments along the lines of: The individual would be nothing if it were not for the community. This kind of logic could lead to various types of fascism. Hegel, however, was no fascist, and a more accurate problem of his political philosophy is what happens when it is impossible for either the individual to belong to the community he or she lives in, or when the community refuses

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entry to its inhabitants—problems that the Jewish Question was designed so resolve, and a problem that makes it exceedingly difficult for any coherent account of an obligation to die.

AN OBLIGATION TO DIE FOR THE COMMUNITY Both the common good and the common life argument emphasize the importance of life in the state without taking into account the importance of human diversity and individuality. The problem here is the risk to the individual that collective thinking can encourage and is most apparent in the common good formulation. In the common good argument there is no individuality and obligations are simply presumed to exist to groups of people en masse. In an account of ethics based on the common good, ethics are something that exist external to the human self: an individual engages with them, ethics are not (along with knowledge and identity) internally driven or internally created by humans. A consequence of this formulation is the claim that if there is some sort of ethical conflict, the problem is that those involved are not acting properly because they are in contravention of these universal, external laws. There is no recognition of a logical contradiction, that perhaps the problem is not that one is acting contrary to the laws of nature, as it were, but that these laws can lead to perverse situations. The claim made by many natural lawyers that it is impossible for there to be an unjust law because no law can be unjust is one example of this problem. Another way to express this problem is to recall that the philosophical subject of the natural lawyers is not self-directed but is given his or her self-identity from his or her place in society. It is the commons and the universal laws of nature that reflect onto the individual subject and provide his or her self-identity along with the conditions of possibility for the guidelines of human conduct. The “good” for this subject is consequently a good of the commons, of what the universal laws of nature say is good. The emphasis is thus always on the universal laws of nature and not on the person as an individual-self, and it is inconceivable that there exists a conflict between the good of the individual and the common good. Hegel tries to overcome these difficulties by linking individual freedom to life in the state, and although he does recognize the autonomous individual, this individual finds his or her meaning by belonging to the modern state. The individual is made what he or she is by virtue of life in the state. Hegel would, consequently, also find it difficult to locate how the good of the individual would not also be the good of the common life. However, while Hegel claims that it does not matter whether one is a Jew, Catholic, Protestant, and so on, he was deeply critical of Judaism and Jewish history, writing that, “The subsequent circumstances of the Jewish people up to the mean, abject, wretched cir-

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cumstances in which they still are today, have all of them been simply consequences and elaborations of their original fate.”67 Hegel does not explain how such a people could come to accept this prejudiced judgement of their history and enter into the common life as if they were fully welcome. The logic of anti-Semitism (and racism more generally) follows this kind of structure, so that a disgraced people are presumably welcomed into society only to find that those who disgraced them find them even more repulsive once they were allowed in.68 For Hegel, everything comes down to the metaphysics of the individual discovering freedom in the state, and requires that each individual will understand how to participate in this metaphysical universe. There is no recognition here that perhaps diversity and individuality are important for the state. The problem posed by diversity in political theory has garnered a significant amount of attention in contemporary liberal thought.69 However, these texts, which are primarily about minority rights, are generally not about political obligation as the term is being used here, but about the responsibilities of the (often liberal) state toward its inhabitants. An examination of the obligation to die that takes into account the challenges posed by a diverse population is provided from a rather unlikely source. The specific challenge at issue here is how diversity of the community can conflict with the idea that all within the community or state are equally obliged, and in the process illustrate the importance of individuality in contextualizing the obligation to die. An example of these issues, articulated in an account that includes political obligation, is provided by the famous social critic and Zionist Max Nordau. As a harbinger of an age in decline, but on the cusp of the modern world of the twentieth century, Nordau sits at a meeting place in history. By contemporary moral judgements, he would likely be labelled as either eccentric or slightly insane. He was one of the last to use phrenology as the basis for his psychological arguments and socio-political (and cultural) critiques. He called Tolstoy, Nietzsche, Ibsen, and Wilde intellectual degenerates, had an affair with the anti-Semitic pan-Slavic Russian noblewoman Madame Olga Von Novikoff, and at the urging of his friend Theodor Herzl gave a speech at the first Zionist Congress (held in Basle in 1897).70 Nordau notoriously used social-Darwinist inspired degeneration theory to attack artists, literary figures, and philosophers.71 He saw before him a world that was changing for the worse. As the professor of Jewish history Michael Stanislawski writes, . . . We see here a man decrying the slow ebbing away of the world he cherished— the world of cosmopolitan European culture and intellectual life of the 1860s and 1870s, in which belief ran high that progress would be inexorable, based on scientific advance and expressed through both political and aesthetic progress.72

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George Mosse writes in his introduction to Nordau’s book, Degeneration, that, “The cornerstone of Nordau’s world view was a belief in ordered progress based upon the potentialities of the natural sciences.”73 Nordau believed that the scientific law of cause and effect dominates all correct understandings of human life, and his (liberal) outlook preached discipline, order and progress.74 Central to Nordau’s worldview was his nineteenth century liberal cosmopolitan conviction that “he had superseded his Jewish origins and become a consummate European.”75 Being born Jewish was nothing less than an accident, hence, presumably, his ability to carry a prolonged relationship with Madame Novikoff. Nordau was eventually forced to confront his Jewish identity because others would not allow him to forget it (although, interestingly enough, it does not appear that Nordau’s Jewish background was much of a concern to Madame Novikoff since she did not force Nordau to confront this side of his identity). After experiencing an anti-Semitic attack directed at him while on holiday he wrote to Madame Novikoff, “I have never known or felt that I am a Jew. But I am forced to know that now, since if I continue to ignore the fact others will take it upon themselves to remind me of it.”76 This sentiment, and the grief contained within it are what eventually led Nordau to Zionism and characterize an important aspect of most Zionist understandings of political obligation. It is also a prime illustration of how a universal idea of belonging can mean nothing once one’s differences are revealed or targeted. Nordau, like many Jews of his time, believed in the universality of the human individual, of the promise of the universal rights of man. The only problem was that the world, which created these promises did not believe in them.77 The grief that led Nordau to Zionism is indicative of a greater problem, where what is perceived to be the good of the community at large is in part based on the suppression, prejudice, and violence directed against different members of the community. Here we find a modern take on how the assumptions contained in the common life argument can lead to possibly absurd and hopeless situations. Such a situation presents itself in Nordau’s 1897 play, A Question of Honor (also known as Dr. Kohn). The play is a love tragedy, with heavy ideological Zionist tones. The lead character, Dr. Leo Kohn is a lecturer of mathematics, but is refused a professorship at his university because he is Jewish and refuses to convert to Christianity. Dr. Kohn refuses to convert because, as Stanislawski explains, the fictive Dr. Kohn is a Zionist, “a proud and defiant Jew who rejects emancipation and assimilation as evil chimeras and insists upon the Jews returning to their own country, reclaiming their own language.”78 Yet, Dr. Kohn is in love with a Christian woman, Christine, who he wants to marry. The father, Christian Moser, a converted Jew himself, is primarily concerned with his daughter’s happiness and while

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he does not understand Dr. Kohn’s nationalist Jewish pride, he reluctantly approves of the union. Nevertheless, he tells his daughter that, “I did not escape from the Ghetto, into the fresh air, to have the dearest treasure I possess in the world dragged back again into the foul odors by a Jewish fortune hunter.”79 However, he eventually agrees to support her and “suffer” with her that which cannot be avoided.80 Moser’s wife and two sons do not approve. Moser’s brother-in-law, Leberecht von Quincke (a Christian bishop), becomes involved and states that he does not approve of such mixed marriages, including the marriage of his sister to Moser: “Mixed marriages are an evil and a crime. Whenever a Jewish person forces an entrance to a Christian hearth, gross materialism and moral obtuseness follow.”81 Even baptism is not enough to allow a Jew to enter into a Christian home, “A Jew is a Jew. The sacred right of baptism, even when received with devout faith, will probably save the soul, but will not wash clean the base, impure blood.”82 Von Quincke claims that while baptism may technically convert a Jew into a Christian, “it never makes an Oriental into a German.”83 Things get more heated (and complicated) when the bishop then says that because the mixed marriage will stain the family’s honor, he will not permit the marriage of his daughter, Maria, to her cousin, Carl (who is Christine’s brother). Carl is furious at losing his own bride because of Leo Kohn’s impending marriage to his sister, and so he confronts Dr. Kohn: “A man of honour would not bring discord into a united family.”84 With these words he is challenging Dr. Kohn to a duel by pistols. Christine and her father beg Leo not to fight the duel, but Leo accepts the challenge: So far as I am personally concerned, I would shrug my shoulders at the insult. My self-respect does not depend upon an angry exclamation from an excited young man. But this matter will become well known, there is no doubt of it— and it will be discussed in the usual way. People will not condemn me, the individual, Leo Kohn, but the Jew—all Jews. The disgrace to which I submit will rest upon my whole race. This dictates my duty.85

Leo Kohn, has more to say on this matter, and in a strikingly adept attack at the established anti-Semitism of his day, based on blatant Christian racism toward the Jewish people and individual Jews alike, he proclaims both his love for Christine and the tragedy of a history that has led society to ignore neighborly love and human respect (morals that Christine’s father accused von Quincke of ignoring). Says Dr Kohn to Christine, You are dearer to me than everything the world contains. But I can worship you without becoming a traitor to my race. Perhaps I am in the unhappy position solely because each individual Jews has not kept before his mind the honor of

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being the legitimate representative of his whole race. The forces that encountered each other in this room today, were currents of the world’s history thousands of years old. So much the worse for the individual who has the misfortune to stand at the point of contact.86

Christine accuses Leo of caring more for his “race” than for her. Leo’s response is that he does not, but that he has no choice because history has turned every Jew into a representative of all Jews, and he goes to the duel. But, instead of firing at Carl he fires his shot into the air. As a violation of the chivalric code Carl has to fire back at Leo, and kills him. And so, Dr. Leo Kohn becomes a martyr. Not only is Dr. Kohn willing to die for the Jews, he also takes the moral high ground by refusing to kill his fiancé’s brother. Commenting on this play, Stanislawski writes that, “Dying for one’s honour and the honour of one’s nation . . . was both a duty and a metaphor of the new Jew that Nordau was dedicated to creating as a Zionist and via Zionism.”87 The play ends with Christine asking, “Oh, Papa, why do human beings hurt one another so?”88 Nordau’s play illustrates many of the issues raised by Aquinas and Hegel. First, in relation to Aquinas, Nordau too sees nature as providing rules for understanding human political life. However, unlike Aquinas’ natural law universalism, Nordau sees nature to provide a means to critique societal and mental malaise according to the idea of degeneracy, which is to go against natural order.89 Similar to both Aquinas and Hegel, Nordau presents political obligation as a necessary condition of political life because of the need to defend the value of the community. The community at issue here is not a state, but the implication is that the obligation is necessary because a Jewish state is needed. The point is that the value of the political community is worth dying for. In addition, and in an Aquinasian vein, Nordau suggests that political obligations exists because of one’s place in society, in this case as a nationalist Jew, and that the community is more important than any individual. Thus, Kohn dies not for his own sake but so that the various communities around him will not speak of his example “in the usual [ant-Semitic] way.” Nordau is not concerned in this play with the importance of any Jewish individuality, but with the place of Jews in the state, and thus even though the play demonstrates a clear case of individual choice, the character as presented by Nordau really has no choice. He has to go to the duel and die. There is a political obligation involved in Dr. Kohn’s death, as Stanislawski points out by referencing the honor of one’s nation. However, there is something else going on here as well. Dr. Kohn, as a Diaspora Jew (a subject without a commons), does not have the ability to fight, he cannot inflict harm on the community that persecutes him. There is no common good for him be-

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cause even though he is subject to the norms of the community at large, he can never be a full member of this community, and because he is not a part of the community he has no recourse to a legitimate or justifiable use of force. Such is the figure that Dr. Kohn represents. Dr. Kohn is in a hopeless situation. He can neither fight on behalf of the Jews nor fight for himself. He is an outsider in all ways, a member of the commons that has no membership rights, and so Dr. Kohn chooses the only option available to him, he acts more honorably than his fiancé’s brother by not trying to kill him, and dies with his honor intact. The key point is that Dr. Kohn does not die for the sake of security. He dies for the sake of his self-worth, a value that is not recognizable in either the common good or common life arguments, but is made possible by an individual discovering his individuality because of a life in the community. In this case, one can see how Hegel’s dialectic of identity-construction has the effect of making possible an obligation that challenges the unity and normative value of the state. Zionism is, as Nordau would have it, the path for both honour and life. Nordau’s argument for an obligation to die is based on identity politics and any universalism that he at first subscribed to as a “consummate European” dissolves. The value of community overwhelms this universalism because there are different communities inside the state. Aquinas could not recognize such an argument, even if it is a logical outcome of his political thought since, as Arendt remarked, universality has the perverse effect of emphasizing identity differences in order to proceed to supposedly ignore them, and Hegel has the same problem. The natural law common good argument provides no allowance for the importance of individual identity, or for that matter, communal identity. The universalism in natural law precludes the possibility of a nationalist natural lawyer. Hegel’s common life argument might respect individual identity, although only inasmuch as the individual is an ideal-type citizen without any competing political identities, and because of this need for homogeneity inside the state he also rejects nationalism. These critiques of identity and obligation are not new, although such critiques have not been brought to bear on the obligation to die. For example, JeanPaul Sartre explores these issues in Anti-Semite and Jew, and the tension for Jews understood as particulars in a universal world has been explored with the intention of justifying Zionism existentially.90 Nordau’s play represents more than the possible problems of a non-visible minority group (even if that is all that Nordau intended). The story represents the paradox of how the Jew can never belong, even when he is literally engaged to the gentile world.91 The tragic figure of Dr. Kohn illustrates how once he was challenged as an individual his obligations become confused and could only be resolved by an obligation to his own self-worth as a member of

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an ostracized community. Dr Kohn is refused the possibility of any obligation to the community he lives in, he is forced into a fatal obligation for a landless community, and so he can only respond by conjuring up a moral obligation to a greater good—he dies but he does not kill who could have possibly been his brother-in-law. He dies not because he loves his people more than his fiancé; he dies because he is torn between two commons from which it is impossible to choose. It is not just self-identity that is stake, it is the community, and the recognition that even within universal claims to a common life or common good there are always different constituency groups that need to be taken into account. In other words, what is good or ethical for one constituency can conflict with another, and political obligations need to recognize this difference. In the case of Dr. Kohn, this difference is in fact what makes the obligation to die possible. For Hegel in particular, the justifiability of this obligation presumes that different people will chare the same reasons for why they can be obliged, but this is not necessarily the case. State homogeneity is not enough to presume that the obligation to die can exist. Aquinas simply ignores all of this, clinging instead to inferior subjects having to obey their superiors. Hegel’s approach to resolving the ever-present tension between the particular identities of the citizens and the universal character of the state is to formulate a theory of identity, politics, and history that provides room for particular subjects to discover their place within a universal historical process. In this regard, Elie Kedourie proposes that Hegel was building on the metaphysics of Spinoza, for whom a universal substance was the foundation of all being.92 Unlikely as it may seem, Nordau’s play rests on the fringes of metaphysics, and of the validity in searching for universal foundations of existence or being. Yet, with all these subtexts going on in his writing, and even a literary example of the obligation to die, Nordau was not so sure about when or how to bring political obligation into practice. When the possibility of organizing specific Jewish armed military units during WWI arose, Nordau was against any such involvement in the war.93 He also never thought that there would be any conflict in Palestine. Nordau’s conception of obligation does involve an obligation to die, but it is a romanticized obligation pursuant specifically to his understanding of Jewish interests and Jewish identity. The obligation is between a subject and a sovereign, but the sovereign is understood to be made up of subjects that do not exist except in the imagination of those who share Nordau’s vision of the ideal-type Jew. As stated previously, without a subject that may be obliged, there is no obligation—this is why it was and is so important for the Zionists to explain what it means to be a Jew, and where we find an example of the dangers involved in using claims based on “nature” for political purposes or in political theory.94 The obligation to die cannot exist if there are no identity politics. Thus, any natural law account of

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the obligation to die is problematic, and not only because it lacks a recognition of identity, but also because of the disturbing paths that political arguments based on nature can take. In his opening address at the first Zionist Congress, Nordau romanticized the Jews of the Eastern European ghettos. Nordau, who was also a kind of psychiatrist or physician, argued that the ghetto should not be associated with shame or humiliation. The ghetto was not a prison for the Jews, “but a refuge.”95 He continued, “Their external situation was insecure, often seriously endangered, but internally they achieved a complete development of their individuality, with no fragmentation of the self.”96 However, this unfragmented self was fatally injured with “the Emancipation,” for when Jews were promised integration into society they left their secure ghettos, only to ultimately find themselves attacked and individually fragmented. Zionism, consequently, was the road to regaining a strong Jewish selfhood or identity. In 1892 Nordau published Degeneration, a scathing critique following in the footsteps of his 1883 critique, The Conventional Lies of Our Civilization. The term, ‘degeneration’ or ‘degenerate’ was still relatively recent, and Nordau used it against those he “considered nervous and incapable of clear thoughts; [who] were devious and [who] turned their backs upon nature.”97 Nordau was heavily influenced by Herbert Spencer’s use of Darwin’s scientific theories, and Nordau used social Darwinist theory against the literary and artistic world. However, even though he bought into much of the social Darwinist discourse, he also argued that “there is no such thing as an ‘organic nation’ or ‘an organic state.’”98 Yet, Nordau was faced with a world that was in fact making such claims, and was even starting to use science in the racialization of politics and discrimination. Nordau was thus faced with trying to understand Jewish identity both in terms that he was comfortable with, and within a world that he felt was rejecting these terms. Consequently, Nordau’s understanding of political obligation was to combine a reluctant acceptance of the inevitable recognition of being Jewish (as opposed to cosmopolitan, for example) with a racial ideal-type strong Jew or “muscle Jew” (Muskeljudentum).99 Such Jews were needed in order to protect Jews from attack and in order to get out of Europe, to escape the malaise of the fin-de-siècle and settle in Palestine. The obligation is for the survival of the Jewish people, but this survival is contingent on remaking the Jew from the weak ghetto Jew into a new muscle Jew. In general, Zionist conceptions of obligation are framed in this way, that the obligation is for saving the Jewish people by rebuilding the Jewish nation into a new and stronger Jewish identity. However, paradoxically, this argument is based on accepting the anti-Semitic caricature of the Jew, and then reacting against this caricature.

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Nordau’s social and political thought is modern, but it is also influenced by previous philosophies that turn to nature to understand the social and political world. Here we find one way in which the medieval idea of natural law found a modern incarnation. The universals of nature were, by Nordau’s time, revised into universal laws of science, and Nordau was highly engrossed in this kind of racist science that saw biology to determine intelligence (and even cultural abilities). As I suggest above, it is logical that once science provided answers to possible physical human difference in the way of scientific racism, the natural law universalism changed to suit biological/scientific race theories, such as Nordau’s muscle Jews. In The Conventional Lies of Our Civilization Nordau elaborates on how natural claims impact social and political theories. He writes, If we descend from the universe to our race, to man, we see in him, as a necessary consequence of our conception of material nature, merely a living being, fitting perfectly into its allotted place in the ranks of living organisms, and governed in all things by the common laws of the organic world. . . . We acknowledge the struggle for existence as the inevitable foundation for all law and morality.100

Similarly to Hegel, who was engrossed in the problem of reconciling the universal with the particular,101 Nordau the Zionist was engrossed in the particularistic identity politics of Zionism while Nordau the social critic relied heavily on universal assumptions of naturalistic political thought. Nordau’s cosmopolitanism may seem bizarre considering his social degeneration theories, but his tirade against literary and artistic figures was targeted at those whom he felt were suffering from a mental malaise that prevented them from thinking clearly, with order and structure. Nordau’s response to Jewish persecution was to argue for a Jewish identity that was capable of taking on the ultimate political task of fighting for the Jewish people. The fact that Nordau used scientific race theory in this regard is disturbing in hindsight. NATION, FREEDOM, SPIRIT, AND OBLIGATION Nordau is interesting because he represents the intersection where the natural law universalisms meet the particularities of the modern world. His play A Question of Honor involves the modern world of difference colliding with the historically European value of universal sameness. Hegel took this collision so seriously, that it served as a base for his political philosophy. In contrast to Aristotle’s account in The Nicomachean Ethics of the individual who will die for the sake of selfish glory Hegel’s warrior-type dies not for glory but for un-

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selfish service in the state, or history.102 In emphasizing the ‘ethical’ character of the state, Hegel means to indicate that the individual is what he is only by virtue of his participation in a totality greater than himself and this participation justifies the obligation to die. “The state involves shared standards and principles, which is . . . what Hegel means in emphasizing its ‘spiritual’ character. Indeed it is the willingness to sacrifice oneself for the sake of this common ideal that is for Hegel at the core of political obligation properly understood.”103 Unlike Aquinas, who understands the existence of the state as a part of natural law, and unlike the consent theories, which legitimize the state according to the state’s provision of security, Hegel’s approach is to see the state, and thus political obligation, through the moral values that the state provides. For Hegel, these values are explained with the term patriotism. Patriotism for Hegel is neither any kind of jingoistic nationalism that may come to mind, nor a love of love of the state. Rather, patriotism for Hegel is “a political disposition.”104 “Patriotism is,” he writes, “frequently understood to mean only a willingness to perform extraordinary sacrifices and actions. But in essence, it is that disposition which, in the normal conditions and circumstances of life, habitually knows that the community is the substantial basis and end.”105 Patriotism is a form of consciousness, representing the highest level of freedom, and achieved by being a citizen in good standing, doing one’s duty and living a healthy life, in the state. Patriotism is not about individual sacrifice for the greater glory of the state. The obligation to die for the state exists voluntarily, out of recognizing the values of this membership that makes possible a consciousness enabling one to achieve true freedom. The obligation is not because the members of the community “sign” some contract to protect their person and/or their property. The obligation exists because of the ethical life, of the freedom made possible in the modern state. As Rupert Gordon writes, “For Hegel, in this spirit of freedom, the ‘obligation’ to die for the state becomes rather a freely made choice grounded in the truth of the individual’s interdependence with an irreducibly collective dimension of freedom, and the ‘basic sense of order’ that it guarantees.”106 How, then, do the values that Hegel espouses for the ethical life and the subsequent political obligation to die for the state relate to modern politics? The obvious claim would be to say that Hegel supports nationalism, as his patriotism would imply. However, contrary to what Karl Popper argues,107 Hegel was no nationalist. Hegel did claim that the Jews, as a peculiar nation “required” their own state, but a nationalist claim to political independence is a deviation from the historical norm, and this unique requirement of the Jews most likely refers to premodern times.108 Hegel could not be a nationalist because of the threat nationalism poses to the state. The modern state is comprised of different peoples, for them to become nationalists and call for independence would

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be to threaten the state and would constitute a historical regression. Furthermore, the generic criteria of nationalism such as having a common language or a shared religious identity are, according to Hegel, immaterial to the construction (and needs) of the modern state.109 However, this requirement of homogeneity is a problem, as I have illustrated. Furthermore, it is questionable why identity matters historically, but not in the present, which is what Hegel ostensibly claims. Consequently, how can Hegel relate to Zionism, which is a nationalist movement? Hegel was no nationalist, although such differences did not stop Zionists from using Marxism and socialism, two ideologies that are also not nationalist.110 Hegel also did not encourage his thought to be amicable to Jewish thinkers due to his attacks on Jewish history. However, his attitude toward the Jewish people was different, for his “attitude to Judaism did not preclude Hegel from advocating equal rights for Jews.”111 According to Avineri, Hegel argues that “one cannot deny Jews their equal rights because they are different and ‘isolated’ because this refusal itself tends to leave them in their isolation for which they are blamed.”112 In The Philosophy of Right Hegel claims that, . . . Although it may well have been contrary to formal right to grant even civil rights to the Jews on the ground that the latter should be regarded not just as a particular religious group but also as members of a foreign nation, the outcry which this viewpoint and others produced overlooked the fact that the Jews are primarily human beings, this is not just a neutral and abstract quality, for its consequence is that the granting of civil rights gives those who receive them a selfawareness as recognized legal persons in civil society, and it is from this root, infinite and free from all other influences, that the desired assimilation in terms of attitude and disposition arises. If [the Jews had not been granted civil rights] . . . the Jews would have remained in . . . isolation with which they have been reproached and this would have rightly brought shame upon the state, which excluded them; for the state would thereby have failed to recognize its own principle as an objective institution with a power of its own.113

His political thought is, indeed, more than sympathetic to the possibility of Jewish political rights, even if he is deeply suspicious and antagonistic toward the Jewish religion. Yet, how could anyone accept this arrogant supposition that attacks Judaism quite ferociously while claiming to receive with open arms Jewish people? To say that “I do not like you because you are Jewish but I will accept you because you are human” seems perverse. Nevertheless, it is possible to use a Hegelian lens to examine or even defend Zionism. Paul Mendes-Flohr refers to Hegel a couple of times in his existentialist defense of Zionism, and Shlomo Avineri’s book on Zionism reads

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as though it were inspired by Hegel’s political thought.114 In a memoir, the former president of the World Jewish Congress, Nahum Goldmann mentions in passing that Herzl adopted Hegel’s understanding of the modern state.115 There are also cases of Zionism being placed within a Hegelian idea of historical dialectics.116 In any case, what is important is that there are similarities between some of Hegel’s central normative arguments and Zionism insofar as obligation is concerned. In particular, there is an interesting similarity between Hegel’s and Ahad Ha’am’s understanding about obligation and community. The idea that the state is important for one’s spirit is a strong argument in favor of political obligations. To go to war for the state is important because without the state, one’s spirit or one’s subjectivity languishes. Indeed, this was the claim made by many Zionists, that without a Jewish state, the Jewish spirit would be in danger. This is the basic claim behind the spiritual/cultural Zionism of Ahad Ha’am, and, incidentally, was influential in the socialist Zionism of Moses Hess. Hess, as a socialist, is theoretically amicable to the Hegelian politics of obligation and of history, although Hess makes no claim that being willing to die for the state is a sign of a healthy community. Ha’am is generally not acknowledged to have been influenced by Hegel. Herbert Spencer is more of a reference point in this regard.117 However, there is a similarity between Ha’am’s and Hegel’s thinking on a political obligation to die. For Ha’am an obligation would make sense only in terms of the Jew’s identity, and the possibilities of freeing the Jewish spirit. However, for Ha’am any political obligation also involves a powerful leader and a susceptible people. In a biography on Ha’am, the professor of Jewish history, Steven Zipperstein points out that, Ahad Ha’am explains . . . that social stability results from the ability to hypnotize individual members to act in compliance with societal needs. Obedience is attained by various imperceptible means—mostly all-but-invisible. Of particular importance are those that can be traced back to the very beginnings of time and which are “handed down from generation to generation without any fundamental change.”118

Hegel might approve of the importance of history here, but he probably would not have shared the same understanding of it. The emphasis that Ha’am places on spirit might also have intrigued Hegel, although yet again, Hegel and Ha’am are not using the same definition of spirit. Nevertheless, there is a parallel here. First, the spirit cannot surface on its own at the individual level, it requires a community. Second, and following from the first, any obligation to die needs to be built on a recognition of the importance of the community. Hegel knew that the state may need to ask of its members that

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they risk their lives, and his political philosophy accommodated this problem. Ha’am was aware of this exact same problem, and in an almost Hegelian tone wrote in Flesh and Spirit: I live for the sake of the perpetuation and the well-being of the community to which I belong; I die to make way for others, who will remould the community and save it from petrifaction and stagnation. When the individual loves the community as himself and identifies himself completely with its well being, he has something to live for; he feels his personal hardships less keenly, because he knows the purpose for which he lives and suffers. But obviously this will hold good only if the community itself lives for some purpose, which the individual can regard as justifying every possible sacrifice on his part.119

Ha’am argues that Judaism solves the problem of why any individual would be willing to give up his or her life for the sake of the community. “Having shifted the center of life from the individual to the community, Judaism was compelled to find an answer to the problem of collective life.”120 He continues, [Judaism] had to endow the life of the community with a purpose sufficiently large and important to sustain the morale of the individual even when his personal life was a burden to him. Hence the community of Israel became ‘a kingdom of priests and a holy nation,’ destined from the very beginning to be an example to the whole of mankind through its Torah.”121

Ha’am is known for re-reading Jewish history to suit what he wants to argue. Hertzberg writes that, “Ahad Ha’am rewrote the past as national history in order to provide himself with ancestors whom he supposedly would emulate.”122 Historical accuracy aside, Ha’am clearly demonstrates a recognition that the community, the state, needs to be able to legitimately oblige its members to risk their lives for its behalf, and that this argument makes sense when the community is necessary for the individual, not when the individual makes the community. CONCLUSION Aquinas’ and especially Hegel’s debt to Aristotle is quite deep and goes beyond viewing the state as a place for some kind of good. However, it is in this way that Aquinas and Hegel both justify the obligation to die, by providing an argument that claims that the life made possible by the state is worth dying for. I have shown how for Aquinas this argument is hollow due to the exceptionally limited view that Aquinas has of political life. The characteriza-

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tion of obligation as obedience illustrates how for Aquinas life in the state is understood to be good not because of what it enables the population to achieve, but because it adheres to the natural ordering of the world. Christian theology plays into this argument in a major way, and I will examine the religious argument in the next chapter. However, the religious side to Aquinas’ political thought does not change the argument presented here, that Aquinas presumes people to be political animals, but he effectively removes any kind of political life from public spaces, thus rendering the idea of being a political animal devoid of any concrete meaning. His claim that people need to live in a state is made by reference to natural law and the need of the state is not presumed to mean the need of human beings to participate in politics. The idea that it is possible to turn to nature and derive social and political truths from such observations is also a problematic aspect of Aquinas’ thought since such claims are, as Hegel suggests, presumed to be self-evident without requiring the necessary justification. Moreover, there are serious risks in turning to nature in this way, for as Nordau demonstrates in his turn to social Darwinism, it is humans that perceive nature to hold socio-political truths and this makes it possible to see in nature the possibility of pure races or “Muscle Jews.” Regarding Hegel, he too values life in the state but he presumes that it is possible to disparage a people while simultaneously welcoming them into the state and into the possibility of finding an ethical life. Hegel’s justification for the obligation to die rests on a perverse conception of political life as being both open to all citizens and yet prejudiced against some of them. With Hegel, the obligation is justified according to his complex metaphysics of history and freedom, which includes a naïve understanding of war as becoming humane and a difficult dialectical construction of identity. According to this dialectic each individual citizen will realize that his or her identity is made possible by life in the state among others. Individuals might recognize this, but only if they are open to it, yet Hegel describes the bourgeoisie as self-interested, thereby implying that he does not think that all citizens will be able to make this connection. Hegel and Aquinas provide a useful counterweight to the individuality of the modern world, and rightly emphasis the importance of the state. The types of arguments they provide have been used, most likely unknowingly, by Zionists such as Max Nordau and Ahad Ha’am. However, the argument that justifies the obligation to die because of the benefit of life in the state needs to get the balance right between the normative value of the state and how the citizens, or subjects, fit into this normative life. If the obligation to die is to become justified, the normative value that Hegel ascribes to the state is especially important since for the obligation to

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become justified, the entity doing the obliging needs to be worth the cost that it is demanding. Hegel in particular notes that there needs to be some way in which the value of life in the state can be recognized by its inhabitants to such a degree that they would be prepared to risk their lives for it. In this vein, Hegel highlights the normative purposes of the state. Indeed, if the obligation to die is to become justified there should be some normative justification for why the state is worth risking one’s life for. Aristotle hints that the political community provides a life of happiness, and finding this kind of life is the telos of the citizen. Hegel follows Aristotle in this regard, although with noticeable metaphysical changes to the argument. What is important, however, is that the obligation to die cannot be justified if the state does not provide a life worth dying for. This paradox is what Hegel tries to address by way of his metaphysics, but as I will suggest in the final chapter, the paradox is a part of politics in the modern world and it is, as a consequence, necessary to recognize what kind of political life might be worth risking one’s life for. Nevertheless, while Hegel was right to emphasize the normative aspects of life inside the state, I suggest that Hegel and especially Aquinas get the balance between the individual and the state wrong and make some theoretical mistakes in the process. In order to examine the other side of the scale and see how the individual has served to justify the obligation to die I will turn to consent theory, but before then, I examine the religious argument for the obligation to die. NOTES 1. Hannah Arendt, Responsibility and Judgment, ed. Jerome Kohn (New York: Schocken Books, 2003), 48. 2. Shlomo Avineri, Hegel’s Theory of the Modern State (Cambridge; London: Cambridge University Press, 1972), 50. 3. Hobbes’ claim that humans have a right to self-preservation is one such example. For more on Hobbes see chapter 7. For an account of Hobbes that places him within the natural law tradition see, Mark C. Murphy, “Was Hobbes a Legal Positivist?,” Ethics 105, no. 4 (1995). 4. Vivienne Jabri, Discourses on Violence: Conflict Analysis Reconsidered (Manchester; New York: Manchester University Press, 1996). See also, Philip Bobbitt, The Shield of Achilles: War, Peace and the Course of History (London: Allen Lane, 2002), xxxi. 5. There are Hegelian sides to Zionism. In regard to Herzl see, Nahum Goldmann, The Jewish Paradox, trans. Steve Cox (London: Weidenfeld and Nicolson, 1978). Shlomo Avineri’s examination of Zionism also places Zionism within a Hegelian framework. See, Avineri, The Making of Modern Zionism: Intellectual Origins of the Jewish State (London: Weidenfeld and Nicolson, 1981).

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6. For more on the historical connection here between sociopolitical scientific nature claims with racism and Nazism see, Hannah Arendt, The Origins of Totalitarianism (London: André Deutsch, 1986). 7. See, for example, Michael Howard’s and Robert L. Holmes’ respective contributions to Jean Bethke Elshtain, ed., Just War Theory (Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1992). See also, Alex J. Bellamy, Just Wars: From Cairo to Iraq (Cambridge: Polity Press, 2006). Ian Clark, Waging War: A Philosophical Introduction (Oxford: Clarendon, 1988). Aquinas is used, as Ian Clark does, to mark an intellectual turning point that does not really exist. The development of these two distinct concerns was gradual, and while Aquinas does raise issues that relate to both ius ad bellum and ius in bello, this distinction is made clearer by Francisco de Vitoria—a point that Clark also makes. For related discussions about Aquinas’ contribution to just war see, Richard Brian Miller, Interpretations of Conflict: Ethics, Pacifism and the Just-War Tradition (Chicago; London: University of Chicago Press, 1991). For a different approach and to see how Aquinas’ thought on revolution relates to the ethics of war see, A. J. Coates, The Ethics of War (Manchester, Manchester University Press, 1997). 8. Alessandro Passerin d’Entrèves, The Medieval Contribution to Political Thought: Thomas Aquinas, Marsilius of Padum, Richard Hooker (New York: Humanities Press, 1959), 33. 9. Michael Donelan, Elements of International Political Theory (Oxford: Clarendon, 1990), 13. 10. I will provide examples of this later in the chapter. 11. Augustine, City of God against the Pagans, trans. R. W. Dyson, ed. R. W. Dyson (Cambridge; New York: Cambridge University Press, 1998). See, Book XI, ch. 26. 12. Such as Aquinas, Grotius, Vitoria, Pufendorf. See, Carl Joachim Friedrich, The Philosophy of Law in Historical Perspective, 2nd ed. (Chicago & London: The University of Chicago Press, 1963). 13. Alessandro Passerin d’Entrèves, Natural Law: An Introduction to Legal Philosophy, 2nd revised ed. (London: Hutchinson, 1970), 42 (See Summa Theologiae IaIIae 91). 14. R. W. Dyson, Normative Theories of Society and Government in Five Medieval Thinkers: St. Augustine, John of Salisbury, Giles of Rome, St. Thomas Aquinas, and Marsilius of Padua (Lewiston, N.Y.; Lampeter: Edwin Mellen Press, 2003), 217. 15. Thomas Aquinas, Political Writings, ed. R. W. Dyson, trans. R. W. Dyson (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2005), 7 (De Regimine Principum). 16. Aquinas, Political Writings, 5–6 (De Regimine Principum). There is some debate as to the accuracy of Aquinas’ translation of Aristotle’s famous description of man as a political animal (a zõon politikon). Dyson argues that Aquinas’ translation (which Aquinas takes from a Latin translation of Aristotle, but is apparently already used by Seneca) is more accurate in its inclusion of the word social than the “literal” translation that uses only the adjective political to describe “man.” Hannah Arendt, however, argues that the Latin translation is erroneous in that the “word ‘social’ is Roman in origin and has no equivalent in Greek language or thought.” Hannah Arendt, The Human Condition (London and Chicago: Chicago University Press, 1958). 23. 17. Passerin d’Entrèves, The Medieval Contribution to Political Thought.

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18. Aquinas, Political Writings, 70 (Summa Theologiae IIaIIae 104). 19. Aquinas, Political Writings, 144 (Summa Theologiae IIaIIae 96). 20. For a brief synopsis of how the classical natural lawyers understand morality see, J. B. Schneewind, “Autonomy, Obligation, and Virtue: An Overview of Kant’s Moral Philosophy,” in The Cambridge Companion to Kant, ed. Paul Guyer (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1992), 411–12. 21. Dyson, Normative Theories of Society and Government in Five Medieval Thinkers, 211. 22. Aquinas, Political Writings, 19–20. 23. Passerin d’Entrèves, Natural Law: An Introduction to Legal Philosophy. 24. Aquinas, Political Writings, 19–21 (De Regimine Principum). 25. Paul E. Sigmund, “Law and Politics,” in The Cambridge Companion to Aquinas, ed. Norman Kretzmann and Eleonore Stump (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1993), 221. 26. See, Francisco de Vitoria, Political Writings, ed. Anthony Pagden and Jeremy Lawrance (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1991). 27. See “On the American Indians” in de Vitoria, Political Writings. 28. For an examination of how medieval Christian thought relates to modern racism see, George M. Fredrickson, Racism: A Short History (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 2002). Scientific racism refers to those theories that justify racist argument by way of scientific laws, such as biology. Eugenics was one product of this line of thinking. For a general examination and critique of racism see, Albert Memmi, Racism (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2000). 29. Such as, Donelan, Elements of International Political Theory. 30. See, Emmanuel Chukwudi Eze, Race and the Enlightenment: A Reader (Cambridge: Blackwell, 1997). Postcolonial critiques follow heavily in this line of attack against Enlightenment universals. For two general and wide-ranging introductions to these issues see, Ania Loomba, Colonialism/Postcolonialism, 2nd ed. ed. (London: Routledge, 2005); Anne McClintock, Aamir Mufti, and Ella Shohat, Dangerous Liaisons: Gender, Nations, and Postcolonial Perspectives, Cultural Politics, V.11 (Minneapolis; London: University of Minnesota Press, 1997). See also, Edward W. Said, Orientalism, Penquin Classics (London: Penquin, 2003). 31. See, Arendt, The Origins of Totalitarianism. 32. Arendt, The Origins of Totalitarianism, 176–77. 33. I address this point in greater detail when I examine how being Jewish took with it an obligation not to die for the state, but to be killed by the state. See the section entitled, The Jewish Experience of the Human/Citizen Dichotomy, in chapter 6. 34. Aristotle does argue that too much diversity of the population can cause revolution (The Politics Book V, 3:25), but the point that I am making is that for Aristotle the political life of the citizen would not be possible without different people to take up different tasks so that the citizen will have the time to engage in the good life of political participation and individual contemplation. It is the need for difference that is important here, not the discrimination involved in keeping women and slaves out of politics. 35. It could be said that Aquinas does provide a content to what it means to be a political animal when he argues that the state exists in order to allow humans to live

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a worthwhile life since no human can survive by him or herself. The idea here is that life on earth is not all bad, that good can be found on earth prior to achieving individual salvation in heaven. But claiming survival as a good makes sense only if one is challenging the Augustinian idea that life on earth is always a life of sin. For more on the religious justification for the obligation to die, see chapter 5. 36. Arendt, The Human Condition. The church’s control over social matters may have been partly why Aquinas adds the term social to his definition of the zõon politikon, “the political animal.” See above (fn. 34). 37. Arendt, The Human Condition. 38. Aquinas, Political Writings, 69. (Summa Theologiae IIaIIae 104) 39. This is not the only link between Hegel and the natural lawyers. Hegel too argued against the possibility of an unjust law, for a law that is unjust cannot be an actual law. 40. For more on the relationship between Hegel and natural law see Tony Burns, Natural Law and Political Ideology in the Philosophy of Hegel (Aldershot, Hants: Avebury, 1996). 41. Passerin d’Entrèves, Natural Law: An Introduction to Legal Philosophy, 74. 42. Ius naturale can be translated as law of nature or natural right. 43. Friedrich, The Philosophy of Law in Historical Perspective, 133. 44. Kenneth Westphal, “The Basic Context of and Structure of Hegel’s Philosophy of Right,” in The Cambridge Companion to Hegel, ed. Frederick C. Beiser (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1993), 241. 45. K.-H. Ilting, “The Structure of Hegel’s Philosophy of Right,” in Hegel’s Political Philosophy: Problems and Perspectives, ed. Z. A. Pelczynski (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1971), 91. Hegel does share some conceptual understanding with the natural law of the seventeenth and eighteenth Century, such as a restrictive understanding of nature that is no longer teleological. For more on Hegel and natural law see Manfred Riedel, “Nature and Freedom in Hegel’s Philosophy of Right,” in Hegel’s Political Philosophy: Problems and Perspectives, ed. Z. A. Pelczynski (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1971). 46. Shlomo Avineri, Hegel’s Theory of the Modern State (Cambridge; London: Cambridge University Press, 1972), 84. 47. See, Charles Taylor, Hegel (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1975), 365–67. 48. Raymond Plant, Hegel (London: Allen and Unwin, 1973). 49. Z. A. Pelczynski, “The Hegelian Conception of the State,” in Hegel’s Political Philosophy: Problems and Perspectives, ed. Z. A. Pelczynski (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1971), 5. 50. Pelczynski, “The Hegelian Conception,” 6. 51. Steven B. Smith, “Hegel’s Views on War, the State, and International Relations,” The American Political Science Review 77, no. 3 (1983): 627. 52. Avineri, Hegel’s Theory of the Modern State, 84. The concept of an ethical life is fundamental for Hegel’s political philosophy. Avineri defines the term as follows: “Sittlichkeit, ethical life, is defined by Hegel as the identification of the individual with the totality of his social life.” Avineri, Hegel’s Theory of the Modern State, 87. Elsewhere,

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Avineri defines what Hegel means by ethical life as, “the realm of needs,” whereas Allen Wood writes that it is, “a rational system of social institutions.” (Shlomo Avineri, “The Problem of War in Hegel’s Thought,” Journal of the History of Ideas 22, no. 4 (1961): 466. Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel, Elements of the Philosophy of Right, ed. Allen W. Wood and Hugh Barr Nisbet (Cambridge, England; New York: Cambridge University Press, 1991), xii.) For Hegel, ethics pertains to the material world of life in the community (whereas morality, Moralität, pertains to the realm of the autonomous individual, of the individual will). Ethics is objective and is “realized only through or in the state.” (Friedrich, The Philosophy of Law in Historical Perspective, 132.) Consequently, ethics pertains to both the realm of needs and a rational system of social institutions. In other words, ethical life refers to a “system of values of communities.” (Friedrich, The Philosophy of Law in Historical Perspective, 132.) 53. Hegel, Elements of the Philosophy of Right, 102. 54. See, Elements of the Philosophy of Right §4. Hegel, Elements of the Philosophy of Right, 35–37. 55. Hegel, Elements of the Philosophy of Right, 365. 56. For more on Hegel’s thinking on the importance of the courage of soldiers see, D. P. Verene, “Hegel’s Account of War,” in Hegel’s Political Philosophy: Problems and Perspectives, ed. Z. A. Pelczynski (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1971). Verene’s account is heavily reliant on Karl Jaspers’ The Future of Mankind. 57. Hegel, Elements of the Philosophy of Right, 364 (Italics in original). 58. I will explore the social contract arguments in chapter 7. 59. Hegel, Elements of the Philosophy of Right, 240 §09. (Italics in original). 60. Avineri, Hegel’s Theory of the Modern State. 61. Hegel, Elements of the Philosophy of Right, 220 §182. 62. Hegel, Elements of the Philosophy of Right, §324. 63. Avineri, Hegel’s Theory of the Modern State, 41. 64. Hegel, Elements of the Philosophy of Right, 371. 65. For more on the issues of humane warfare and of the normative/moral relation between technology and war see, Christopher Coker, Waging War without Warriors? The Changing Culture of Military Conflict (Boulder, Colorado; London: Lynn Rienner Publishers, 2002), Christopher Coker, Humane Warfare (London; New York: Routledge, 2001); James Der Derian, Virtuous War: Mapping the Military-Industrial-MediaEntertainment Network (Boulder, CO; Oxford: Westview Press, 2001), Chris Hables Gray, Postmodern War: The New Politics of Conflict (London: Routledge, 1997). 66. According to Hegel, “a common military force” is necessary to form a state, and thus it follows that any state will have to be able to justifiably oblige its citizens to risk their lives in war as military conscripts. It is possible that a state might have a questionable government, but the type of government does not necessarily change the basic requirements justifying the obligation to die, which, for Hegel, involve the individual citizen becoming at one with the spirit of the time and thus becoming free, and which is possibly only inside the state. Whether or not an unjust government can justifiably oblige its citizens in war is question of resistance, and Hegel does, unlike Aquinas, make room for revolution in his political philosophy. Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel, Political Writings, ed. Laurence Dickey and H. B. Nisbet, trans. H. B. Nisbet (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1999).

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67. Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel, Early Theological Writings, trans. T. M. Knox (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1948), 199 in “The Spirit of Christianity and its Fate” §1 “The Spirit of Judaism”. 68. See, Jean-Paul Sartre, Anti-Semite and Jew: An Exploration of the Etiology of Hate, trans. George Becker (New York: Schocken Books, 1995). 69. See for example, Will Kymlicka, Multicultural Citizenship: A Liberal Theory of Minority Rights (Oxford; New York: Clarendon Press, 1995); Will Kymlicka and W. J. Norman, Citizenship in Diverse Societies (Oxford; New York: Oxford University Press, 2000); Charles Taylor and Amy Gutmann, Multiculturalism: Examining the Politics of Recognition (Princeton, N.J: Princeton University Press, 1994); James Tully, Strange Multiplicity: Constitutionalism in an Age of Diversity (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1995). For an introduction to minority rights see, Jennifer Jackson Preece, Minority Rights (Cambridge: Polity Press, 2005). 70. Michael Stanislawski, Zionism and the Fin De Siècle: Cosmopolitanism and Nationalism from Nordau to Jabatinsky (Berkeley, Los Angeles and London: University of California Press, 2001), 51, 56. See also Söder who explores the linkage between religion, modernity and disease in the writings of Max Nordau. Hans-Peter Söder, “Disease and Health as Contexts of Modernity: Max Nordau as a Critic of FinDe-Siècle Modernism,” German Studies Review 14, no. 3 (1991). 71. For an introduction to theories of degeneration and to Nordau’s contributions in this regard see, Sally Ledger and Roger Luckhurst, The Fin De Siècle: A Reader in Cultural History, C. 1880–1900 (Oxford, England; New York: Oxford University Press, 2000). On the cultural politics of the fin de siècle see, Sally Ledger and Scott McCracken, Cultural Politics at the Fin De Siècle (Cambridge, U.K.; New York: Cambridge University Press, 1995); Carl E. Schorske, Fin-De-Siècle Vienna: Politics and Culture (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1981). 72. Stanislawski, Zionism and the Fin De Siècle, 48. 73. Max Simon Nordau, Degeneration (Lincoln and London: University of Nebraska Press, 1993), xv. 74. For Nordau, the modern open-minded liberalism would seem like chaos, devoid of structure and purpose. His identity-politics came from the nineteenth-century cosmopolitan or liberal perspective that was more conservative than today’s liberalism. Mosse writes, “Nineteenth-century liberalism, which was concerned with progress through order, will, and rationality, must not be equated with the ‘openmindedness’ of modern-day liberalism.” Nordau, Degeneration, xvii. 75. Stanislawski, Zionism and the Fin De Siècle, 49. 76. Stanislawski, Zionism and the Fin De Siècle, 58. 77. See, Arendt, The Origins of Totalitarianism. 78. Stanislawski, Zionism and the Fin De Siècle, 83. Dr. Kohn is also not religious and claims that he does not convert to Christianity because he has no religious belief. At one point Dr. Kohn says, “I have no religion at all. I have as little belief in Christianity as in Judaism.” Max Nordau, A Question of Honor: A Tragedy in Four Parts, trans. Mary J. Safford (Boston and London: John W. Luce and Company, 1907), 73. 79. Nordau, A Question of Honor, 62. 80. Nordau, A Question of Honor, 65.

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81. Nordau, A Question of Honor, 119. See also, Stanislawski, Zionism and the Fin De Siècle, 84. 82. Nordau, A Question of Honor, 103. 83. Quoted in, Stanislawski, Zionism and the Fin De Siècle, 84. 84. Nordau, A Question of Honor, 138. See also, Stanislawski, Zionism and the Fin De Siècle, 85. 85. Quoted in, Stanislawski, Zionism and the Fin De Siècle, 85. Stanislawski’s translation is slightly different in style but not in content than what appears in the original English translation, see, Nordau, A Question of Honor, 141. 86. Nordau, A Question of Honor, 142. 87. Stanislawski, Zionism and the Fin De Siècle, 91. 88. Nordau, A Question of Honor, 169. 89. I examine more of Nordau’s “naturalistic” claims below. 90. Paul Mendes-Flohr, “Between Existentialism and Zionism,” Journal of the American Academy of Religion 47, no. 3 (1979). 91. Sartre, Anti-Semite and Jew. 92. Elie Kedourie, Sylvia Kedourie, and Helen Kedourie, Hegel and Marx: Introductory Lectures (Oxford, UK; Cambridge, Mass.: Blackwell, 1995). Benedict de Spinoza, Ethics, trans. Edwin Curley (London: Penguin Books, 1996). Taylor, Hegel. 93. Walter Laqueur, The History of Zionism, 3rd ed. (London and New York: I. B. Tanrist Co. Ltd, 2007). 94. In fact, it was precisely over this issue that split the political Zionists (such asTheodor Herzl) from the cultural Zionists (such as Ahad Ha’am). What was at stake between these opposing Zionist conceptions? It was not the idea of Zionism, as such, but rather the idea of what kind of Zionist one should be, and by implication, what kind of Jew. 95. For a complete translation of the speech see Arthur Hertzberg, The Zionist Idea: Historical Analysis and Reader (Westport, Conn: Greenwood Press, 1975), 235–41. 96. Quoted in, Stanislawski, Zionism and the Fin De Siècle, 89. Hertzberg’s translation uses the word “individuals” instead of “self.” 97. George L. Mosse, “Max Nordau, Liberalism and the New Jew,” Journal of Contemporary History 27, no. 4 (1992): 567. 98. Max Nordau, Interpretation of History, quoted in, Stanislawski, Zionism and the Fin De Siècle, 33. Nordau’s socio-political thought is underpinned by his understanding of health, or said differently of biology and science, of nature For a discussion on the linkage between religion, modernity, and disease in the writings of Max Nordau see, Söder, “Disease and Health as Contexts of Modernity.” 99. For an analysis and survey of the anti-Semitic stereotype of the weak Jew, the opposite of the Muskeljudentum that Nordau wanted to create, see Elliot Horowtiz, They Fought Because They Were Fighters and They Fought Because They Were Jews, ed. Peter Y. Medding, vol. XVIII, Studies in Contemporary Jewry: Jews and Violence: Images Ideologies, Realities (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2002), 23–42. Horowitz’s interesting study looks both at the anti-Semitic propositions about Jewish feebleness as well as some philo-Semitic accounts that accept this same caricature, and includes a discussion of famous Jewish sportsmen. For more on Nordau, degen-

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eration, race theory, Zionism, and the idea of the muscle Jew see, Todd Samuel Presner, ‘Clear Heads, Solid Stomachs, and Hard Muscles’: Max Nordau and the Aesthetics of Jewish Regeneration,” Modernism/modernity 10, no. 2 (2003). 100. Quoted in, Stanislawski, Zionism and the Fin De Siècle, 24. Max Nordau, Conventional Lies (New York: Arno Press, 1975), 25–26. 101. Plant, Hegel. 102. Avineri, “The Problem of War in Hegel’s Thought,” 629. 103. Smith, “Hegel’s Views on War, the State, and International Relations,” 628. 104. Hegel, Elements of the Philosophy of Right, 288. 105. Hegel, Elements of the Philosophy of Right, 288–89. 106. Rupert H. Gordon, “Modernity, Freedom, and the State: Hegel’s Concept of Patriotism,” The Review of Politics 62, no. 2 (2000): 312. 107. Karl Raimund Popper, The Open Society and Its Enemies: Vol. II: The High Tide of Prophecy: Hegel, Marx, and the Aftermath, 4th ed. (London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1962). 108. Hegel, Early Theological Writings, 158–59. See also, Shlomo Avineri, “Hegel and Nationalism,” The Review of Politics 24, no. 4 (1962). 109. Avineri, Hegel’s Theory of the Modern State, 34–36, 45. 110. Such Zionists cannot, however, claim to be true Marxists or socialists due to their nationalism. There is a Hegelian dimension to this type of Zionism, however, since the logic is that the Jew needs a state of his/her own in order to participate in history. 111. Shlomo Avineri, “Hegel’s Views on Jewish Emancipation,” Jewish Social Studies 25, no. 2 (1963): 146. 112. Avineri, “Hegel’s Views on Jewish Emancipation.” 113. Hegel, Elements of the Philosophy of Right, 295–96, §70 fn . 114. Mendes-Flohr, “Between Existentialism and Zionism.” Avineri, The Making of Modern Zionism. 115. Goldmann, The Jewish Paradox, 89. 116. See, Presner, “‘Clear Heads, Solid Stomachs, and Hard Muscles’: Max Nordau and the Aesthetics of Jewish Regeneration.” 117. Steven J. Zipperstein, Elusive Prophet: Ahad Ha’am and the Origins of Zionism, ed. Arthur Hertzberg, Jewish Thinkers (London: Peter Halban, 1993). Walter Laqueur writes that “The chief philosophical influences on Ahad Ha’am were the positivist thinkers of the last century: Spencer, John Stuart mill, Renan, and the Jewish Haskala.” Laqueur, The History of Zionism, 166. 118. Zipperstein, Elusive Prophet: Ahad Ha’am and the Origins of Zionism, 89. 119. Hertzberg, The Zionist Idea, 256. 120. Hertzberg, The Zionist Idea. Ha’am is not a consistent thinker. He argues that any Jew would be stupid to risk his or her life for the sake of being Jewish, but he also suggests that the right kind of community might be worth risking one’s life for. 121. Hertzberg, The Zionist Idea, 256–57. 122. Arthur Hertzberg, Jewish Identity: Homegrown or Imposed? The Views of the Jewish Historians, ed. Shimon Shamir, Self-Views in Historical Perspective in Egypt and Israel (Tel Aviv: Tel Aviv University, 1981), 74. Ha’am even saw himself as a sort of prophet.

Chapter Five

Salvation

And in general, [for Augustine] one’s obligation toward another arises from this common past of sin, the concrete impulse of neighbourly love arises from the thought of one’s own peril. This thought is constantly awake from the past, from the descent of Adam, in this life, which is seen as an enduring trial. —Hannah Arendt1 The certainties of Thomas Aquinas afford excellent spiritual guidance and are still much superior to almost anything in the way of certainties which has been invented in more recent times. But certainty is not truth, and a system of certainties is the end of philosophy. —Hannah Arendt2

In the two essays written explicitly about the obligation to die, one of them is concerned solely with whether or not such an obligation exists in the Jewish religion, and the other is Walzer’s exploration of whether there is such an obligation and how it has been justified.3 Walzer’s essay is substantial in scope, but in it he has little to say about how religion has served to justify the obligation to die. The article on whether or not there is a Jewish justification for such an obligation helps to fill in this gap, but only insofar as religious scholarship is concerned. In other relevant texts that address this obligation, George Kateb’s brief exploration of the obligation to die is based on theories of individualism and the American Constitution, and Cheyney Ryan’s is concerned with how liberal political thought can logically accommodate the

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state’s war-making capacities.4 What is lacking in all of these texts is an examination of religious inspired political arguments for the obligation to die. Considering the significance that religion has had in human history, and is currently having in international relations, this examination is important for both historical and contemporary reasons. This chapter aims to help fill in this gap, although the chapter is restricted in scope to how religious accounts of salvation have influenced justifications for the obligation to die. The chapter is not an exegesis of religious texts, and it does not presume that salvation is the only way that religion can influence the obligation to die. Nevertheless, in Christian political theory and in religious Zionism it is salvation or messianic redemption that characterizes the obligation to die and it is these two accounts that this chapter focuses on. Both the just war tradition and Zionism have strong religious links. The just war tradition is for the most part a Christian tradition—its secular version came about alongside the eventual separation of church and state in European politics. Zionism may have started as a primarily secular ideology and movement, but its referents are often of a religious nature.5 With the state of Israel’s existence and especially its military victory in the 1967 Six-Day War, religious Zionism became exceptionally important in Israeli political life and Zionist ideology. Whereas the just war tradition started as religious and Zionism started, primarily, as secular, both bring together religious claims about political life, including the obligation to die. The purpose of this chapter is to explore how religious belief has served to justify the obligation to obey the sovereign by going to war and risking one’s life. This obligation as argued by the theological inspired philosophies of Saint Augustine, Saint Thomas Aquinas, and the religious Zionists is based on their respective understandings of salvation and/or redemption. There are, however, two serious problems with this kind of argument. First, using salvation to justify an obligation that risks death also risks devaluing the life of the person obliged, and consequently, encourages a dubious means/ends morality. Second, there is a serious tension in using religious faith to order a spatial or territorial politics since it is by no means apparent that controlling religious faith can justify temporal authority. Saint Augustine and Saint Thomas both used, in varying degrees and in different ways, salvation as a reason for the obligation to obey one’s superiors. Both Augustine and Aquinas produced a vast amount of written work, characterized in great part by lengthy exegeses on specific theological issues. Yet, as d’Entrèves writes about Saint Thomas and which relates to Augustine as well, The really important fact, of which the endless scriptural texts is but an indication, is surely that the problem of authority and obligation was felt by the me-

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dieval mind primarily to involve a religious issue, and urgently required an answer which should be in accordance with the principles of the Christian faith.6

Interpretations vary, as do the various articulations, but the central claim made by Augustine, Aquinas, and other classical Christian just war thinkers was that everybody is subject to a higher authority who must be obeyed. For Augustine, more so than the others, the reason an authority must be obeyed was salvation. As such, for Augustine, the concept of political obligation is, like Aquinas, better understood by the term obedience, since the political obligation was to obey the proper or legitimate authority. In the modern era, individuals are expected to have a moral conscience of their own, and have the ability to make independent decisions based on this conscience. Obligation in this context implies a choice or an independent will, but neither Augustine nor Aquinas have any such conception of individual will. For both of these thinkers there is no autonomous self capable of making such decisions, and while salvation is an individual affair, the autonomy of the soul is not shared by the life of the body. There is a concept of the individual since both thinkers are concerned with what individuals may do since salvation is an individual affair, but this individual is different from the modern conception of the autonomous individual that is assumed to have rights and cognitive abilities intrinsic to itself.7 Another way to express the medieval understanding of the individual is to think of what it means to be a subject that is capable of deciphering meaning. For Augustine, the world exists because God made it, and any understanding of something’s existence is based on perceiving this truth.8 The matter that creates the world exists independently of any subjective recognition, involvement with, or observance of such matter. Augustine may be concerned with sensory perception and lifeexperiences, but he does not attribute the power of creating meaning to the individual, and his understanding of the human condition is framed within a Christian body/soul dualism that privileges the eternal soul at the expense of the finite body. Suffice it to say, neither Augustine nor Aquinas claim or recognize that people are autonomous beings, capable of having rights innate to their person. Consequently, while the issue at stake is one of political obligation, these thinkers frame the conditions for being obligated on an account of obedience to authority, and whether disobedience could be morally justified. If it could not, as both Augustine and Aquinas argue, then using the term obedience instead of obligation is a clearer way to get to the issue at hand. The religious beliefs of Augustine and Aquinas, when brought into political life, do not offer much room for independent thought or choice—unquestionable religious foundations make sure of it. In this regard, religious Zionism also offers little

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room for choice due to its messianism. Any action taken counter to the Zionist cause is, consequently, acting against the arrival of the messiah. It is in this sense that religious Zionism becomes characterized as a type of fundamentalism, since it is an absolutely certain theological belief that justifies and commands all Zionist activity, thereby condemning anything that could delay or prevent the arrival of the messianic era.9 Tracing the religious roots of just war thinking is relatively straightforward and leads to back Saint Augustine and Saint Thomas Aquinas. Zionism is more complicated in this regard. There is a general tendency when thinking about religious Zionism to think about the religious settler movement in the West Bank of the Jordan River and, until recently, in the Gaza Strip. One of the most important religious Zionist groups is the Gush Emunim10 movement that dates back to 1974. This movement clearly harbors no doubt about the use of violence, if deemed necessary, and in the late nineteen-eighties, there were intense debates within the movement about the relative value between the spilling of Jewish and Arab blood, with the point being that, post-Intifada, killing Arabs is not as serious as killing Jews.11 There is without doubt here a recognition that settling in Israel, and specifically in the West Bank, is a religious obligation for Jews and that violence is an acceptable part of this obligation. However, there are two problems in starting with the Gush Emunim. First, religious Zionism did not start with them. Second, the Gush Emunim are a product of the Israeli state. The religious settler movement is important as an example of a modern Jewish fundamentalism. However, as a product of the Jewish state this group does not need to provide an argument for an obligation to die for the sovereign, since this obligation is already built into the construction of Israel. For the Gush Emunim, the state of Israel has an army, in which they generally serve, and so this particular obligation falls under the general rights of the state, and not necessarily within a creed of salvation and/or redemption, which is how the religious just war thinkers argued their case. Consequently, it is necessary to look elsewhere and turn to the original thinkers of religious Zionism, specifically Rabbi Zvi Hirsch Kalischer (1795–1874), Rabbi Yehuda Alkalai (1798–1878), and Rabbi Abraham Kook (1865–1935). Religious Zionism offers a provocative alternative take on how religious belief and political obligation work together. This relationship is also best understood as obedience, but for different reasons. Unlike the Christian account of obligation that is tied to individual salvation, the religious Zionist account of obligation is based on the universal salvation associated with the arrival of the messiah even though in Judaism “there is no explicit reference to messianism in Tanakh, the Bible. . . . ”12 Nevertheless, “belief in the Messiah and the ultimate redemption of the children of Israel is an integral part of Jewish

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belief, at least since that Talmudic period.”13 Jewish messianism came from interpreting the Bible, and possibly from the experience of Jews living during the tumultuous times between and after the destruction of the First and Second Temples.14 Furthermore, in contrast to Christian political thought that emphasizes the afterlife and death, Jewish thought is ambivalent toward what happens when one dies. Judaism chooses instead to place the emphasis on life, on human deeds, on the important social and moral choices that characterize human life. Nevertheless, salvation as the basis for an obligation to obey the sovereign exists in Jewish history as well, and Zionism has always included elements of salvation and/or redemption. Even though they come from drastically different premises, there are significant similarities between the medieval Christian philosophies of Augustine and Aquinas, and modern religious Zionism. The messianic politics of Zionism illustrate how religion continues to influence secular politics. Zionism is not necessarily a religious ideology, but its political solution cannot be removed from religious history and belief. Indeed, the messianic idea is important for understanding most kinds of Zionism, just as Europe’s Christian history is important for understanding the history of European political philosophy. As Arthur Hertzberg writes in the introduction to The Zionist Idea, “[Zionism] is . . . the heir of the messianic impulse and emotions of the Jewish tradition, but it is much more than that; it is the most radical attempt in Jewish history to break out of the parochial moulds of Jewish life in order to become part of the general history of man in the modern world.”15

SAINT AUGUSTINE Augustine was born in 354 in Thagaste (today’s Suk Ahras in Algeria). He studied and taught rhetoric in Carthage, Thagaste, and, in 383, Rome. He had been a Manichean but his mother, a Christian, had, according to Augustine’s autobiographical The Confessions, been encouraging him and praying for him to convert to Christianity. Yet, Augustine spent his early years quite removed from living a Christian life. He was enamored with the pursuits of the flesh, of women and other earthly temptations, and in general lived a life of sin. While in Rome he eventually became disenchanted with Manichaeism, and in 384 he went to Milan where he was influenced quite strongly by Saint Ambrose. In 387, Ambrose baptized Augustine, and in 388 Augustine returned to Thagaste where he established a monastic community. In 391 he was ordained priest of Hippo (today’s Annaba in Algeria), established a monastic community there, and in 396 he was ordained Bishop of Hippo. While at

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Hippo he wrote the Confessions and in 413 started The City of God, which he finished in 426. He lived in the final stages of the collapse of the Roman Empire. He died in Hippo, on the twentieth of August 430. Saint Augustine uses the term paterfamilias as the original model for thinking about the city, and thus of political obligation. For Augustine, authority and obligation are framed in highly patriarchal terms. Ultimately, the authority is God, but the demand for obligation to authority included a subject’s obedience to his (or her) master(s), be the master a slave owner, father, husband, judge, prince, king, or other relevant authority figure who participated in ruling the various Christian commonwealths. For Augustine, political obligation is a necessary aspect of life in what he calls the city of man or the earthly city, a life that is framed by the desire to enter the city of God or the eternal city. The cities of man and God are allegories for thinking about authority and politics. The two cities function in relation to each other, with entrance into the city of God being contingent on one’s conduct in the earthly city. Augustine’s concerns about the afterlife (that is, entrance to the city of God) and with salvation led him to turn his attention away from the gradations of morality in the imperfectable life-world of living people and emphasize instead the role of authority in attaining individual salvation.16 The city of God serves to contextualize the earthly city because according to Augustine, we should all strive to enter the eternal city when we die.17 Consequently, life in the city of man is characterized by doing what is possible in order to enter this city of pure virtue, the city of God, but these endeavors are limited by the very nature of life in the city of man. Life in the earthly city is a life of sin and is an existence made possible by the Fall from grace of Adam and Eve and their expulsion from the Garden of Eden. It is “the fall of the first man”18 that creates the possibility for politics because the Fall lays the foundation for some form of social ordering. In other words, it is the Fall that sets up the conditions for people being subject to the rule or authority of other people or another person, since before the Fall there was no need for any ruling hierarchy among humans. Consequently, judicial and political authorities occupy their respective positions not because God fated them there, but because they are fulfilling a God-created requirement, made possible after the Fall, that there be a human social order.19As such, to disobey the authorities is to rebel against an order made possible by God. Saving souls is a primary concern or responsibility for any authority, although respective authority figures are also responsible for ensuring the welfare, peace, or tranquillity in the family or community.20 In order to ensure such welfare, peace, or tranquillity the authorities must be obeyed, and those who disobey must be disciplined.21 In fact, the authorities must be obeyed even if they are wrong. Obedience to authority is so important that Augustine

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is willing to allow an innocent person to die as an unintended consequence of the imperative to obey, as Augustine demonstrates when he writes about the fallibility of the judge. In order to discover the truth of a crime a judge may inadvertently punish and torture an innocent person in order to discover some truth that the judge believes this person knows. However, the judge can never be entirely certain whether or not the person being tortured in fact has the knowledge that the judge seeks. Consequently, the judge could find himself in the position of torturing and even possibly killing an innocent person in order to spare another innocent person. “In his wretched ignorance, therefore, he puts to death, tortured and innocent, the very man whom he had tortured to avoid putting the innocent to death!”22 Augustine allows such tragedies to occur because human beings are prone to ignorance and are always potentially guilty of committing crimes or sins unbeknownst to them. “If it is through unavoidable ignorance and the unavoidable duty of judging that [the judge] tortures the innocent, then he himself is certainly not guilty.”23 Furthermore, the unfortunate innocent individual who is tortured to death is not condemned to a life in hell, but because he was both innocent and obedient, is assured entrance into the city of God. In addition, this judge has not prejudiced his chance of entry to the city of God because he was fulfilling his duty and consequently, did not risk his chances at salvation. This moral allowance, however, means that it is at least theoretically permissible to kill someone provided that the murder is not committed for any material selfish desires, thereby not prejudicing one’s chance of entry into the city of God. Augustine is, of course, not sanctioning murder, and he is not sanctioning any kind of resort to organized violence. Augustine does not favor war. He recognizes it to be a horrifying event, even if the waging of war brings about peace.24 He is arguing that our lives must be lived in order to achieve salvation, and that obedience is important in this regard, which is how Augustine argues that anyone ordered into war by the proper authority must go. Augustine writes: But when a lawful soldier, obedient to the power under which he has been lawfully placed, slays a man, he is not guilty of murder according to the laws of his city. On the contrary, if he does not do so, he is guilty of desertion and contempt of authority. If he had done this of his own free will and authority, however, he would have fallen into the crime of shedding human blood.25

In this passage Augustine does many things. He implies that it is necessary to have the proper authority (that is, “the power,” which I take in this context to mean the same as authority) in order to wage war, because otherwise the war and the killing it involves would be wrong if not criminal. In addition, he

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states that nobody can go to war as an individual. This argument is traditionally assumed to mean that only states can fight a war, but in an Augustinian context, it also means that individuals do not have the moral ability to decide when one should fight. Augustine also emphasizes that following the orders of the proper authority is an imperative. To disobey orders is just as much of a crime as if the soldier were to kill without orders. Consequently, Augustine makes no allowance for political disobedience. Rebellion or civil war is not allowed for at least three reasons. First, because individuals have no individual rights, there can be no individual right to rebel against any established order. Second, all humans are guilty, so it makes sense to follow those in authority and not try to replace them with others who are at best equally guilty. Just as there is no individual right to disobey or rebel there is no collective right. Third, life in the city of man is made possible by the plans of God, albeit plans concocted after the Fall (and the establishment of human guilt). Augustine’s emphasis on obeying authority relies heavily on the words of Saint Paul. In a letter to Macedonius,26 Augustine quotes Saint Paul on this topic. “Every Soul is subject to higher authorities. There is no authority except from God; all that there are are established by God. Anyone who resists authority resists what God has established. But those who resist that, bring judgement on themselves.”27 In short, rebellion is wrong because it is a rejection of the authority of God, and one must obey the authorities in the city of man because although they do not represent God, they serve God in the maintenance of order and tranquillity in the earthly city. Should these authorities be tyrants, people are still required to obey them because people are all guilty, and because life on earth is a result of the Fall suffering is to be expected. Nowhere does Augustine say that one “should not or need not obey unjust laws.”28 As R. W. Dyson says about Augustine’s account of obligation, “It is the Christian’s duty to submit to government not because government as such has any claim on him, but because it is God’s will that we should submit even to the rule of the cruel and wicked.”29 Augustine is not greatly concerned with the life of the soldier being sent to kill. Augustine certainly believes that human life has value, but his ability to view the soul as more important than and separate from the body diminishes his concern with the physical lives of the soldiers. The soldier is simply doing his duty, obeying orders, and as such has a good prospect for entry into the eternal city. If the soldier does die, the worst that can happen to him is to lose his life—his soul will be saved. Augustine is not framing the problem as if the soldier has an obligation to die for the community. Rather, the first judgement is that the soldier has an obligation to go into harm’s way because he is ordered to go.30 The soldier has to obey not for the community but for

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the sake of his soul. The soldier must obey the command to go to war and fight precisely because he was ordered into battle, and if his soul is to remain clean he must obey his ruler. Augustine emphasises this point about obligation being based on salvation when he argues against killing in self-defense. Self-defense is not used as the basis for moralizing force, and it cannot be, since Augustine has no conception of an individual capable of owning or having such a right. Augustine does refer to defense, but not self-defense. James Turner Johnson writes that, “Augustine treated defence by means of a paradigmatic situation involving three persons: a criminal who is attacking or about to attack a second person, the innocent victim, and a third person, an onlooker, on whose behalf Augustine offers his thoughts.”31 Augustine talks about the third person, not the person being attacked. He does not say that this victim has the right to defense. He argues instead: The onlooker, as a Christian, must be motivated by love toward both those individuals before him, the criminal as well as the victim. . . . The proper action for the Christian, reasoned Augustine, is to intervene between criminal and victim, defending the latter even at the risk of his own life against attack or threat of attack by the former. Such defence of the victim, argued Augustine, is mandated by the onlooker’s love for him as someone for whom Christ died; yet Christ also died for the criminal, and this limits what may be done toward him in defending the innocent victim.32

Augustine is suggesting that self-defense is wrong because it means that one is more concerned with the material life of the body than with the eternal life of the soul. Provided that the soldiers are following orders and believe in Christian teachings, they will be fine, even if they die. Acts of rebellion are consequently also wrong for the same reason that an individual disobeys because he is selfish, vain, full of hubris, and more concerned about his temporal life than his life after death. I am not arguing that Augustine is unconcerned with the quality of human life. He was concerned, but he understands it according to a particular theological account of sin and salvation. Yet it is interesting to note that it is a life in a mediocre “city” that Augustine says it is acceptable to die for, and in fact, if called to fight by the proper authority, one must be prepared to die for it. Augustine views life in the city of man as an unfortunate condition.33 It is salvation that informs Augustinian accounts of political obligation, including the obligation to die. The soldier who is sent to war goes to die not so much for his master or country, but because he is ordered to—he needs to obey and he should not care if he dies since his salvation is contingent on his obedience.

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THOMAS AQUINAS AND THE RELIGIOUS ARGUMENT Aquinas brings to the religious argument the Aristotelian claim that territorially based politics are a place for good, and, contra Augustine, are not solely an after-effect of the Fall. Aquinas’ theological-political thought rejects Augustine’s view that “the archetypal society, where alone true human fulfilment can be found, is the society of the angels and the saints in heaven: not a polis.”34 This view was highly influential in the history of medieval Christian thought, but Augustine lived before the Christian church had fully established itself in its relation to political authority. Consequently (perhaps), his views about the nature of the city or state were bleak, not open to the more positive interpretation of them adopted by later Christian philosophers, and uncomfortable attributing too much good to anything of a temporal nature. Thomas Aquinas, however, saw the medieval equivalent of the polis in a positive light. Whereas Augustine emphasized the coercive and punitive functions of the State and looked on man’s need for the State as a consequence of the Fall, Aquinas regarded the State as a ‘natural’ institution, demanded, that is to say, by the nature of man as such. He agreed of course with Augustine that if there had been no Fall, there would have been no need for armies, prisons and so on. But he was far from looking on the State as being simply a necessary instrument for checking the evils resulting from man’s fallen condition. Aquinas placed emphasis much more on the idea of political society as responding to the needs of man as such. Hence he could maintain that even if there had been no Fall, the State would nevertheless have come into existence.35

Aquinas’ great philosophical project was the joining of Aristotle’s thought with Christianity. He sought to bring together philosophy and theology by sorting out which questions could be addressed by theology and faith, and which questions could be addressed by philosophy and reason.36 Aquinas offers an account of political obligation that synthesizes Aristotle’s argument that humans are political animals37 and of the state serving as the conditions of possibility for “the good life” with a Christian theology of salvation and the philosophy of natural law. The significance of Aquinas’ argument is that he makes clearer than Augustine how precisely religious belief provides a foundation for territorially based political obligations, such as the obligation to risk one’s life for the state. Aquinas could claim that the state would exist regardless of the Fall but he also has to demonstrate how the state fits within a theological framework. Thus, Aquinas brings an additional foundation to the religious version of political obligation by having to provide simultaneous justifications for political obligation, one based on natural law and one

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based on religious law, with human positive law making up the shortfall between the two while also being in accord with them. Aquinas is greatly concerned with the afterlife and says that, “there is a certain extraneous good which awaits man after he has lived this mortal life: namely the final blessedness to which he looks forward in the enjoyment of God after death.”38 It is not as if Aquinas is concerned solely with achieving salvation; like Augustine before him, the finite life of humankind concerns him greatly.39 Aquinas, and Augustine as well, respect human morality but do not believe that all individuals are capable of applying moral laws to particular situations. In a telling contrast to modern arguments for moral equality, Augustine and Aquinas claim that the weaknesses of humans born in sin make it impossible for everybody to be morally equal. As such, people need to follow the appropriate authorities who can direct individuals in what they should do, thereby establishing the basis for political obligation. The political and social hierarchies, which exist, do so because people are not morally equal beings. Life in the material world is, therefore, subject to certain conditions that require individuals to obey their superiors and pay more attention to one’s spiritual needs and not material desires. About the material life Aquinas goes as far to say that “too much in the way of pleasantness leads men to enjoy delights to excess, and this is harmful to cities in many ways.”40 Excessive pleasure causes moral corruption, and a “fall away from honest virtue.”41 One of these virtues is the virtue of obedience.42 The obligation required to one’s superiors replicates obligation or obedience to God. “Therefore as man must obey God in all things, so too must he obey his superiors.”43 With such a direct link between obeying God and obeying one’s superiors, Aquinas’ account of obedience is clearly related to religious salvation. D’Entrèves says that, “It is enough to remember the main principle which St. Thomas develops, that, as the duty of obedience to authority is grounded both upon divine and natural order, its limits are necessarily fixed by the correspondence of human authority with divine and natural law, that is, with justice.”44 The purpose of human laws may be to “lead men to virtue,”45 but not all virtues can be led to by human law, and in any case, the reason for living a life of virtue is to live a life according to the will of God. This is why Aquinas can argue that a good king can take the sons of his subjects and send them to their possible death in war.46 Aquinas’ account of political obligation is complicated, but what should be clear is that the obligation to die poses no moral, political, or theological problem for Aquinas, other than it being another instance of having to justify a theory of political obligation. What Aquinas demonstrates is that justifying the obligation to die involves having to justify not just the purpose of being obliged, but also how religious belief is tied to what exists in the temporal world. He does this by

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linking religious law with natural law with positive law thereby demonstrating a temporal link with religiously sanctioned political obligations.47 Religious Zionism made this link even clearer, as I will demonstrate, by connecting the establishment of a Jewish state in Palestine to the religious belief in a messianic redemption of humankind.

RELIGIOUS ZIONISM: AN OBLIGATION TO DIE FOR THE FUTURE One of the key features in religious Zionism is the belief that even nonbelievers are capable of (unknowingly) participating in the process of messianic redemption.48 Consequently, there exists a one-sided relationship between the “righteous” religious Zionist settlers and their nonreligious Zionist neighbors—provided that the secular Zionists do not do anything to prejudice the messiah’s arrival. Augustine provides a remarkably similar argument with his concept of love, as in love of one’s neighbor. Augustine acknowledges that loving thy neighbor may not be out of any immediate moral obligation, but because of one’s desire to be eternally saved. If so, then “love is derivative—derived from hope,”49 hope for salvation. Consequently, the relationship among humans becomes determined by means/ends categories, thus turning any obligation of one’s neighbour into a selfish desire to assist only those who are capable of contributing to one’s salvation. Augustine is clearly aware of this problem: For if we love somebody for his own sake, we enjoy him; if for the sake of something else, we use him. But it seems to me that he should be loved for the sake of something else. The happy life is grounded in what must be loved for its own sake; and the thing which constitutes this happy life is not yet at our disposal, although the hope for it consoles us in the present time.50

This problem is, however, unavoidable since in the city of man, people are unable to treat others as ends unto themselves, but only as means to salvation or enjoyment. The earthly city is constructed on human fallibility and ultimately it is characterized by inhabitants pursuing salvation. Redemption takes precedence and as such, the promises of the future outweigh any possible moral obligations to the present. Both religious Zionism and Christian just war thinking share this way of combining religious belief and political obligation as justifying present activity according to its final teleological goal, although there are some notable differences between the two. Messianic salvation/redemption in the Jewish sense is significantly different from the Christian one. As the Jewish historian Gershom Scholem writes,

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A totally different concept of redemption determines the attitude to Messianism in Judaism and Christianity; what appears to the one as a proud indication of its understanding and a positive achievement of its message is most unequivocally belittled and disputed by the other. Judaism, in all its forms and manifestations, has always maintained a concept of redemption as an event, which takes place publicly, on the stage of history and within the community. It is an occurrence which takes place in the visible world and which cannot be conceived apart from such a visible appearance. In contrast, Christianity conceives of redemption as an event in the spiritual and unseen realm, an event which is reflected in the soul, in the private world of each individual, and which effects an inner transformation which need not correspond to anything outside.51

This difference cannot be underemphasized. However, once salvation becomes the foundation for a sovereign/subject obligation, where the sovereign is spatially bound, this difference becomes increasingly less significant and what becomes important is the problem of having to join religious belief with territorial or spatial politics and the accompanying obligations. In this regard, some of the other key differences between Augustine’s political theory and Zionism are not as important as they would be in other contexts. Neither Augustine’s account of obligation nor his theology are compatible with Judaism, but it should not be surprising that there are some important similarities between Augustine’s thought and religious Zionism. Augustine viewed the Jews with disdain, since he could not accept their rejection of Christ. He thus saw the Jews as a once great people who had fallen considerably. Nevertheless, there are two substantial reasons why it is important to compare and contrast Augustine’s thought on the morality of war with religious Zionism. First, if there is any expectation of a just war tradition or theory, then the basic elements of the just war need to be relevant to nonChristian contexts. There would be a fatal problem in any account of just war thinking if it could not be used outside of its initial Christian boundaries, which is how the tradition is used today. Second, there is an important similarity between Augustine’s thought and religious Zionism that warrants sustained reflection. It is not by chance that Augustine recognizes the obligation to one’s neighbor and the religious Zionists treat their secular Zionist neighbors as means to an end. The use of religious belief to justify temporal and spatial politics creates a series of problems, of which the means/ends approach to moral obligation is one example. In religious Zionism, the means/ends problem is most often formulated according to the ethics of messianic redemption. The originators of religious Zionism, Rabbi Zvi Hirsch Kalischer and Rabbi Yehuda Alkalai joined traditional Jewish thought with modernity. They were not political philosophers but rabbis living in a particular milieu that

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was not favorable to the possibilities of a Jewish political theory. Yet, they both argued that religious belief justified a modern political project of Jewish immigration to Palestine. As the sociologist Chaim Waxman writes about Kalischer, “He was able to speak the language of modernists and to develop and retain close relationships even with those who rejected Orthodoxy.”52 Kalischer was no modern nationalist, but he was, as Hertzberg writes, “particularly aware of it because of his geographic location.”53 Thus, Kalischer’s striking prose in favor of immigrating to Palestine is in stark contrast to the conventional wisdom of his day that assumed the messianic redemption of Israel to occur suddenly. In Seeking Zion (Derishat Tziyon), Kalischer writes, My dear reader! Cast aside the conventional view that the Messiah will suddenly sound a blast on the great trumpet and cause all the inhabitants of the earth to tremble. On the contrary, the Redemption will begin by awakening support among the philanthropists and by gaining the consent of the nations to the gathering of some of the scattered of Israel into the Holy Land.54

Kalischer’s rhetorical skills are clearly visible in this statement that uses both traditional belief with an acceptance of the conditions set by modern political life, but do such conditions involve an obligation to obey and risk one’s life in the process? Interestingly enough, and uncharacteristically of the early religious Zionists, Kalischer in fact makes precisely such a claim in a statement made famous for another reason. Kalischer called for the “establishment of an agricultural cooperative as the economic foundation of settlement and the establishment of an agricultural school in Palestine. . . . ”55 The socialist Zionist Moses Hess adopted both recommendations, and both became reality.56 As a Rabbi in Torun in Poznan,57 far removed physically from life in Palestine, Kalischer was remarkably in tune with what the Zionists would have to face there. In Seeking Zion Kalischer wrote about the logistics of settlement and he “commented on the need to train Jews for a home guard to protect the settlers against Bedouin marauders and to preserve law and order.”58 Furthermore, he wrote that, There are many who will refuse to support the poor of the Holy Land by saying: “Why should we support people who choose idleness, who are lazy and not interested in working, and who prefer to depend upon the Jews of the Diaspora to support them?” To be sure, this is an argument put forth by Satan, for the people of Palestine are students of the Torah, unaccustomed from the time of their youth to physical labour. Most of them came from distant shores, risking their very lives for the privilege of living in the Holy Land. In this country, which is strange to them, how could they go about finding a business or an occupation, when they have never in their lives done anything of this kind? Their eyes can only turn to their philanthropic brethren, so that they can dwell in that Land which is God’s portion on earth.59

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Not only do we read in this quote a reference to a body/soul separation that invokes a spiritual conception of human existence and of the turmoil faced by human life, but there is also a statement about obligation and dying. The body/soul issue here is not the same conception of the human subject as understood by Christian theologians; the significance is only that an explicitly religious understanding of human life is invoked in this blatantly political statement. The most significant part of this quote is when Kalischer points out how those Jews who have gone to settle in Palestine risk their lives in the process. He continues to say, “Why do the people of Italy and of other countries sacrifice their lives for the land of their fathers, while we, like men bereft of strength and courage, do nothing?”60 He sarcastically asks, “Are we inferior to all other peoples, who have no regard for life and fortune as compared with the love of their land and nation?”61 And he shouts, “We should be ashamed of ourselves! All the other peoples have striven only for the sake of their national honour; how much more should we exert ourselves, for our duty is to labour not only for the glory of our ancestors but for the glory of God who chose Zion!”62 It appears that for Kalischer the obligation to risk dying for the sovereign is a sign of strength, independence, courage, and, since going to Palestine is a messianic project, redemption as well. Rabbi Alkalai also argued that the arrival of the messiah is something that takes place over time, and not in an instantaneous moment of a divine miracle. Consequently, settling in Palestine in order to build a Jewish state was something that could contribute to Jewish redemption, as opposed to the traditional Jewish view that it is the arrival of the messiah that will bring about a return to the Land of Israel. Alkalai, unlike Kalischer, argued against any rebellion and felt that the other nations would assist the Jews in the reestablishment of a Jewish state in Palestine. Alkalai even used religious texts (from the Jewish Bible, the Talmud, and the Midrash) to support this view.63 For both Alkalai and Kalischer, the religious reasons for Zionism were messianic, which is possibly the closest thing to a Jewish version of salvation, and since the salvation promised by Christ is influenced by the Jewish concept of messianism this similarity is expected. The messianic ideal is not something born out of happiness.64 It promises an ideal future. If the present were perfect, there would be no need for believing in the messiah. Zionism also came out of such a context.65 Zionists understood the Jewish condition in Europe as a continuation of the disappointing and unfortunate condition of Jewish life after the Destruction of the Second Temple as well as the continuing erosion of Jewish rights during the last two hundred years of the Second Temple period. “As with the declining fortunes of Israel, the notion developed of an eschatological change for the better.”66 This statement, written about the emergence of the messianic idea in Jewish history, might as well be said about Zionism. Both Augustine and the religious Zionists start from a

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premise that takes for granted the imperfect conditions of life on earth. The obligation to obey the sovereign is done for the sake of a better future, understood either in individual Christian terms or collective Jewish terms. Augustine and the religious Zionists had to find a way to link religious salvation with political life. Thus, spatial concerns influence theological interpretations. Augustine’s answer to this problem is based on his belief in individual salvation, whereas the religious Zionists argued for collective salvation. To this end Augustine’s account of human agency is severely restricted to the final resting place of the individual’s soul, whereas the religious Zionists accorded human agency the possibility to improve one’s life and the lives of others on earth. It is because eternal happiness is impossible on earth that Augustine looks elsewhere for the possibilities of redemption. Human behavior alone cannot alter the fact of the deplorable condition of human life in the city of man. Religious Zionist accounts start from the premise that it is possible to alter the conditions of life on earth. They claim that the current state of Jewish existence, premessiah and in exile, if not deplorable is close to it, and it is possible through human agency to improve this condition in such a way that salvation becomes possible on earth, with the arrival of the messiah. Consequently, while the city is not a place of good, it can be a place for good. Religious Zionists see political activity within a religious eschatology, and thus political obligations fit into this eschatology of messianic arrival. Yet, behind these rather significant differences is this problem of how to bring religious faith in line with spatial political concerns, bound not just by space but by time as well.

RELIGIOUS ZIONISM AND MILITARISM In religious Zionism we see some of the issues that engaged Augustine and Aquinas play out in practice, albeit in a specifically Jewish way; this is especially true in the politics of the religious Zionism of Rabbi Abraham Kook. The majority of the early Zionists were not religious in any conventional sense of the word, and thus Rabbi Kalischer’s and Rabbi Alkalai’s messianic Zionism is an important precursor to the religious Zionism of Rabbi Kook. Rabbi Abraham Kook was the first Chief Rabbi of Palestine, and his son, Rabbi Zvi Yehuda Kook (1891–1982), became the religious leader of the Gush Emunim movement.67 Abraham Kook argued that nonorthodox Jews should not be discriminated against by the religious because they too are a part in the messianic project of Zionism, even if they do not believe it. His faith in an otherwise secular Zionist project is of great importance since it ascribes to the nonbelieving Zionists a role of utility; they are not cared for because of who they are, but because of what they do—a problem that Arendt

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notes in Augustine’s moral philosophy about the relationship with others.68 Kook wrote on many issues,69 but of particular interest here is his support of the Brit Habiryonim70 and his belief in a Zionist eschatology. The Biryonim were a small extremist group of activists led by Achimier, a former socialist and later fascist sympathiser who saw Mussolini to be “the greatest political genius of the century.”71 Achimier believed that actions were not as important as the purpose behind the action, thus sanctioning murder (even assassinations) if the purpose was right. Originally, however, the Biryonim were a faction of the Jewish Zealots who were involved in the Jewish War/Revolt against the Romans in the first century C.E., before the destruction of the Second Temple. The original Biryonim were a violent group. Their devotion to Judaism was so complete that they refused to compromise for less than total religious and political autonomy. Given the huge power of the Roman Empire and its complete hegemony in the East, their attitude led to national disaster. The Zealots conducted a brutal terror campaign against both the Romans and moderate Jews, and were instrumental in heightening the conflict to a point of no return. The tragic destruction of the Temple was the beginning of the process that led to a two-thousand-year national exile. It was this destructive role in the events of the Great Revolt that gave the Biryonim and the Zealots in general, a negative name in Jewish tradition and Halakhic discourse.72

In addition to Achimier, Micha Berdichevsky, a militant Zionist nationalist and former Yeshiva student,73 also privileged the Biryonim in his reading of Jewish history, as did Yaakov Cahan, who “won himself a place in the evolving national ethos by virtue of a single poem, Ha-Biryonim.”74 Cahan chose the term Biryonim instead of Zealots on purpose, even though and in spite of its pejorative connotations in Jewish thought. Achimier also idolized the Sikarii.75 The Sikarii, who are sometimes referred to as the Zealots,76 were a group of pious Jews who, led by Eleazar ben Yair, were the famous Jewish sect that made the last stand at Massada at the end of the Jewish War against the Romans, and instead of surrendering opted for mass suicide. The original Sikarii were Jewish assassins active at the beginning of the Jewish Revolt who would conceal a short curved knife under their clothes and, while blending in with visiting pilgrims in the streets of Jerusalem would kill leading political figures.77 Furthermore, according to Josephus, the Sikarii were involved in violent acts against fellow Jews willing to surrender to Rome.78 These themes are all visible in Achimier’s political thought, for as Laqueur writes, “In Achimier’s political thought . . . death and sacrifice are cardinal motifs, recurring with monotonous regularity.”79 Achimier’s Zionist Biryonim were accused of being involved in the murder of Chaim Arlosoroff, and Achimier was subsequently arrested by the British.80

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Rabbi Kook defended the Biryonim. His defense of them became quite a controversy among religious Zionists, in part since Judaism strongly opposes suicide, something the Biryonim defended.81 Kook supported, or at least defended, a group that had decided to affiliate themselves by name to a group of Jewish extremists that were involved in mass suicide, attacks against other Jews, and are linked in Jewish thought to the destruction of the Second Temple. The fact that Kook did not dismiss and condemn the Biryonim outright but defended them is especially significant, since Kook was going against Halakhic thought by sanctioning violence, death, and suicide in pursuit of the Zionist project. Kook was also ignoring the Talmud’s Three Oaths, “which admonished Jews to avoid provoking government authorities at all costs,” and originated in thinking about the role of the Jewish Zealots in the Jewish Revolt, and the subsequent destruction of the Temple and exile.82 Kook’s support of the Biryonim is especially provocative because of this traditional Jewish understanding of them as being directly affiliated with the destruction of the Second Temple. The Zionists who idealized this band of zealots perverted not only the traditional Jewish understanding of political participation insofar as violence and rebellion is concerned, if not more generally, but also understanding about the destruction of the Second Temple. For the Zionist Biryonim “the struggle itself was considered an expression of spiritual strength, vitality, and the superiority of those who fight over those who surrender.” As Cahan wrote in his poem, Ha-Biryonim: We arose, returned, we, the Biryonim! We came to redeem our oppressed land— With a strong hand, we demand our right! In blood and fire did Judea fall. In blood and fire shall Judea rise.83

Kook was also an ardent supporter of the “Jewish efforts at self-defence” in the Yishuv.84 George Wilkes writes, Kook’s forceful support for Jewish efforts at self-defence, and his fulsome acceptance of the role of the executive in military affairs (the king as against the Sanhedrin, or the Israeli government rather than the rabbinate or the Knesset), also gave his students and followers a lasting and influential association with the religious chaplaincy of the Israeli Defence Forces.85

Kook’s support here is in favor of a sovereign entity outside of the religious leadership in relation to matters of national defense. When it comes to individuals, however, Kook’s support was more ambiguous. Aviezer Ravitzky writes,

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[Kook] found it difficult to apply to the pioneers, in practice, standards in any way different from those applied by his colleagues, the ultra-orthodox rabbis. To mention one well-known example: in 1914 Rabbi Kook was asked to eulogize members of the Ha-Shomer militia who had been killed in the course of duty. He wrestled mightily with the halakhic question of whether it would be proper to do so for people who had deliberately abandoned the ways of the Torah! When at last he was able to come up with formal grounds for leniency on this question, he still judged them with terrifying harshness, according to their overt behaviour and pronouncements rather than any presumed hidden motivations. As a passionate philosopher of history, Kook could see the freethinking pioneers as unwitting penitents, but as a halakhic scholar, acting within history, he was fiercely opposed to their ‘crude, contemptible heresy’ and deliberate transgressions. . . . ”86

Kook’s philosophical historical reasoning was that Zionism, of any kind, is a part of the project of redemption by hastening the arrival of the messiah. Consequently, it is important to recognize the obligations required in ensuring this messianic process, even if such obligations include violence and, to a certain degree, irrelevant of whether the actor or agent involved was a nationally sanctioned military executive, or an individual (secular) soldier. Religious Zionism also frames political obligation as a question of obedience since to disobey would be to delay or possibly even risk the arrival of the messiah. Ascribing Zionism a religious messianic role, as Kook and his followers do, is not necessarily an outlandish ideal, insofar as the messianic model is concerned. As R. J. Werblowsky writes, The fact that the birth of the State of Israel took place in the aftermath of a tragedy which even in Jewish history is unparalleled, the cold-blooded murder by the Nazis and their accomplices of six million Jews, and amid toil, sweat and heroic struggle for survival, seemed to make actual modern history conform to the almost archetypal notion . . . of a double-faced messianism composed of catastrophe on the one hand and redemption on the other.87

Kook took the events of Jewish settlement in Palestine as a part of the twofold messianic time of return and redemption. “The return to Zion and the Ingathering of the Exiles would be a redemptive consummation because it seemed beyond the range of natural possibilities and hence in no way less miraculous and supernatural than the conquest of sin and evil and the realization of complete communion with God.”88 Such is the image of the messianic age that the religious Zionist believed in, and saw happening around them, albeit, being done for the most part by the secular. Kook demonstrates a significant shift in using religious foundations for apparently secularized political actions. Unlike the medieval Christian thought

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that places a direct link from God to the obligation to die for the sovereign, Kook provides an updated version of this obligation that still relies on belief in God to warrant an obligation to fight and risk death in the name of the sovereign, but supplements this connection with a greater emphasis on human actions. Jewish thought has always placed a greater emphasis on life than on death, and the afterlife is a vague concept in Judaism, unlike the concrete Heaven/Hell conception so important in Christianity. He reads the Zionist communities in Palestine as a place for good, albeit neither a perfect good nor the final good. Kook’s belief in Zionism provide a strong foothold for the Jewish “fundamentalism” that came later, and that (as is characteristic of much contemporary fundamentalist politics) mixes modernity with extreme readings of traditional values.89 The fact that many fundamentalist Zionist Jews took to violence is indicative of how religious obligations can, with relative ease, provide political obligations that involve risking one’s life.90

RELIGION, LAND, AND BEING OBLIGED TO DIE There are four crucial yet questionable claims made that characterize the argument for the obligation to die because of salvation, and when taken together emphasize the need for a way to connect religious belief with territorially based politics. First, everybody must obey their superiors; second, in line with the traditional just war argument, the ostensible purpose of any war is to achieve peace; third, the soul and body are separate; and fourth, although articulated by Aquinas and not Augustine, that everything exists according to a specific end. In the case of the first claim, it does not make much sense to argue that one must obey one’s superiors simply because of an established organizational hierarchy. Those living since second half of the twentieth century should be particularly aware of this claim due to the Nuremburg Trials at the end of the Second World War and the trial of Adolf Eichmann in Jerusalem in 1961/62.91 Insofar as the second claim is concerned, fighting for salvation is an especially problematic claim to make since not only does it run counter to the idea for fighting in order for there to be peace (since the person who obeyed to die will be dead, and will not live to witness this peace that he fought for), but it tends to function as a justification for demanding the unjustifiable. In the case of body/soul separation, accepting Augustine’s claim that wars are fought in order for there to be peace also means accepting that the peace which the body can enjoy is not as important as the peace of the soul, which exists only in death. Consequently, one must believe that what happens to the body is not as important as what happens to the soul. As such, doubt remains

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as to the actual importance of the life enjoyed by the body. If this life is only transitory, does it really matter what one does, especially if one can atone for the actions of the body by confessing one’s sins, a strategy established by Augustine in his Confessions. If the direction of anybody’s life is directed toward an eternal life that one must accept by faith, how is it possible to prioritize moral choices made that relate to life on earth? In other words, there needs to be a mechanism that links actions that happen on earth with what happens to the soul. It is life in the body that determines what will happen to the soul in the afterlife. What the body does needs to affect the soul. Consequently, the soul is nothing without the body even though the soul is presumed to be more important than the body. As such, the importance of human actions are significantly reduced by concern over one’s own spiritual immortality instead of the ostensibly more important political and moral choices that characterize human socio-political life. Finally, both Augustine’s claims and especially Aquinas’ teleological argument mean that ultimately it is the ends that justify the means. This moral argument finds many different manifestations, including the Catholic doctrine of double effect. The doctrine of double effect is supposed to resolve this moral problem by claiming that good intentions can diminish negative effects, which I take to be a morally dubious argument. In general, means/ends moral arguments are questionable since the means can always potentially overwhelm the ends, the ends might not be worth the means, and how is it possible to determine which means are appropriate for the desired ends considering the possibility of unintended consequences. Just war theory does address these problems, notably in the tenet of proportionality that requires the means of war to be proportionate to the desired end. But this tenet does not resolve the tension for if the end desired relates in some way to individual salvation it is difficult to know when and how to draw the line at what is proportionate and what is not. In the modern literature on just war, this problem ultimately involves a judgement call as to whether or not the various aspects of just war theory can maintain a suitable balance between means and ends, but as Michael Walzer demonstrates with his supreme emergency clause,92 this question is always an open issue contingent in no small measure on the issues at stake in the war being fought. In general, however, the overall claim for political obligation based on religious salvation may explain why any particular individual will risk dying, but it does not explain an obligation to die for the sovereign, for the state, or as the case may be, for the benefit of having a state. Salvation may explain individual martyrdom for the grace of God, but it is significantly harder for religion to justify dying for anything of a temporal nature, especially if the faith is geared toward redemption and eternal salvation. Insofar as Augustine

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is concerned, it is surely an odd formula that demands one’s obedience to the point of death for the sake of a Fallen community; and for Aquinas, if the city is a place of good, why would one want to die not for the city but for individual salvation? Nietzsche was possibly the first to be enraged by these perverse arguments that privilege sin and death and place them on equal if not superior footing to the value of life itself.93 To die for the sake of salvation means privileging death over life, for it is in death that a truly perfect happiness can be realized. This logic forms the basis for religious martyrdom, and is notoriously put to the test in the case of Muslim suicide bombers, but this is a case where one is obligated to kill oneself. Going to war involves an obligation to risk one’s life; but the obligation to die is not an obligation to commit suicide—it is to risk dying, and neither Augustine nor Aquinas sanctioned suicide.94 Insofar as war is concerned, to use religious beliefs to make a claim for obligation involves sacrificing not so much one’s actual life (although that clearly is a part of it) but sacrificing one’s worth as a human being. This lessening is done by emphasizing the soul instead of the body, even though the future of the soul is contingent on what the body does. War is, of course, a human activity, which takes place on earth. Consequently, if salvation is to serve as the reason for the obligation justifying the subject’s dying for the sovereign by going to war, there needs to be some way to link the religious belief of infinite salvation with a finite political life on earth. If religious faith is the justifying factor for the obligation to die, this begs the question of what happens in an unjust state where either religion does not influence political obligation or the wrong religion influences political obligation? Vitoria noted this problem when he writes that “neither Christian sovereigns nor the church may deprive non-Christians of either their kingship or power on the grounds of their unbelief, unless they have committed some other injustice.”95 Vitoria, also claims that even the laws of a tyrant must be obeyed,96 thus it appears that it is possible for individuals to be obliged into war by non-Christian or non-just rulers. The matter of this individual’s salvation would then depend on his faith, and in this way the Christian theologians are able to bypass the problem of whether or not only those obliged in a Christian commonwealth may be justifiably obliged to risk their lives in war. The crux of the matter, however, is that for salvation to function as an effective argument for an obligation to obey the sovereign and go to war, it needs to justify this obligation in terms of the value of the earthly ground being fought for. Nietzsche recognized this problem when he attacked the Church for its hypocritical attempts to justify its own temporal authority in the name of God.97 Christian theologians seemed to be aware of this problem. For example, Vitoria condemned a religious war for God’s glory, although Suarez legitimates the

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right of the state to forcibly convert its own citizens.98 However, Augustine and Aquinas allow a war intended to right a wrong, and it is conceivable that a wrong could involve some sin against God. In such cases where wars are fought for exclusively religious concerns, the war is not being fought in Heaven, but on earth, in a particular place by particular people at a particular time. Therefore, there has to be some way to bring God’s meaning to the locale that is fighting, either in order to justify an obligation or to justify the war. In other words, for the salvation argument to work it needs to answer the following questions: How is [this] territory spiritual? How is this land important for religious belief? War is made possible by the conditions of a politics that prioritizes property or land and the borders that give it a particular meaning. Consequently, the transcendent element of an obligation based on salvation needs to understand the city, state, or community as a part of this transcendental world. In order to resolve this tension both Augustine and Aquinas argue, in different ways, that the city or state is a part of God’s creation, although Aquinas’ favorable account of the city is a more explicit attempt at resolving this tension. This tension between religious belief and territorial politics is especially recognizable in religious Zionism that emphasizes an ideological link to the Holy Land, and problematized in the spiritual Zionism of Martin Buber. THE PROBLEMS OF A MESSIANIC TERRITORIAL POLITICS A reoccurring motif in religious Zionism is the belief that by coming to settle in Palestine the Jews are not just participating in a messianic redemption, but are also contributing to the greater humanity of the world and bringing about world peace. Note for example the following excerpt from one of Rabbi Kook’s writings titled, The War: All civilizations of the world will be renewed by the renascence of our spirit. All quarrels will be resolved, and our revival will cause all life to become luminous with the joy of fresh birth. All religions will don new and precious raiment, casting off whatever is soiled, abominable, and unclean; they will unite in imbibing the dew of the Holy Lights, that were made ready for all mankind at the beginning of time in the well of Israel. The active power of Abraham’s blessing to all the peoples of the world will become manifest, and it will serve as the basis of our renewed creativity in Eretz Israel.99

Kook’s views here, that the Jews returning to the Land of Israel are involved in an process of messianic redemption for all of humankind, is a powerful justifying force in Zionism, and is found throughout Zionist thought. However,

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while Kook links redemption to a discriminatory and violent Zionism requiring a need to defend and fight those who oppose it, it is also possible to come to a remarkably different conclusion from similar premises. There was a Zionist rabbi who argued against violent means for the fulfilment of Zionism. Rabbi Yitzhak Ya’akov Reines, the founder of the Mizrahi movement, felt that Zionism was an important way for the Jews to exit their life in exile in order to improve themselves. He rejected violence because “the Jewish people has an ethico-religious objective” that is opposed to the use of violence.100 In this vein, one of the religious arguments used to argue against Zionism is the Three Oaths. The Three Oaths come from “a midrashic reading of three passages in the Songs of Songs (2:7, 3:5, and 8:4) where the same (or, in the case of the third verse, almost the same) phrase is repeated.”101 According to the Midrash, the phrase “I adjure you, O daughters of Jerusalem . . . that you waken not, nor excite love till it pleases [to come to itself]” is a reference to three oaths commanded by God: 1. That the nation not ascend “on the wall” (bakhomah: interpreted by Rashi to mean ascending to the land of Israel by force); 2. That it not rebel against the nations of the world; 3. That it not attempt to “force the End” by attempting to bring the Messiah before the proper time.102 According to Talmud, the second oath is a reference to the possible “confrontation that might occur should the Jews attempt to return en mass to their homeland.”103 “Alkalai and Kalischer said that agreement by the gentile inhabitants would enable a return without violating this oath,”104 and Kook seems to have followed their train of thought since it follows that if the gentile inhabitants of Palestine refuse the “return” of the Jews, then it is possible that they are violating a higher commandment or obligation than that of the Three Oaths. Religious Zionism is possibly the most significant example of Jewish theology being applied to the politics of sovereign statehood. It was this application of religion to politics that engrossed Augustine and Aquinas, in large part because of the relationship between the Christian Church and the state (or more precisely, for Augustine the Roman Empire, and Aquinas the medieval city-states). This same problem of reconciling theology, which is spiritual and transcendental in nature, with political life, which is generally neither, is what characterizes religious Zionism. Yet, in stark contrast to the sin and salvation politics of Augustine and Aquinas, and the militant Biblical or Religious Zionism, Martin Buber provides a profoundly different perception about the possibilities for spiritualism, politics, and morality in an imperfect world.

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As Paul Mendes-Flohr writes about Buber’s thought, “Paradoxically, the real ‘corrupting’ world provides the only possibility for the actualization of moral principles.”105 The return of the Jews to Palestine was not just a fulfilment of a messianic obligation, but was also romanticized as the Jews returning to their Oriental origins, from a limited place bound by ontological stagnation to a transcendental and promising place.106 Buber’s Zionism always involved a combination of transcendental spiritualism and messianic opportunity, framed within a strong ethical worldview articulated most famously by the “I and Thou” relationship that frames human relations in a spiritual and innately ethical way.107 Buber saw the Zionist project as something with the potential to better humankind. He writes that the Jewish tradition, . . . was spectacular and decisive for the history of mankind in that it confronted the new people with a task they could carry out only as a people, namely to establish in Canaan a model and “just” community. Later on, the “prophets”—a calling without any historical precedent—interpreted this task as obliging the community to send streams of social and political justice throughout the world. Thereby the most productive and paradoxical of all human ideas, Messianism, was offered to humanity. It placed the people of Israel in the center of an activity leading towards the advent of the Kingdom of God on earth . . .108

Buber then links this Jewish offering as the condition of possibility for the politics of Cromwell and Lincoln, among others. The Jews have a unique role in history, Buber argues, to bring about a true model of justice. Speaking in defense of Zionism Buber argues that, “The importance of these attempts surpasses the frontiers of Palestine as well as of Judaism. Given the change of unhampered development, these vital social attempts will show the world the possibility of basic social justice upon voluntary action.”109 Consequently, he was aghast at the assassination of UN envoy Count Bernadotte on September 17, 1948, by (most likely) members of the Stern Gang (also know as Lehi). For Buber, “Independence of one’s own must not be gained at the expense of another’s independence. Jewish settlement must oust no Arab peasant, Jewish immigration must not cause the political status of the present inhabitants to deteriorate, and must continue to ameliorate their economic condition.”110 Buber was a member of Ichud, a Zionist peace movement in Palestine led by Judah Magnes of Hebrew University, that called for a binational state and at one point called for restrictions on Jewish immigration into Palestine in order to maintain demographic harmony with the Arab Palestinian population. Buber’s understanding of Zionism involves an obligation to the Zionist cause/project, but not at the expense of another people. Unlike virtually all of the other Zionists, Buber was no nationalist in the conventional sense, and he was concerned about what would happen to the Jewish people should they

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embark on a project of national self-determination: “I do not know anything about a ‘Jewish state with canons, flags, and military decorations,’ not even as a dream.”111 Buber’s philosophical and spiritual outlook made the division between politics and ethics, means and ends, nonsensical. “What is wrong for the individual cannot be right for the community.”112 For Buber, the prospect of a messianic arrival, tied to the Zionist mission that would project a model of justice to the world, did not include any obligations that involved violence. Buber’s messianic Zionism illustrates the difficulty of establishing what is essentially an obligation tied to a place when the obligation is supposedly based on transcendental belief. Buber’s conception of the political aspect of Zionism is far removed from the hegemonic concept of the modern sovereign nation-state. He does not see land as being indivisible, and instead treats the Zionist enterprise as trying to demonstrate the possibility of bringing an improvement on human justice. The Jews cannot remain in Europe, they need a place to live as Jews, but they cannot do so at the expense of another people. The only way out of this seeming paradox is to reject the assumptions that make it paradoxical in the first place, and instead, as Buber does, try to posit a transcendental philosophy of ethics and politics that renders means/ends distinctions nonsensical, since both are equally important, and thus view the community and the process of building a community as both equally important ethical and spiritual endeavours. Buber’s thinking may be idealistic, but it is no more idealistic than Zionism was in the first place, nor is it any more idealistic than many other constructions of politics that exist today, that are taken for granted, but are the creation of imaginative minds. Whereas for Augustine, Aquinas, and I would suggest, Kook, politics can be made to serve theological design, for Buber politics and theology are both spiritual enterprises. For Buber religious faith informs human socio-political relations without requiring that these relations retain an ontological basis. His I/Thou argument is an illustration of this kind of relationship. The I/Thou is a mutual relationship whereas each human enters the world by recognizing the other and by seeing others as spiritual beings. “I become through my relation to the Thou; as I become I, I say Thou.”113 The I/Thou relation is completely transcendental: If I face a human being as my Thou, and say the primary word I-Thou to him, he is not a thing among things, and does not consist of things. Thus human being is no He or She, bounded from every other He and She, a specific point in space and time within the net of the world; nor is he a nature able to be experienced and described, a loose bundle of named qualities. But with no neighbour, and whole in himself, he is Thou and fills the heavens.114

Consequently, for Buber politics as the relations between I and Thou cannot take land as a basis for politics, or for that matter most spatially based poli-

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tics. Buber demonstrates, much like Emmanuel Lévinas does, that it is possible to think of politics as a spiritual enterprise based on the idea that to see another human is to become human and to participate in a spiritual endeavor called life.115 The ability to join religious belief with a spatial political project is difficult. Augustine’s response to this problem is to emphasize the soul and individual salvation. Aquinas’ response is to recognize human obligation as a virtue and treat the city as a place for good. The religious Zionists’ response is to privilege the role of the Zionist project in the process of messianic redemption, and like Aquinas, treats the state as a place for good. However, in each of these responses lies the same difficulty, that religious faith is presumed to be ultimately concerned not with territorial life, but with salvation (for Augustine and Aquinas) or universal redemption and peace brought about by the arrival of the messiah (for the religious Zionists), or some other spiritual ethic. Territorial politics are treated as means to an end that is constantly immanent but never present. The temporal politics of salvation are about something that will come, not about something that is here, while political life in any given territorially based community is about human life, not human death or some perpetually immanent arrival. For Buber, these worldviews would make no sense. This territorial or spatial-connection problem is not unknown in the history of political thought as the following example of two disparate political philosophers reveals. The Enlightenment philosopher Moses Mendelssohn confronts this issue in its religious terms when he writes that, “One confuses ideas if one opposes his temporal welfare to his eternal felicity,” and that it is a delusional of people to think that, “it is one thing to care for their temporal, and another to care for their eternal well-being, and it is possible to preserve one while neglecting the other.”116 Many years before Mendelssohn, Machiavelli was aware of the related issue of bridging what one wants to happen with the politics of what is happening. Machiavelli’s understanding of politics is, contrary to conventional understanding, not necessarily about being deceitful, lying, mischievous, and conniving. Rather, Machiavelli rightfully understands political life as contingent on events, and thus any successful political actor will be willing to make difficult choices that characterize the exigencies of politics based on the creation and maintenance of a successful (that is, lasting) polity.117 Furthermore, Machiavelli’s political outlook implies that however important religious belief is, it is not sufficient for the ordering of a successful political order because if salvation or some other type of redemption is what sets up the conditions for politics, the possibility for politics is in fact removed. It is ironic that of all people, the supposedly scheming Machiavelli recognizes the most moral of all political problems, that of recognizing the need for

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politics. In a sense, this is precisely what the religious Zionists ignore, and what the Christian politics of Augustine and Aquinas neglect in their emphasis on the importance of following orders and of individual salvation. Such accounts are absolutist because the only issue that matters is ultimately the success of individual salvation or messianic redemption. However, absolutism removes the possibility for choice and thus for politics; since all choices are already made according to an absolutist framework, there can therefore be no debate and consequently there is no politics. The same is true for the religious messianism of the religious Zionists, for whom any action counter to the arrival of the messiah is prohibited and thus all choices are already determined according to a strict interpretation and reading of what is ordered for the messianic arrival. Buber’s spiritual politics is spiritual and messianic, but profoundly different. According to Buber’s spiritual ethic any territorial ground that Zionism could have would have to be unknowable or “mysterious.” The Land of Israel is important, but not because the territory or land is tied to the arrival of the messiah, but because of the spiritual process in the Jewish construction of a Jewish community in Palestine. Consequently, while redemption continues to play an important part, it is not an absolute value for which everything must be subordinated to.118 It is a responsibility to the unknowable that concerns Buber. Buber writes, “For Judaism, God is . . . neither something conceived by pure reason but emanating from the immediacy of existence as such, the mystery of immediacy which religious man steadfastly faces and nonreligious man evades.”119 For Buber, political obligations to Zionism cannot escape this characteristic of Judaism and of the mystery of God. Consequently, unlike the religious politics of redemption and/or messianism, what matters is not what could be, but what is, the uncertainty or mystery that the religious person faces in his or her daily life.

CONCLUSION In this and in previous chapters, I have argued that the obligation to die traditionally follows from a series of claims about how the community or state is valued and of how the political identity of the obliged fits into justifications for the obligation. In the classical world, obligations were presumed to be contained within the definition of one’s identity as a citizen, slave, woman, and so on. Only citizens could presumably be faced with an obligation to die. In the medieval world this changed, as obligation came to be an assumed requirement of being a subject of the king or other authority figure. With Hegel, the idea of the citizen returns, although unlike Aristotle, Hegel does not take

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the obligation to die to be a given. Rather it is important to explain how the individual self-interested bourgeois citizen should take on this obligation. I have also shown how for Aristotle, the obligation to die can be argued either according to the values of citizenship and of how life in the city enables the citizen to pursue the good life, or that it is based on the selfish value of desiring greatness and, consequently, in being remembered. Subsequently, and following on the former of these two arguments, I demonstrated Aquinas’ account of the obligation to die to be based on the recognition that the political community is for the benefit of human life and is made possible according to the necessity of obeying the proper authorities that serve in a world made possible by God. I also explained how Hegel modernizes this account of communal obligation by including an account of the autonomous individual, and the individual’s connection to the common life and the ethical character of the modern state. I questioned the strength of these arguments due, in part, to the risk the common good/common life arguments pose to the importance of human individuality and human diversity, and because of the tendency in both arguments to ignore or marginalize the importance of difference for politics to take place. In this chapter, I examined the religious argument for the political obligation to die, as argued by Saint Augustine and by Saint Aquinas respectively. While they make different arguments, they emphasize how individual salvation makes political obligation an imperative that takes precedence over any (selfish) desires to remain alive and enjoy the material life as opposed to the spiritual life in heaven. Whereas Augustine is quite clear in this regard, Aquinas is less so but makes the logical yet unconvincing transition that links the value of salvation to life in the state which also has a normative value inherent to itself. The Augustinian formula is odd in its emphasis on death and on the importance of being ready to accept dying if so ordered by the rulers of a Fallen community. Moreover, the religious argument is inconclusive since it removes the morality involved in the political obligation to die. Being prepared to die is a selfless act if taken for the benefit of others, and in the process it becomes a moral act. Augustine, however, makes it a selfish act by claiming that one should accept this obligation in order to increase the odds of being saved. Being selfish for the sake of the afterlife is not substantially different than being selfish for the sake of life on Earth. The individualistic basis of salvation means that ultimately there can be no altruistic motives for the obligation to die since the concern is about one’s own soul. The Jewish version of the religious obligation to die does not share this problem since for Jews salvation is not an individual but a collective affair. However, the problem with the Jewish religious argument is that in emphasizing messianic redemption,

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the ends take over from the means and any action can be justified by reference to what could happen. In this regard, the problem is how religious belief is transferred into justifiable political action, which is where Aquinas’ argument is at its oddest. Aquinas’ argument is problematic since, in addition to the issue of how salvation functions as the foundation for political obligation, it makes little sense for an obligation to die for the sake of the soul and not the city, which Aquinas recognizes to serve a normative purpose for humankind’s betterment. The emphasis on salvation also implies and involves a hierarchy of authority so that those being “obliged” are not really given any choice, but are required to obey, just as a child is supposed to obey his or her parents. Obedience, in either the religious account or the common good version, precludes any real moral responsibility, and makes it desperately easy to claim that one is “just following orders,” that one is but a “cog” in a bureaucratic machine, and that any individual act of disobedience would be futile because if “I” did not do X, somebody else would. Salvation can mitigate these moral problems with its eschatology of redemption, but the problem would remain that if the political world exists solely on obedience, there would be no morality, and there might not even be any politics. In such a condition there certainly could not be any justifiable obligation to die. The paradox, however, is that the state requires certain levels of obedience, in much the same way that the religious institutions did. As Hannah Arendt, writes, “Obedience is a political virtue of the first order, and without it no body politic could survive.”120 However, she also claims that, “The only domain where the word [obedience] could possibly apply to adults who are not slaves is the domain of religion, in which people say that they obey the word or the command of God because the relationship between God and man can rightly be seen in terms similar to the relation between adult and child.”121 In this chapter I also compared and contrasted the religious accounts of Augustine, Aquinas, and the principal religious Zionists. While there are significant theological and religious differences between Christian just war theorists and the Jewish religious Zionists, there are nevertheless some important similarities that are indicative of the problems involved in trying to use theology and religious faith to order a temporal and territorial/spatial politics. The most significant of these problems is the issue of basing political obligations on what may happen and of consequently devaluing human life by seeing people as means to an end, and instead privilege an immanent politics of messianic faith or individual salvation. Yet, I also demonstrated by way of Martin Buber how faith can provide a drastically different account of political obligation. Buber’s Zionism was in many ways unique due to his religious faith, his politics, and his profoundly ethical philosophy. For Buber a political life has to respect the mystery of

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God’s creation. Politics is, consequently, a spiritual enterprise conducted by humans that is based on the idea that to see another human being is to become a human. There is, in this version of politics, no need for the common fixation on territoriality as the precondition for political life, even if territory is important. Zionism, for Buber, is not about the national aspirations of a particular group, but this group’s role in the betterment of humanity. What is important here, and what I will return to by way of Buber’s fellow Zionist Hannah Arendt, is the importance of framing politics in such a way that the idea of a political obligation becomes justified not in relation to national territory, but in relation to the human condition of being one among many. Faith is, as Buber knew, important, but it is not beyond reproach in the maintenance of political life or when people’s lives are at stake, especially since the soul is nothing without the body and so it should be very important what one does to the body. Eventually, historically speaking, one aspect of the religious/political issue was addressed as religion and politics became increasingly treated as separate realms. It is precisely this shift between church and state that leads the obligation to die for the sovereign to be reframed away from religious belief and into secularized consent theory, which is the focus of the next chapter.

NOTES 1. Hannah Arendt, Love and Saint Augustine, ed. Joanna Vecchiarelli Scott and Judith Chelius Stark (Chicago and London: The University of Chicago Press, 1992), 109. 2. Christianity and Revolution in, Hannah Arendt, Essays in Understanding 1930–1954, ed. Jerome Kohn (New York: Schocken Books, 1994), 155. 3. Geoffrey B. Levey, “Judaism and the Obligation to Die for the State,” in Law, Politics, and Morality in Judaism, ed. Michael Walzer, 182–208 (Princeton and Oxford: Princeton University Press, 2006); Michael Walzer, Obligations: Essays on Disobedience, War and Citizenship (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1970). Walzer’s argument is examined in chapter 6. Levey argues that in Jewish thought this obligation, and others, exist as legal ones, insofar as political obligations in Judaism are defined by the concept of mitzvot or commandments. 4. George Kateb, The Inner Ocean: Individualism and Democratic Culture (Ithaca, N.Y.; London: Cornell University Press, 1992); Cheyney Ryan, “The State and War Making,” in For and against the State: New Philosophical Readings. It is worth mentioning at this point that both of these articles are, more so than Walzer’s, related to the problem of conscription and are primarily concerned with conscription in the United States. However, being conscripted does not necessarily refer to the obligation to die, since one can be conscripted into a variety of roles, many of which have little to do with being placed in harm’s way on the battlefield.

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5. One particularly interesting example in this regard is the Jewish symbol that became the center of the Israeli flag, the Star or Shield of David. The origins of this six pointed star as the symbol of Judaism are vague, but one link is to the messianic movement of the false messiah Sabbatai Zevi—which considering the disastrous end of this seventeenth century messianic movement (Sabbatai, who had been imprisoned for his activities was told that he could either convert to Islam or be executed; he converted to Islam and went from being Rabbi Sabbatai Zevi to Mehemet Effendi) is rather shocking. For a brief explanation of this episode in Jewish history see, R. J. Zwi Werblowsky, “Messianism in Jewish History,” in Jewish Society throughout the Ages, ed. H. H. BenSasson and S. Ettenger, 30–45 (London: Vallentine, Mitchell, 1969), 41–43. For a history of the Star of David see “The Star of David: History of a Symbol” in, Gershom Scholem, The Messianic Idea in Judaism and Other Essays on Jewish Spirituality (London: George Allen & Unwin Ltd, 1971), 257–81, see pp 72–73 in particular. 6. Alessandro Passerin d’Entrèves, The Medieval Contribution to Political Thought: Thomas Aquinas, Morsilius of Padua, Richard Hooker (New York: Humanities Press, 1959), 8. 7. The concept of the will introduced by St. Paul and especially St. Augustine foreshadows the modern understanding of the self since the will is understood to mediate between the faculties of reason and desire. However, it would be a mistake to presume that this similarity implies that Augustine’s understanding of the self is modern, even though it is Augustine who first introduces some of the modern assumptions about the individual doubting, and the self-conscious self. See, Hannah Arendt, Responsibility and Judgment, ed. Jerome Kohn (New York: Schocken Books, 2003). Augustine does not, however, claim that individuals have a generally constant right to choose what they can or should do. Aquinas makes the same claim. Human beings do have a will, although the term used by Aquinas to characterize this will is dominion. On this aspect of Aquinas’ thought, see, Ralph McInerny, “Ethics,” in The Cambridge Companion to Aquinas, ed. Norman Kretzmann and Eleonore Stump (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1993), 197. (Summa Theologiae IaeIIe.1.1) 8. R. W. Dyson, Normative Theories of Society and Government in Five Medieval Thinkers: St. Augustine, Talbouf Salisbury, Giles of Rome, St. Thomas Aquinas, and Marsilius of Padua (Lewiston, N.Y.; Lampeter: Edwin Mellen Press, 2003). 9. It is not just maintaining Jewish settlements in the Holy Land that is defended. There is the case of religious settler Jews being involved in a plot to blow up the Dome of the Rock in Jerusalem, thinking that such an action would somehow hasten the arrival of the messiah and make possible the rebuilding of the Jewish Temple in Jerusalem. 10. Gush Emunim translates as the “Block of the Righteous/Faithful.” 11. Gideon Aran, “Jewish Zionist Fundamentalism: The Bloc of the Faithful in Israel (Gush Emunim),” in Fundamentalisms Observed, ed. Martin E. Marty and R. Scott Appleby (Chicago and London: University of Chicago Press, 1991), 287 and fn 27, p. 336. For more on Jewish fundamentalism in Israel see: Gilles Kepel, The Revenge of God: The Resurgence of Islam, Christianity, and Judaism in the Modern World (Oxford: Polity Press, 1994), 140–90. Laurence J. Silberstein, ed., Jewish Fundamentalism in Comparative Perspective: Religion, Ideology, and the Crisis of Modernity (New York: New York University Press, 1993).

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12. Chaim I. Waxman, “Messianism, Zionism, and the State of Israel,” Modern Judaism 7, no. 2 (May, 1987): 175. 13. Waxman, “Messianism, Zionism, and the State of Israel.” 14. See, Chaim Potok, Wanderings: Chaim Potok’s History of the Jews (New York: Fawcett Crest, 1978). In particular, the last two hundred years of the Second Temple Period; see, Werblowsky, “Messianism in Jewish History,” 32. 15. Arthur Hertzberg, The Zionist Idea: A Historical Analysis and Reader (Westport, Conn.: Greenwood Press, 1975), 20. 16. The relationship between Augustine’s theology and philosophy are, however, not necessarily as clear as I am putting it here. See, Meyrick H. Carré, Realists and Nominalists (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1946). 17. Death is very important in understanding Augustine’s philosophy and politics, because he believes that a life, which ends in death is an unfortunate life. Indeed, his Confessions read in such a way that makes the point that everything in the material and finite world is of little significance, is rendered problematic because of death, or matters only insofar as the afterlife is concerned. In the City of God he writes, “For from the very beginning of our existence in this dying body, there is never a moment when death is not at work in us. For throughout the whole span of this life—if, indeed, it is to be called life—its mutability leads us towards death.” Augustine, City of God against the Pagans, trans. R. W. Dyson, ed. R. W. Dyson (Cambridge; New York: Cambridge University Press, 1998), 550. (Book XIII 10); Augustine, Confessions of a Sinner, trans. R. S. Pine-Coffin (London: Penguin, 1961). See also, Arendt, Love and Saint Augustine, 9–35. 18. Augustine, City of God, 541. (Book XIII 1). 19. See, Herbert A. Deane, The Political and Social Ideas of St. Augustine (New York: Columbia University Press, 1963). For a critique on the order(s) of God in Augustine’s writings see, William E. Connolly, The Augustinian Imperative: The Politics of Morality (Newbury Park, Calif: Sage Publications, 1993). 20. See for example, Augustine, Political Writings, ed. E. M. Atkins and R. J. Dodaro (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2001). (Letter 220: Augustine to Boniface). 21. Augustine, City of God, 944. (Book XIV 16). See also, Augustine, Political Writings, 125. (Sermon 13). Dyson, Normative Theories of Society and Government in Five Medieval Thinkers, 41–45. 22. Augustine, City of God, 927. (Book XIX 6). 23. Augustine, City of God, 928. (Book XIX 6). 24. Augustine, City of God, 934. (Book XIX 12). 25. Augustine, City of God, 39. (Book I 26). 26. Macedonius was the Vicar of Africa from 413–414. 27. Augustine, Political Writings, 82. (Letter 153). (Quoted from Rom. 13.1–8). 28. Dyson, Normative Theories of Society and Government in Five Medieval Thinkers, 40, fn. 1. 29. Dyson, Normative Theories of Society and Government in Five Medieval Thinkers, 42. 30. See, Robert L. Holmes, On War and Morality (Chichester; Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1989), 82.

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31. James Turner Johnson, Can Modern War Be Just? (London: Yale University Press, 1984), 3. 32. Johnson, Can Modern War Be Just?, 3–4. 33. In The City of God, Augustine refers to the community or kingdom as similar to a band of robbers. “Justice removed, then, what are kingdoms but great bands of robbers? What are bands of robbers themselves but little kingdoms? The band itself is made up of men; it is governed by the authority of a ruler; it is bound together by a pact of association; and the loot is divided according to an agreed law. If, by the constant addition of desperate men, this scourge grows to such a size that it acquires territory, establishes a seat of government, occupies cities and subjugates peoples, it assumes the name of kingdom more openly. For this name is now manifestly conferred upon it not by the removal of greed, but by the addition of impunity.” Augustine, City of God, 147–48. (Book IV 4). 34. R. A. Markus, Saeculum, History and Society in the Theology of St Augustine (London: Cambridge University Press, 1970), 103. 35. F. C. Copleston, A History of Medieval Philosophy (London: Methuen & Co Ltd, 1972), 44. 36. Etienne Gilson, Reason and Revelation in the Middle Ages (New York and London: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1939). However, Aquinas’ use of philosophy was not for philosophy’s sake but for theology. See, Etienne Gilson, History of Christian Philosophy in the Middle Ages (London: Sheed & Ward, 1955), 366–68. See also, F. C. Copleston, who writes, “It does not follow that Thomas leaves philosophy and theology unrelated. . . . [Thomas] sees man as called to the attainment, by divine grace and by leading a life pleasing to God, to the direct or immediate vision of God in heaven. Attainment of this goal demands some knowledge of God and of his will for man. Some knowledge of God is attainable in philosophy, through human thought.” Copleston, A History of Medieval Philosophy, 182–83. 37. However, Aquinas adds the concept of “social” to political animal (see fn. 31, chapter 4). 38. Thomas Aquinas, Political Writings, trans. R. W. Dyson, ed. R. W. Dyson (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1992), 40. (De regno). 39. Aquinas attributes teleological ends to people’s lives as well. One notorious and not so open-minded example of Aquinas attributing an innate temporal purpose to a group of people while they are alive is in his comments on the role of women. Aquinas treats women as lesser creatures (in comparison to men) whose purpose according to nature is procreation. In a less controversial vein, Aquinas distinguishes between what humans can do as agents (human acts) and what acts occur according to the human being, or acts that occur by design, such as aging. See, McInerny, “Ethics,” 197. 40. Aquinas, Political Writings, 51. 41. Aquinas, Political Writings, 51. 42. This concern about obedience and political obligation became increasingly pronounced during the Reformation, and this led some Lutherans and eventually even Calvin to start to think about actual resistance. See “The Duty to Resist” in, Quentin Skinner, The Foundations of Modern Political Thought: The Age of Reformation, vol.

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II (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1978). 43. Aquinas, Political Writings, 67. 44. Passerin d’Entrèves, The Medieval Contribution to Political Thought, 34. 45. Aquinas, Political Writings, 141. (Summa Theologiae IaIIae 96) 46. Aquinas, Political Writings, 56. (Summa Theologiae IaIIae 105:1) 47. Although, Augustine foreshadows this argument since it is in the City of God and the Confessions that we find what may be the first account of an individual questioning his own existence, and questioning his own ability to know. In making these observations, Augustine is laying the ground for being able to see how religious belief occupies temporal life without having to justify this relationship according to salvation. The reason that this separation is possible is because if one doubts one’s own knowledge one is claiming that there is knowledge separate from what God has provided. However, because Augustine sees life on Earth as a life of sin, made possible by the Fall, he does not take these observations about human knowledge and human existence to mean that what humans create can have a positive purpose in itself, which is where Aquinas comes in. 48. I examine this feature of religious Zionism when I look at Rabbi Kook’s Zionist thought further on in this chapter. 49. Arendt, Love and Saint Augustine, 42. 50. Quoted in, Arendt, Love and Saint Augustine, 42 (from Augustine’s “Christian Doctrine” I, 29,30). 51. Scholem, The Messianic Idea in Judaism, 1. 52. Waxman, “Messianism, Zionism, and the State of Israel,” 177. 53. Hertzberg, The Zionist Idea, 109. Kalischer lived during two unsuccessful revolts (1830–1831 and 1863) by the Poles against Russia. 54. Hertzberg, The Zionist Idea, 111. 55. Waxman, “Messianism, Zionism, and the State of Israel,” 178. 56. In 1870 the Mivkeh Israel agricultural school was set up, and in the early 1900s agriculture become a primary strategy of the World Zionist Organization. 57. Poznan is in Poland. 58. Anita Shapira, Land and Power: The Zionist Resort to Force 1891–1948 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1992, Reprint, Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1999), 16. 59. Hertzberg, The Zionist Idea, 113 (Italics added). 60. Hertzberg, The Zionist Idea, 114. 61. Hertzberg, The Zionist Idea, 114. 62. Hertzberg, The Zionist Idea, 114. 63. Waxman, “Messianism, Zionism, and the State of Israel,” 180. 64. Scholem, The Messianic Idea in Judaism, 5. 65. Shapira, Land and Power. 66. Werblowsky, “Messianism in Jewish History,” 31. 67. In an interesting biographical story of the Kook family, Abraham Kook’s nephew Hillel Kook (also known as Peter Bergson) was an avid follower of Jabotinsky’s revisionist Zionism. (See, Elizabeth Young-Bruehl, Hannah Arendt: For the Love of the World 2nd ed. (New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 2004), 175.) Thus, the Kook family had various ties to militant Zionism.

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68. Arendt, Love and Saint Augustine. See above. 69. For an English translation of some of his personal letters see, Abraham Yitzhak Hakohen Kook, Rav A.Y. Kook: Selected Letters, trans. Tzvi Feldman (Jerusalem: Yeshivat Birkat Moshe, 1986). 70. Hereafter referred to as the Biryonim. 71. Walter Laqueur, The History of Zionism, 3rd ed. (London and New York: I. B. Tauris & Co. Ltd.), 362. 72. Ehud Sprinzak, The Ascendance of Israel’s Radical Right (New York; Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1991), 24–25. See also, Arie Perlinger and Leonard Weinberg, “Jewish Self-Defence and Terrorist Groups Prior to the Establishment of the State of Israel: Roots and Traditions,” in Religious Fundamentalism and Political Extremism, ed. Leonard Weinberg and Ami Pedahzur (London and Portland, Oregon: Frank Cass), 92. Halakah refers to Jewish religious law. 73. A Yeshiva is a religious Jewish school. 74. Shapira, Land and Power, 32. 75. Also known as the Sikarin or the Sikarians 76. Neil Faulkner, Apocalypse: The Great Jewish Revolt against Rome AD 66–73 (Stroud: Tempus, 2004), 372. 77. It was from this activity that they got their name. Sica means dagger in Latin and sicarii meant dagger-men. Faulkner, Apocalypse, 165. 78. Flavius Josephus and G. A. Williamson, The Jewish War, Rev. ed. (Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1970), 380. 79. Laqueur, The History of Zionism, 363. 80. Arlosoroff, who was killed on June 16, 1933, was a leader of the Labour Zionist group, Hapoel Hatzair, and was in charge of the Political Department of the Jewish Agency, the de facto Zionist foreign ministry. 81. George Wilkes, “Judaism and Justice in War,” in Just War in Comparative Perspective, ed. Paul Robinson (Burlington, Vt.; Alders Lot: Ashgate, 2003), 15. See, Walter S. Wurzburger, Ethics of Responsibility: Pluralistic Approaches to Conventional Ethics (Philadelphia: Jewish Publication Society, 1994), 42. 82. Perlinger and Weinberg, “Jewish Self-Defence and Terrorist Groups Prior to the Establishment of the State of Israel,” 92. More on the Three Oaths below. 83. Shapira, Land and Power, 32–33. 84. Wilkes, “Judaism and Justice in War,” 20. 85. Wilkes, “Judaism and Justice in War,” 20–21. 86. Aviezer Ravitzky, Messianism, Zionism, and Jewish Religious Radicalism, trans. Michael Swirksy and Jonathan Chipman (Chicago and London: The University of Chicago Press, 1996), 116. 87. Werblowsky, “Messianism in Jewish History,” 44. 88. Werblowsky, “Messianism in Jewish History,” 44. 89. Aran, “Jewish Zionist Fundamentalism”; Kepel, The Revenge of God; Perlinger and Weinberg, “Jewish Self-Defence and Terrorist Groups Prior to the Establishment of the State of Israel”; Silberstein, ed., Jewish Fundamentalism in Comparative Perspective. 90. For example, there was the plot led by extremist members or affiliates of the Gush Emunim to blow up the Dome of the Rock and thus bring about WWIII, which

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they predicted would result in a Messianic age; surely this plan has to involve such a willingness by the sheer scope of violence and destruction involved in bringing about a third world war. 91. See, Hannah Arendt, Eichmann in Jerusalem: A Report on the Banality of Evil, Rev. and enl. ed., Penguin Twentieth-Century Classics. (New York; London: Penguin Books, 1994). 92. See, Michael Walzer, Just and Unjust Wars: A Moral Argument with Historical Illustrations, 3rd ed. (New York: Basic Books, 2000). 93. See, Friedrich Nietzsche, On the Genealogy of Morality, trans. Carole Diethe (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1994). (1.13–1.15) 94. And I am not claiming that they should. 95. Francisco de Vitoria, Political Writings, ed. Anthony Pagden and Jeremy Lawrance (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1991), 18 (On Civil Power 1.6) 96. Vitoria, Political Writings, 42 (On Civil Power 3.6). 97. Nietzsche writes, “Faith in what? Love of what? Hope for what?—These weaklings—in fact they, too, want to be the powerful one day, this is beyond doubt, one day their ‘kingdom’ will come too—the ‘kingdom of God’ simpliciter is their name for it, as I said: they are so humble about everything! Just to experience that, you need to live long, well beyond death,—yes, you need eternal life in order to be able to gain eternal recompense in ‘kingdom of God’ for that life on earth ‘in faith,’ ‘in love,’ ‘in hope.’ Recompense for what? Recompense through what?” Nietzsche, On the Genealogy of Morality, 1.15. 98. James Turner Johnson, Ideology, Reason, and the Limitation of War: Religious and Secular Concepts 1200–1740 (Princeton; London: Princeton University Press, 1973), 163 (Suarez, On Faith, Disp. XVIII, sect. 5). 99. Hertzberg, The Zionist Idea, 423. (Eretz means Land, as in the Land of Israel.) 100. Elie Holzer, The Use of Military Force in the Religious Zionist Ideology of Rabbi Yitzhak Ya’akov Reines and His Successors, ed. Peter Y. Medding, vol. XVIII, Studies in Contemporary Jewry: Jews and Violence: Images Ideologies, Realists (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2002), 75. 101. Holzer, The Use of Military Force, 80. 102. Holzer, The Use of Military Force, 80. 103. Holzer, The Use of Military Force, 81. 104. Holzer, The Use of Military Force, 81. 105. Martin Buber, A Land of Two Peoples, ed. Paul Mendes-Flohr (Chicago: University of Chicago Press; first published 1983 by Oxford University Press, 2005), 20. 106. Martin Buber and Nahum Norbert Glatzer, On Judaism (New York: Schocken Books, 1972), (See Chapter IV, “The Spirit of the Orient and Judaism,” 56–78). 107. Martin Buber, I and Thou, trans. Ronald Gregor Smith, 2nd ed. (London and New York: Continuum, 1958, 2004). 108. Buber, A Land of Two Peoples, 181. 109. Buber, A Land of Two Peoples, 182. 110. Buber, A Land of Two Peoples, 183. Buber said all this on November 13, 1945, in front of the Anglo-American Inquiry Committee in Palestine. 111. Buber, A Land of Two Peoples, 36.

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112. Martin Buber and Nahum Norbert Glatzer, The Way of Response: Martin Buber; Selections from His Writings (New York: Schocken Books, 1966), 185. 113. Buber, I and Thou, 17. 114. Buber, I and Thou, 15. 115. There is some debate as to how similar Lévinas and Buber are, although both of them are philosophical heirs to the Jewish existential philosophy of Franz Rosenzweig and both of them rely heavily on the idea of the Other (Thou). Emmanuel Lévinas, Totality and Infinity: An Essay on Exteriority, trans. Alphonso Lingis (Pittsburgh: Duquesne University Press, 1969); Emmanuel Lévinas, God, Death, and Time, trans. Bettina Bergo (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1993); Emmanuel Lévinas, Otherwise Than Being: Or Beyond Essence, trans. Alphonso Lingis (Pittsburgh: Duquesne University Press, 1993); Emmanuel Lévinas, Is It Righteous to Be? trans. Jill Robbins (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2001); Emmanuel Lévinas, ed., The Levinas Reader (Oxford: Blackwell, 1989); David Warner, “Levinas, Buber and the Concept of Otherness in International Relations: A Reply to David Campbell,” Millennium: Journal of International Studies 25, no. 1 (1996); Franz Rosenzweig, The Star of Redemption, trans. William W. Halo (Notre Dame: University of Notre Dame Press, 1985). 116. Moses Mendelssohn, Jerusalem or on Religious Power and Judaism, trans. Allan Arkugh (Hanover and London: University Press of New England published for Brandeis University Press, 1983, 39. 117. Niccolò Machiavelli, The Prince, ed. Quentin Skinner and Russell Price (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1988). 118. It is worth pointing out here that Hannah Arendt observed violence to also be an absolute phenomenon, although her remarks on this issue are not in relation to religion. See, Hannah Arendt, On Violence (London: Harcourt Brace and & Company, 1970). 119. Buber and Glatzer, The Way of Response, 182. 120. Arendt, Responsibility and Judgment, 46. 121. Arendt, Responsibility and Judgment, 48.

Chapter Six

Wishful Thinking: Consent, Contract, and the Obligation to Die

If a human being loses his political status, he should, according to the implications of the inborn and inalienable rights of man, come under exactly the situation for which the declarations of such general rights provided. Actually the opposite is the case. It seems that man who is nothing but a man has lost the very qualities, which make it possible for other people to treat him as a fellow man. —Hannah Arendt1

This chapter examines how consent theory justifies the obligation to die. Consent is a theory of voluntarism.2 It is a theory of agreement. Theories of consent often involve trading some freedoms for the security, protection, or other normative goods that the state or sovereign provides with consideration of the rights of others. This trade is called the social contract. For Thomas Hobbes, the contract is designed to restrict internal violence and establish security. For Jean-Jacques Rousseau, the contract is about enabling as much human freedom as is possible in conditions of civil society. In both instances, consent theory emerged out of the displacement of religion from political life. For those who live in the rights based societies of liberal democracies, the descriptions of political life and of human morality that consent theories propose make sense if taken at face value. One of the most important of these descriptions is the idea that human beings are morally equal, that each individual is presumed to have the same moral capability and the same human rights as anyone else. The content of these rights can vary,3 but any political subjugation or hierarchy must respect this equality. If human beings are morally

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equal creatures, it is both logical and necessary that they consent to any restrictions on their freedoms, which may be required by living in a society. The state may be a violent entity with massive coercive powers, but a just state relies on consent, not coercion. Consent involves or at least presumes the possibility of choice, of making a moral decision and being held accountable for the decision. Consequently, when people carry on their daily lives and obey the laws of their community, they are in a sense verifying consent theory. Adherence to these acts of citizenship is in this sense voluntary. People consent to obey the law, to recognize the needs of others, to act in ways, which reinforce the social and political institutions of the society, and to contribute in some sense to the normative values of life in the community. The act of consent can vary, consent can be individual or collective, and there are varying degrees of consent (which are often relative to the significance or scope of what is being consented to) but the concept of “consent” generally refers to all of them. So long as the state is stable, the people obey the laws, and the state respects the rights of its inhabitants, consent theory appears to work as a theory of state. Consent theory, however, is full of contradictions and difficulties that converge on the issue of the obligation to die. If any political theory about the state is to stand up to scrutiny, it needs to be able to explain how the state or the sovereign power can oblige its citizens to go to war, for without this ability, the state is called into question. In particular, consent theory needs to explain how the rights of the individual are respected within the obligation to take part in war. This problem suggests categorizing different types of soldiers: voluntary conscripts who sign up because the army provides a job, individuals who sign up for ideological reasons, or people who are drafted. Volunteers would presumably have accepted the obligation to die, and any moral or political problem pertaining to the obligation to die is for people who are drafted and have not made this conscious choice. Yet, consent theory needs to explain the logic that justifies this obligation. Being a volunteer does not excuse the state for demanding (even in a voluntary way) its citizens to risk their lives. These various perspectives are addressed in Tim O’Brien’s account of the Vietnam War. O’Brien notes that the state has always been able to send its youth into war and even those who do not want to go submit to the state, if only because they are afraid of incurring “society’s censure.”4 For those who volunteer or are drafted, the justifiability of going to war may pertain to whether or not they agree with the war, or if the war is just. However, as O’Brien discovered firsthand, it does not matter if the war is just, and as Peter Paret notes, those who face battle are rarely those who have declared war and yet these decision makers will take it for granted that they can conscript or recruit soldiers when necessary.5 Conscripts .

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can even be held accountable for refusing to relinquish their right to life, as in the extreme case of Private Eddie Slovik, who on General Dwight Eisenhower’s orders, was executed for desertion in the Second World War.6 The state can always oblige, if not enforce, its citizens to go to war regardless of the type of war or the type of conscript.7 The way that classical consent and social contract theory has tried to justify the obligation to die has been to presume that the only way for humans to be able to fulfil the promise of their moral equality is to do so inside the state as a citizen. In other words, humans can live as moral creatures only as citizens inside a secure state. In the case of a war, the goods of citizenship are important enough that they excuse the state of demanding the citizen to risk his or her life and of possibly requiring the citizen to act contrary to his or her morals. The tension in this obligation, regardless of the specific form of government at stake, is that consent theory involves linking the morality of the individual to the normative value of the state. This morality is supposed to pertain to every human being, and so consent theory implies that it is universally applicable.8 While consent can be, as J. P. Plamenatz notes, a complicated concept that is often misunderstood, misused, and misplaced,9 the basic premise of consent theory is straightforward in description: it is the means by which universal moral equality is rendered into a theory of state. Going to war is one of the state’s privileges, conferred upon it by a political project designed to restrict violence both inside the state and between them. The just war tradition and the emergence of social contract theory are examples of this project. However, with the concept of consent comes the idea of a moral will,10 that is, a capacity to make a moral deliberation and decision. In recognition of a moral will, consent theory should allow the possibility of legitimately disobeying an order to go to war. If people are morally equal creatures with innate rights, then it is necessary for them to consent to any act, especially those which may involve the death of themselves or others; but what would happen in a war where the state asked its citizens to fight, and they all refused? In the nineteen-sixties this example served as a solution to end war, as noted in the song “Universal Soldier” by Buffy Sainte-Marie, and the popular slogan, “What if they held a war and nobody came?” James Fishkin also notes this exact problem when he examines the concept of generalized obligations in his introductory book on political obligation.11 Were nobody to obey a draft or to volunteer for the army, the state would probably collapse either by invasion or by some kind of rebellion. At the very minimum, the government would collapse and the legitimacy of the state would be called into question. Consent theory needs to explain why the individual moral will can be ignored for the sake of the state, a problem that can be traced to the origins of Western political thought.

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The concept of consent, although not of individual voluntarism, as a political category goes back to Plato, who in Gorgias has Socrates describe the importance of an internal moral law, and in The Laws claims that laws should be enforced not just by force but by nonviolent persuasion as well.12 Most importantly, and foreshadowing voluntarism, Plato has Socrates consent to drink the poison hemlock at the command of the city instead of going into exile.13 Socrates makes a choice and he chooses to obey the law of the city, even though the law involves his death, because in this instance were he to leave the city he would not be true to his moral law. While Plato notes the tension between the good of the individual and that of the city, it is Aristotle who makes it a basis of his political philosophy, although Aristotle does not include the idea of consent. Yet unlike either Aristotle’s or Plato’s tenets, the modern solution to this problem presumes that human beings are morally equal, and as a consequence, post-seventeenth century accounts of consent differ from ancient accounts of consent in their inclusion of an individual moral will. The ancients were not concerned with why anybody would obey, but with what regime should be obeyed. Post-seventeenth century political thought was concerned with this why question, and the Enlightenment brought with it the inclusion of a twofold moral universalism: every human being is presumed to be morally equal and it is possible to have a universal human morality. Both of these universalisms are questionable, but it is the former that I am concerned with here since it is moral equality that could cause a problem between the universal moral will and state/political necessity. Moral equality requires that people accept the law and are not forced to obey the authority of the state. Consequently, there needs to be some mechanism by which the sovereign recognizes the individual as a moral agent with built-in rights, and how the people agree to live under sovereign power. The mechanism that is designed to accomplish this is the metaphor of the social contract. The population hypothetically signs a contract, which establishes the state and involves a transfer of rights from the individual to the state. In this way people are presumed to consent to the law. They agree individually and collectively to establish a sovereign they imbue with legislative and authoritative powers by which they will abide. Considering the intellectual and political climate from which they emerged, the three most progressive aspects of consent theory are its assumptions about universal moral equality, the need to link human morality to the foundations of the state, and the argument that the contract enables moral relations which could not otherwise exist. However, problems with consent theory are how it makes this link between human morality and the obligation to die, and how the concept of universal moral equality is used to make this link. Ultimately, con-

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sent theory cannot justify the obligation to die because it involves too many (sometimes contradictory) abstractions which undermine the presumption that what the contract produces is worth dying for. THOMAS HOBBES One of the most famous of all contract thinkers, although not the first, is Thomas Hobbes. Hobbes’ version of the contract is based on a desire to resolve the problem of civil war and to establish a formative obstacle to internal chaos. The way he sets about accomplishing this task is to formulate an account of language that makes contract possible and to offer an account of human nature that makes contract necessary. Hobbes’ Leviathan is a story of origins, a fiction that serves to explain how the contract is necessary and how life could not exist without it. Hobbes’ social contract argument claims that individuals are, due to their nature, unable to live amongst each other without resorting to war or violence unless they agree to form a contract. For Hobbes the contract is a onetime event. The contract is established once, and this moment of founding sets the stage for future politics. There is the possibility of revolt should the contract be broken, but the contract cannot be renegotiated and it need not be constantly reaffirmed through future acts of consent. According to the basic argument contained in Leviathan that postulates that people trade certain liberties for security, if the sovereign were to ask its citizens to risk their lives by going to war then two problems immediately arise. First, the citizen could refuse the demand and claim that it makes no sense to go to war for the sake of a contract that is supposed to avoid war. Second, the citizen would have a legitimate right to rebel against the sovereign who has clearly been unable to guarantee the terms of the contract in which the sovereign is supposed to protect the lives of its subjects or citizens. The obligation to die would be a concrete example of a failed contract. However, Hobbes recognizes that this obligation is crucial for sovereignty. Consequently, in chapter 21 of Leviathan he attempts to explain the obligation to die as follows: . . . A man that is commanded as a Souldier to fight against the enemy, though his Soveraign may have Right enough to punish his refusal with death, may nevertheless in many cases refuse to, without Injustice; as when he substituteth a sufficient Souldier in his place: for in this case he deserteth not the service of the Commonwealth. And there is allowance to be made for naturall timorousness, not onely to women, (of whom no such dangerous duty is expected,) but also to men of feminine courage. When Armies fight, there is on one side or both, a running

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away; yet when they do it not out of treachery, but fear, they are not esteemed to do it unjustly, but dishonourably. For the same reason, to avoyd battell, is no Injustice, but Cowardice. But he that inrowleth himself a Souldier, or taketh imprest mony, taketh away the excuse of a timorous nature; and is obliged, not only to go to the battell, but also not to run from it, without his Captaines leave. And when the Defence of the Commonwealth, requireth at once the help of all that are able to bear Arms every one is obliged; because otherwise the Institution of the Common-wealth, which they have not the purpose, or courage to preserve, was in vain.14

Hobbes claims that the inhabitants are obliged to risk their lives if the commonwealth is threatened. If the community is at risk of being dissolved by a foreign threat and for the sake of the good provided by the commonwealth an obligation to risk dying emerges. Presumably, wars of aggression would not justify such an obligation, although this conclusion does not apply since Hobbes asserts that the sovereign may go to war if the sovereign deems it necessary for the security and prosperity of the commonwealth.15 The problem that Hobbes has to resolve is why the contract makes an allowance for people to violate that basic and inviolable natural right of selfpreservation.16 War and individual self-preservation do not go together. Hobbes’ rhetorical gymnastics justifying the obligation to die end on the obligations for state survival by employing a voluntary paid force. This kind of a military force, however, does not resolve the situation of how war is not representative of a failed state and a return to the state of nature. Surely if the state cannot prevent war, then the contract was in vain and needs to be redrawn? Indeed, “Individual bodily security is the only ultimate in Hobbes’s system and the search for that security can never be forsaken or transcended. In fact, then, for Hobbes there can be no obligation to die of any sort.”17 Moreover, in the case of a war of aggression, which Hobbes justifies, why would one accept a risk to one’s natural right to life in the case of a war deemed for the benefit but not the survival of the commonwealth? The good of the community may be great, but for Hobbes, the primary good being distributed by the commonwealth is security. “The Obligation of Subjects to the Soveraign, Is understood to last as long, and no longer, than the power lasteth, by which he is able to protect them.”18 War is a state of insecurity, and even if it is a particular form of violence, which in theory can be differentiated from the violence of the Hobbesian state of nature, in practice this distinction is futile. Hobbes’ social contract argument cannot justify the obligation to die because for Hobbes, “The very existence of the state seems to require some limit upon the right of self-preservation, and yet the state is nothing more than an instrument designed to fulfil that right.”19

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JEAN-JACQUES ROUSSEAU Jean-Jacques Rousseau’s version of consent theory is also contractual, although his contract is different from that of Hobbes. Both contracts involve enabling human morality in society, but Rousseau thinks that Hobbes got the state of nature wrong. Hobbes’ error, according to Rousseau, is that he saw people suffering in society and read this malaise into the state of nature. Rousseau does not accept Hobbes’ pessimistic view of human nature. Humans are born good, says Rousseau, it is society that corrupts. The Social Contract famously begins with the claim that, “Man is born free, and everywhere he is in chains.”20 “Civilized man,” he writes, “is born and dies a slave.”21 Rousseau also differs from Hobbes in that while Hobbes goes about establishing a political epistemology that makes contracts possible, Rousseau is not convinced that contracts are necessarily a positive addition to human society. Hobbes’ application of geometric precision to political language is also not replicated by Rousseau, and whereas Hobbes is concerned about security and state stability, Rousseau is primarily concerned with human freedom, which causes some difficulty with the idea of a contract. Rousseau claims that any kind of political obligation involves a form of servitude, reduces individual liberty, and by implication harms human morality. The problem with any obligation which involves obeying another is that it requires civil society, and thus involves subjugating one’s will instead of acting out of natural necessity.22 Rousseau’s solution to this enslavement and self-imposed estrangement is a social contract that exists in order to respond to the depraved life in civil society by enabling morality in society, and making possible a life of freedom as close as possible to that enjoyed prior to societal corruption.23 Morality in society is made possible by a social contract that involves a unique transition in “man” by substituting the instinct for self-preservation with justice, and consequently, “endows his actions with the morality they had previously lacked.”24 Once humans enter society they are no longer the human beings they once were. They become a different creature, a creature that owes the state all capacity for normal social relations, including moral, legal, and political responsibilities and obligations. According to Rousseau, morality was not needed in the original state of nature, but civil society requires morality in order for humans to be able to live amongst each other. Without the state and the contract humans would be at each other’s throats in the hell that is civil society. Consequently, morality is empirical in the sense that it comes from people having to live with others, and normative in that it is entrenched in the social contract.25 Ultimately, the social contract is designed “to find a form of association that will defend and protect the person

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and goods of each associate with the full common force, and by the means of which each, uniting with all, nevertheless, obey only himself and remain as free as before.”26 The contract in effect provides people with the possibility of a moral life that involves the pursuit of happiness, some form of relative equality and freedom, mental well-being, and physical security. Yet, in a critique on natural law, Rousseau does not presume that a natural right of self-preservation can provide a basis for political obligations, and in contrast to Hobbes, Rousseau gives the obligation to die a central location in his political philosophy. According to Michael Walzer, “Rousseau’s politics is not really based upon self-preservation or upon any absolute interest in security, property, welfare, or happiness. Indeed he rejects interests of this sort precisely because they cannot serve as the basis of an obligation to die.”27 In Emile, Rousseau writes, Self-interest, so they say, induces each of us to agree for the common good, but how is it that the good man consents to this to his own hurt? Does a man go to death from self-interest? No doubt each man acts for his own good, but if there is no such thing as moral good to be taken into consideration, self-interest will only enable you to account for the deeds of the wicked. . . .28

Rousseau knows that the contract has to include a justification of the obligation to die. Unlike Hobbes, Rousseau recognizes the central role this obligation has to play in a theory of state. Consequently, Rousseau claims that there can be no political obligation if there is no possibility of an obligation to die. Rousseau argues that for there to be any kind of coherent account of political obligation, it must include the possibility that one might be politically and morally required to risk one’s life. In The Social Contract, he explains the obligation to die for the state: Their very life which they have dedicated to the State is constantly protected by it, and when they risk it for its defense, what are they doing but returning to it what they have received from it? What are they doing that they would not have done more frequently and at greater peril in the state of nature, when, waging inevitable fights, they would be defending the means of preserving their lives by risking them? All have to fight for the fatherland if need be, it is true, but then no one ever has to fight for himself. Isn’t it nevertheless a gain to risk for the sake of what gives us security just a part of what we would have to risk for our own sakes if we were deprived of this security?29

The citizen’s responsibilities as a moral agent and political participant are clear—they are based on the citizen’s need for the state. Rousseau emphasizes this point to the extreme in his favorable account of the story of the Spartan

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mother whose sons are sent to war: “A Spartan mother had five sons with the army. A Helot arrived; trembling, she asked his news. ‘Your five sons are slain.’ ‘Vile slave, was that what I asked thee?’ ‘We have won the victory.’ She hastened to the temple to render thanks to the gods. That was a citizen.”30 The morality of the obligation to die, in Rousseau’s view, is based on the basic feature of civil society and of the contract that enables morality in society but also requires it. Rousseau wishes to make clear that the obligation to die is both necessary and worth the cost. However, his political philosophy does not provide a clear endorsement of either of these statements, and in fact, challenges them. Rousseau offers many insights into human psychology, political life, and obligation, but he does not provide a clear justification for the obligation to die. When Hegel argues that it makes no sense to be willing to die for that which one enters into a contract to protect (that is, life, security, property),31 he suggests that Rousseau’s argument has a serious flaw. Rousseau acknowledges that the social contract provides security, thus falling into the problem noted by Hegel, but it is not solely for security that the contract exists. Rousseau claims that the contract also exists in order to enable human morality. Consequently, how could the social contract, as a service provider of morality, justify the obligation to die? Why die for the sake of a contract that makes possible what one is dying for? Does it make sense to suggest that the obligation to die can serve as the basis for political obligation, and thus the social contract, when this contract exists for the normative purpose of enabling human morality in civil society? Rousseau wants to claim that it does, and it might, but he contradicts himself and suggests that this argument could not work. There are two general problems here. The first problem is with the concept of the will, and the second is with Rousseau’s description of human psychology. The first notable contradiction is with the idea of the will. For the obligation to die to be justified according to the logic of contract and consent, Rousseau needs to explain how the will of the individual is the same as that of the community. A joining of wills means that individuals are always obliging themselves and not (theoretically at least) each other, and are thus not in servitude to one another. The social contract is the device that joins the individual and the collective will. In this formulation, one is not being forced into an obligation to die, but is consenting to one’s own authoritative request that one risk his or her life by going into war—that is, one consents to what one asks of him/herself. This union of wills is one of the basic requirements in consent theory. If the will of the individual and the will of the community are one, then there is no subservience, no problem of a contradiction between consent and obligation.32

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For Rousseau, this joining of wills creates what he calls the General Will, as opposed to the Will of All, which could be understood to represent mob rule. The General Will is supposed to reflect the joining of the individual and the collective will together in agreement. However, as Patrick Riley argues, the individual will and the General Will are not the same thing and the General Will cannot be in agreement with the individual will. Riley claims that the idea of a will as a psychological characteristic can only be individual, and cannot be synonymous with a collective will—the “will” in the one case is different from the “will” in the other. No act of philosophical imagination can conjure up anything but a personal will. What can be imagined, and what Rousseau admired in ancient society, is not really a general will but a political morality of the common good in which the individual will is not suppressed but simply does not appear in contradistinction to, or with claims or rights against, society.33

Consequently, the will of the individual is not necessarily the same as the will of the collective, and as such, it cannot be claimed that the will of one is the will of the other. Yet this agreement is what consent theory requires if it is to justify the obligation to die because in consent theory terms, for the obligation to be just, it cannot be willed and then enforced by something other than the individual who consents. What makes the obligation acceptable is that it might as well come from the individual being obliged, and thus s/he that is obliged is simply obeying him or herself, even if the ostensible obliging agent is the state or sovereign. If the will of the individual and the will of the collective are different, or even if the collective will is not a will, there is the problem that the obligation involves coercion and is not according to the moral vocabulary of consent. For the obligation to die to be just, what the collective will (or the political morality of the common good) demands must also be willed by the individual, but if the theory presumes that such agreement exists in part because the two wills are assumed to be the same when they are not, then the presumption of agreement between the wills is unfounded. Consequently, in consent theory terms, the obligation to die cannot be justified on this idea of a uniformity of wills. Riley’s mention of Rousseau’s admiration of ancient society is a reference to Rousseau’s two basic heuristic models for thinking about politics: Sparta and the isolated traditional home, or in Judith Shklar’s terms, “citizen” and “man.”34 Rousseau’s political thought is designed to bring together the best of these two models, that of the citizen and that of the human. The obligation to die is a problem that the citizen might face, but not the apolitical human who lives an isolated home-life away from the ills and temptations of society, away from politics. Consequently, if Rousseau’s argument is to work, this

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marriage needs to be strong. If the citizen breaks away, so does the idea of political obligation, and if the human leaves, so does the individual and collective morality that characterizes the need for the social contract. Neither life is possible on its own, the two need to go to together, and this marriage is key to Rousseau’s political theory. However, a close look at Rousseau’s argument suggests that he is uncertain about the possibility of this linkage. The tensions in this marriage are many, but two stand out in relevance to the obligation to die: how this construction between human and citizen works, and whether or not this dichotomy makes sense. I will explore various aspects of these tensions later in this chapter since these issues pertain not just to Rousseau, but to consent theory in general. For now, I want to focus on the contribution of the individual human. The second problem with Rousseau’s argument is that he does not provide a picture of the human being (of “man”) that is consistent with the requirements necessary in order to forge a successful social contract. If a founding agent of the contract does not live up to its requirements in forging the social contract, the obligation to die cannot be justified. Consent theory finds its legitimacy in respecting the importance of the individual human being. Therefore, what it means to be human is key to understanding how political obligations can be justified, including the obligation to die. Rousseau provides such an understanding by turning to human psychology. He argues that humans are confused creatures who require a form of guidance that is non-coercive in order to live and be obliged as citizens, which includes the obligation to die. For Rousseau’s argument to work, it is necessary that the individual human being who becomes a citizen, obliged via the General Will to one and all, is capable psychologically of taking on such an obligation. Rousseau suggests that individuals have a will capable of being able to become citizens, members of the social contract, and united in a General Will. However, what I will now argue is that his description of the human condition does not support this suggestion. He argues that the human mind is fragmented, psychologically unwell, and unable to make rational decisions. Consequently, it is questionable how Rousseau’s understanding of the human condition can justify an obligation to die based on consent and contract. Those who sign the metaphorical social contract do so because they realize that they are too weak individually to protect themselves from the evils of society, from inequality and self-alienation. Recognizing the need for the contract is possible only by rational decision making. However, Rousseau does not recognize this ability in the basic human condition. Rousseau relies on the ability of the individual to recognize the benefits of the contract. Yet, in the Discourses on Inequality Rousseau claims that “most contracts are fraudulent,

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mere deceptions,”35 which begs the question why anybody would sign them. The social contract is, presumably, different. Nevertheless, this pessimism about contracts is mirrored in his account of the people. Rousseau may hold an optimistic view of human nature, but he is deeply pessimistic about the people and human psychology. “The people, as Rousseau never forgot, are not very intelligent. It may know its interests, but it needs help if it is to defend them effectively.”36 Moreover, as he writes in Emile, “God makes all things good; man meddles with them and they become evil.”37 It is not just the people that are a problem but the individual person as well. Judith Shklar notes that human weakness is a key point in Rousseau’s political thought: “God gave men a freedom which they are too weak to use well and then left them to suffer.”38 According to Rousseau, the human being is a fragmented self. Shklar writes, In looking into himself Rousseau found not a single mind with various capacities, but a fragmented self. Our inner life is a state of war. Compulsion is not only a matter of physical restraint. There is also one’s common experience of not doing what one desires to do with some part of one’s self, and even of not being one’s self.39

The problem is not that humans do not know what they want or should do; rather, the problem is that humans have competing urges and the human mind is generally not strong enough to make the necessary decisions. Rousseau suggests that humans are able to resolve at least part of this inner conflict not as individuals but as citizens, living in consent of the contract since the contract corrects human morality gone awry in civil society.40 However, even the civilized human is a corrupted human. Humans are fragmented selves who may know what they need or what they should do, but are somehow, psychologically, incapable of acting on such knowledge. In Rousseau’s terms, the apolitical human does not have the mental faculties necessary to sign a social contract, and the political human that the contract creates is unlikely to adhere to the normative potential the contract is supposed to create. Rousseau tries to resolve these problems that human fragmentation and individual weakness pose to the contract by introducing the concept of the Lawgiver. The way that this fragmented individual can become a whole person, a free and moral member of civil society, capable of consenting to political obligations (including the obligation to die) is with the help of a mystical figure called the Lawgiver. The Lawgiver is supposed to resolve a contradiction in Rousseau’s reasoning between his view that people should rationally and willingly offer themselves to the contract, and his recognition that they are unable to do so. In this regard, the Lawgiver also exists in order to resolve the

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problem noted by Riley about the individual will and the General Will being in agreement. The Lawgiver is supposed to authorize without being an authority or a commanding figure. “Thus, since the Lawgiver can use neither force nor reasoning, he must of necessity have recourse to an authority of a different order, which might be able to rally without violence and to persuade without convincing.”41 It is difficult to imagine how any entity could persuade without convincing since to be persuaded would involve some convincing. Even if this non-convincing persuasion could work, insofar as the obligation to die is concerned, it would do so because the individual is capable of rationally coming to terms with how the good of the community might require his or her possible death in war. If the individual were able to make this decision, the Lawgiver would most likely be unnecessary and the individual would be of sound mind. Rousseau is taking it for granted, without justifying why, that a rational individual would, as a citizen, be consciously ready to die for the state. This rationality is possible if the individual is of sound mind in agreeing to the social contract, because if he or she is not, there is no basis for recognizing how the individual will is obeying itself even when obliged by the General Will.42 Rousseau’s use of the Lawgiver is to illustrate how an irrational person would accept the obligation, but how could an irrational person accept this obligation? There has to be some rationality in the individual will if any of his arguments about political obligation are to work because otherwise the will is pointless as a moral foundation for consent and political obligation. For consent to mean anything the idea of consent has to include some notion of accountability, of awareness on the part of those that consent. If all people, or enough people, are irrational their will would be unimportant because the will is how free, rational people exercise their morality in society. The concept of the will suggests that one is actively and consciously choosing a course of action. Consequently, for the will to mean anything at all, it needs to be based on the assumption that individual agents are capable of making appropriate political decisions. This rationality requires a sound mind, especially if one is supposedly able to recognize how his or her will is also the General Will. However, due to instinct (if not natural right) of self-preservation, it is more likely that an irrational person would accept the obligation to die; but as Joseph Heller points out in his novel, Catch-22, this kind of argument is completely paradoxical.43 If someone acting irrationally accepted the obligation, it would not be an obligation because any just political and/or moral obligation requires that those obliged be fully aware of what they are taking on. A rational person who loved his or her society or country might accept such an obligation, although in Rousseau’s terms it is difficult to think of anybody loving society that much. The contract might enable certain normative benefits, but

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these benefits are required because society is a problem in the first place. Consequently, there are sufficient grounds in Rousseau’s theory to suggest that individuals are ultimately coerced, if not deluded, into “consenting” to political obligations, including the obligation to die. However, if one were deluded or coerced, then political obligations in the state are ones of servitude, and there would be none of the freedom the contract is supposed to create, and consequently no justifiable obligation to die. In sum, Rousseau’s argument suffers from the following defects. By claiming that people are confused creatures in need of guidance, it is difficult to then suggest that these people can consent to any political obligation, let alone the obligation to die. Rousseau requires some form of rationality for consent, contract, and obligation to work, but he presumes most people to be corrupted and thus irrational. When Rousseau justifies the obligation to die by claiming that to die for the state is to give back to it what the state provides, he is referring in part to the morality and freedom that the state enables, and which are a product of the social contract. The contract provides as much freedom as is possible in civil society, and the obligation to die is justified by what the contract provides and by the individual citizen being aware of the value of the contract. Consequently, in order to justify the obligation to die, the individual citizen has to recognize what the contract and state provide and then make a rational decision to accept the conditions that the contract creates. However, Rousseau argues that most people are psychologically incapable of making this kind of decision. Consequently, Rousseau is ultimately suggesting that the type of person necessary for a political obligation to become just by way of consent does not exist. To add to the confusion, Rousseau seems to be aware of this problem, which is why he is concerned with the proper education of the citizenry, as his book Emile demonstrates. There is, indeed, significant confusion here on the part of Rousseau, since he is trying to suggest that, first, the person that can be justifiably obliged is created by a contract that this person is mentally incapable of understanding, and, second, the contract does not even create the type of person it is supposed to. The fragmented individual is for Rousseau a problem since he wants a firm grounding on which to base, justify, and explain the significance of citizenship. Providing an argument that suggests that citizens are inherently confused because of human psychology does not do much for validating the moral importance of becoming a citizen or of having citizenship (something that Rousseau was quite proud of). In Rousseau’s terms, this fragmentation of the individual mind is a problem because it suggests that the individual human is not capable of being able to consent to much of anything on his or her own, but needs to be given guidance. Moreover, if guidance is involved how

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is it possible for this guidance not to become coercion or how is the individual to know if the advice given is good advice? Rousseau has trouble on these points, and this lends further doubt to the idea of consent and contract justifying the obligation to die. However, in the next chapter, I challenge this negative view of human fragmentation and suggest that an individual being of two minds about something is not necessarily as negative as Rousseau claims. Rousseau’s argument may be confused, but it is highly influential in regard to the way he sets up the conditions under which it becomes possible to adopt obligations to the community and accept obligations designed to “uphold the political institutions of [the] society.”44 As human beings, he claims, people are incapable of living amongst each other in a society. A transformation is necessary in order to imbue a morality into the individual, a morality that is able to be both individual and collective. This transformation is the change from being a human being into a citizen. One may wonder why it is possible to presume that what a human being cannot do the citizen can, considering that the citizen is a remaking of this abstract human. Yet, this is the argument that Rousseau makes, and it is an argument designed to explain how life among people could be, not how life among humans is. There is a critical aspect to Rousseau’s political thought that is absent from Hobbes’, whose political thought presents a story about how politics could only be the way he describes. Shklar claims that Rousseau’s two models for human life, the “Spartan city” and the “tranquil household” are utopias, designed to illustrate “the contrast between the probable and the possible,” and thus demonstrate how far humankind has fallen.45 The Social Contract may have been written as a warning against despotism, but it fits into the utopian model of “the present political order revised.”46 The distinction that Rousseau makes between “man” and “citizen” provides two utopian solutions to the problems experienced by people living in society—inequality, lack of freedom, and psychological illness—that alienate them from their true, natural selves. The “man” solution is to find an idealized family life, detached from society and selfreliant, whereas, the “citizen” solution seeks order and ethical life in a particularly ordered state where individual malaise is treated by “losing oneself in a collectivity.”47 As utopias, they are both impossible to achieve; rather, they promise the possibility of how things could be considering the weaknesses of humanity. I will return to this dichotomy of “man” and “citizen” again in the next section, where I examine Kant’s argument for the obligation to die and where I question the plausibility of this heuristic construction of political identity. Rousseau’s argument justifying the obligation to die follows from a series of moves that are designed to establish a type of human being that will be capable

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of being politically obliged. This human being, this citizen, engages in a particular kind of life made possible by a social contract that enables as much freedom as possible and makes a moral life possible in civil society. According to Rousseau, the obligation to die is justified because of the value of the social contract, and to risk dying for the sake of what this contract provides is logical. Yet, Rousseau’s understanding of the human condition does not support this argument. Rousseau claims that humans are mentally and psychologically weak and that even with the social contract, life in civil society might be contemptible. In this regard, to die for the state is legitimized not because the state is necessarily righteous, but because one’s life would be worse without the state. Yet if people are as weak as Rousseau thinks, it is hard to understand how anybody could come the conclusion that the obligation to die is just because of the contract, because of what would happen in a life outside of this contract. At the core of this problem is the original move that Rousseau makes that separates the human condition into two possible ideal-types, homme (man) or citoyen (citizen), and then explains the transition from homme to citoyen. As a citizen, the obligation to die is possibly just, whereas as a human being that is not a citizen, this obligation is unthinkable, since this person does not live in the state and is not a member of any civil society. Yet, I want to suggest that this dichotomy is more complicated than it might appear, and is key to the entire way that consent theory justifies the obligation to die. The dichotomy between human being and citizen is, as I will demonstrate, a paradox in theory and practice. This paradox is not unique to Rousseau but to the idea of universal humans becoming citizens, and via Immanuel Kant it is to this problem that I will now turn. IMMANUEL KANT Kant is not sympathetic to the idea of justifying war, although he is not a pacifist. The purpose of this section is not to examine Kant’s thought on war, but to see how he develops the “man/citizen” dichotomy to provide a possible foundation for justifying the obligation to die. I argue that this dichotomy is questionable to such an extent that it cannot provide a satisfactory ground on which to justify the obligation to die. In order to make this case I will introduce Kant’s moral philosophy, explain how Kant tries to justify the obligation to die, point out the contradictions involved in Kant’s attempt and then follow these observations into a challenge over the “man/citizen” dichotomy. Patrick Riley claims that Immanuel Kant’s moral philosophy does not involve any “problem of political obligation through consent, contract, or promise,”48 and this absence of consent is presumed because Kant does not use the concept of consent in the conventional sense. Kant provides an inter-

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esting example of the contract since he is technically not a consent theorist. Kant is not a consent theorist per se because his moral philosophy does not require individuals to consent to the requests or demands of others, but ultimately there is a version of consent involved. His moral philosophy is based on an internalized abstract moral law, a metaphysics of morals. Kant’s basic moral proposition, or categorical imperative, is to “let your external actions be such that the free application of your will can co-exist with the freedom of everyone in accordance with a universal law.”49 Or, as translated by Hannah Arendt, “Always act in such a way that the maxim of your acts can become a general law.”50 Kant’s moral argument is complex. He provides numerous versions of the categorical imperative, or at least, various manifestations by which to understand the moral law.51 For example, in The Groundwork of the Metaphysics of Morals, he differentiates between a universal law (“Act only on that maxim through which you can at the same time will that it should become a universal law”) and a “universal imperative of duty” (“Act as if the maxim of your action were to become through your will a universal law of nature”).52 The universal law is based on the principle of a universal maxim whereas the universal imperative of duty is based on the possibility of one’s actions being transformed into a universal law. These subtle distinctions are characteristic of Kant’s philosophy. What is important to note is that Kant does use a version of consent in his moral philosophy. Unlike Rousseau and Hobbes, his version of what I am calling consent is completely internalized. The consent is an imagined consent that exists solely in the mind of the individual. The individual consents to what his or her will commands, provided that the command is consistent with it becoming a universal law. Kant’s moral philosophy, and thus his political philosophy, is based on an internal conversation about what actions are acceptable. The consent is a consent that emerges out of a conversation with oneself.53 Consequently, Kant’s version of the contract, and “he is a social contract theorist,”54 is notably different from either Hobbes’ or Rousseau’s. Kant treats contract exclusively as a hypothetical agreement. He supports the logic of the contract as “an idea of reason, which nonetheless has undoubted practical reality.”55 The contract enables normative relations in society. As Howard Williams writes, Kant regards the social contract as a moral ideal underlying a successful civil society. Historically, no such contract has probably been forged, however, from an ethical standpoint we have to consider society as resting upon such an agreement. With such a notional agreement in mind, legal and moral relations amongst individuals are made possible.56

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This understanding of the contract means that Kant’s political and moral philosophy are inextricably linked. The internalization of a universal moral maxim is the means by which the hypothetical contract is brought to political problems. In other words, political obligations are just if they comply with the categorical imperative. What does all of this mean for the obligation to die? In The Metaphysics of Morals Kant writes, If we consider the original right of free states in the state of nature to make war upon one another (for example, in order to bring about a condition closer to that governed by right), we must first ask what right the state has as against its own subjects to employ them in a war on other states, and to expend or hazard their possessions or even their lives in the process. Does it not then depend upon their own judgement whether they wish to go to war or not? May they simply be sent thither at the sovereign’s supreme command?57

Kant claims that if one is asked to go to war, all individuals should be given the option of whether or not to go. Individual consent is important and necessary. In this instance, actual consent is required, as well as the internal conversation requiring consent one has with his or her will. Kant is making a link between individual morality and political obligation. This individual is treated as an end in itself, and not as tool to achieve another end or goal. Kant writes, “Now I say that man, and in general every rational being, exists as an end in himself, not merely as a means for arbitrary use by this or that will: he must in all his actions, whether they are directed to himself or to other rational beings, always be viewed at the same time as an end.”58 In this instance, the obligation to die must respect this aspect of human individuality and identity, which is why actual consent is required. Yet, Hannah Arendt claims that in political problems Kant recognized a serious limit to his moral philosophy. According to Arendt, when it comes to the obligations demanded of citizens, Kant thought that moral thinking could not help.59 In his Essay on Perpetual Peace Kant writes, It . . . remains for men to create a good organization for the state, a task which is well within their capability, and to arrange it in such a way that their self-seeking energies are opposed to one another, each thereby neutralizing or eliminating the destructive effects of the rest. And as far as reason is concerned, the result is the same as if man’s selfish tendencies were non-existent, so that man, even if he is not morally good in himself, is nevertheless compelled to be a good citizen.60

Kant suggests that it is one’s duty to the state that matters more than one’s duty to human happiness or to morality. Kant makes the point “that a bad man can be a good citizen in a good state,”61 and by “bad” he means anyone who

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does not act in accordance with the universal law of right (the categorical imperative). Kant accepts that in the state it may be necessary for people to act in ways, which support the institutions of the state but not a moral kingdom of ends. Consequently, the one universal moral law that Kant seeks to build is ultimately rendered moot in a case where morality needs to be taken into consideration more than in any other: the obligation to die for the state. Kant’s condemnation of resistance to authority and of rebellion supports this conclusion, and he recognizes the state’s ability to use violence to suppress any challenges to the state.62 In this regard, Kant is a peculiar type of consent theorist. Kant is sometimes associated with the “social contract tradition,” where the idea of consent is important in a particular way. That is, the possibility of resistance to the sovereign might be argued to arise only for those who have previously consented to obey him. But for Kant, there is no question of consent as a necessary condition. It is always permissible to compel someone to enter one’s state, if one lives with him or comes into conflict over ownership, or if a relationship involving mutual rights could arise.63

Consequently, in Kant’s view any refusal to accept the obligation to die for the state could be an act of rebellion, provided that the head of the state acts according to the benefit of the state or the happiness of its inhabitants (which presumably should match). Such a leader must have the authority to “maintain [the state’s] strength and stability, both internally and against external enemies.”64 However, there is a tension here between Kant’s moral philosophy and his political argument. Should one listen to Kant the moral universalist who treats individuals as ends and argues that war is both morally and rationally wrong, or the Kant who claims that one should think freely but obey the political authorities?65 The possibility of an obligation to die in war is a political and moral affront to Kant’s philosophy. While he may opine about the possibility of a perpetual peace between republics in a federation of states, he also recognizes that sometimes politics involves difficult decisions worthy of a Machiavelli. Here the critical philosophy of Kant struggles, since it may be possible to logically construct an image of how the world could be (Rousseau’s political philosophy engages in this kind of theoretical activity to a lesser degree), but there is always the possibility of something coming into the equation that tests the universality of a kingdom of ends. The human mind is, as Rousseau knew, complicated and fragmented, and not capable of acting in accordance with a universal law all the time. There is always doubt, always chance, always some form of discrimination between ideas, people, values, and moral norms.

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Neither Kant’s objective moral philosophy nor his critical philosophy for a perpetual peace make room for these kinds of problems, and the obligation to die is the ultimate example that contradicts a premise of universal peace. The obligation may not occur regularly—one would hope not—but it is the possibility of it occurring that is the issue. In Kantian terms, until everybody is the same rational moral agent, there will always be the possibility of war, and since this universality is exceptionally unlikely to occur, there will always be the possibility of the obligation to die. People, however, are not the same, but Kant’s moral philosophy presumes that they are in the abstract, and as a consequence he argues that the morality of the citizen should be the same as that of the universal human being. Kant builds on Rousseau’s distinction between “man” and “citizen.”66 Whereas Rousseau placed morality squarely in the purview of the citizen (the morality required for life among others did not exist in “man”), Kant places morality in the abstract individual and it is by the metaphor of the contract that this morality applies to citizens. The distinction between the “citizen” and “man” is heuristic. As a dichotomous thinking device, it invites a forced choice between acting as a citizen or a universal human being. Yet, if humans are all morally equal why presume that this distinction is a fair choice, why presume that there even is a choice. Indeed, Kant seems reluctant to admit that it is possible to be either, and although he does not say it, his political thought implies that humans need to be both at the same time. If the obligation to die was based on this supposition, that it is impossible to separate the human from the citizen, then it should be possible to come up with an account of the obligation to die that is theoretically more amicable to the rights of other citizens as human beings and could include some version of consent. I attempt to provide such an account in the next chapter, at the moment, however, there remains the difficulty of how the dichotomy between the human being and the citizen challenges the justifiability of the obligation to die in consent theory. The problem is that traditional consent theory bases the justifiability of political obligation on the construction of citizens who are moral creatures by way of a transfer of human morality into citizen morality. If, however, this dichotomy is questioned and sufficiently called into doubt, then any justifiability for political obligations, including the obligation to die, is also called into doubt. There is a puzzle at work in the “man/citizen” dichotomy. As Kant claims, if humanity is the operating concept for politics, there would be no war. His accusation of just war theorists being “sorry comforters” follows in part from this claim.67 However, since politics is primarily about what goes on inside a bounded community (and possibly because humanity is an impossible concept to operationalize) it is necessary to turn to discourses of citizenship,

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which is where the obligation to die becomes relevant. Consent theory is usually based on the idea that consent occurs within state boundaries, and if humanity as a political category is to refer to anything, it is to the apolitical life that exists in-between states.68 However, the puzzle is that the morality of being a citizen is made possible by presuming that there is a morality that exists above and beyond citizenship, in the realm of the human, but this morality is meaningless in this realm since there is no political life outside of the state in which consent becomes an issue. In order to address this puzzle, consent and contract theorists create distinctions between the universals of humanity or individuality and the particularity of state citizenship. The cosmopolitan/ communitarian debate is precisely such an example. However, as Kant implies but does not assert, ultimately, the concepts of citizenship and humanity are not coherent if they are presumed to stand alone and choosing between them borders on the absurd. The dichotomy falsely assumes that people can isolate their obligations into a single locus of national citizenship or an amorphous and overly grandiose concept of humanity. If the dichotomy were to make sense, it would have to be possible to surgically separate what it means to be a citizen from what it means to be a human. This separation is impossible for even in some the most clear instances of having to act as a citizen, one does so because there is some kind of morality that is beyond citizenship—how else could there be human rights, or war crimes, or a just war tradition? Moreover, as will become clear, the abstractness of this dichotomy is troubling, since it presumes that if one is persecuted it will be possible to resist by claiming one’s membership in the universal fraternity of humankind, when one would clearly not have been persecuted in the first place if this universality meant anything. Furthermore, while the isolation of citizenship may be possible in times of extreme urgency or crisis, this assumption completely ignores the complexity of individual identity, which may not only be a fragmented self in Rousseau’s account, but could have other competing obligations such as gender, religioun, ethnicity, class, and so on. Think, for example, of the international brigades in the Spanish Civil war. Alternatively, the idea that each of us is obligated to all of humanity or to the universal of being human is an impossible obligation to accept once one takes into account all the complexity that comprises the human race. If, as I suggest, this dichotomy makes no sense, then any version of consent theory has a problem if it is to justify the obligation to die. The obligation to die is something that emerges out of being a citizen, and we are citizens because it is as citizens that humans are (so far at least) capable of living together. The problem is that if the human/citizen dichotomy presumably necessary for the citizenship argument to work as a moral argument is called into doubt, then any possibility that the obligation to die can

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be justified according to the normative basis of citizenship is also called into question. This problem presents itself in the way that the concept of human moral universalism functions in consent theory. Even in Kant’s hypothetical contract, membership that transforms individual human beings into citizens involves a trade. The trade can be one for security (Hobbes), for the possibility of moral life (Rousseau), or for the hypothetical requirement of applying moral thought to politics (Kant). In any of these arguments, a transformation takes place: the human being becomes a citizen. Living as a citizen means that one is primarily obliged as a citizen to the community which make citizenship possible and to all the other citizens who make up this community. Citizens from different countries may be equal human beings, but the division of the world into sovereign states means that it is as citizens that persons engage with others insofar as rights and obligations are concerned.69 Nevertheless, any possibility for understanding the conditions for citizens being moral creatures is based on either the moral universalism of being human (Kant) or a claim about universal moral equality (Rousseau, Kant, and in the sense of natural equality, Hobbes as well). Moral universalism is necessary in order for consent or contract theory to justify citizenship, but ironically, this universalism is useless because consent theory does not assume that people can actually live as moral human beings outside of becoming citizens. The assumption is that people cannot live amongst each other as universal moral agents; they can do so only as citizens, who are not universal moral agents since they may have moral constraints imposed upon them by the particularities of citizenship. Consequently, the moral universality that makes consent necessary or the objective moral law possible becomes compromised if not negated by the particularities of citizenship. In other words, the moral universalism that provides individuals the right to consent to political obligations, because they are morally equal (including consenting to the obligation to die) is compromised by a system that presumes such rights but ignores them.70 The basic universal moral assumptions that make consent theory possible are destroyed by consent theory because humans are presumed to be able to live only as citizens. Paradoxically, consent theory assumes that the moral human being is partially destroyed by the citizen who is created in order for the moral human being to survive. Not only is there no actual consent involved in this equation—there cannot be, the argument is entirely abstract—but if there were consent, the consent would be akin to killing a part of oneself. Oddly enough, there might not be an obligation to die, but an obligation to kill as the moral human is murdered for the sake of a lesser moral citizen. The human is sacrificed, at least in part, for the benefit of the citizen. Consent theory is sup-

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posed to promise a world of morally equal and free beings, but it actually leads to unhappy conclusions due to its foundational claim that humans are unable to live as the universal moral subjects they are presumed to be. So far in this chapter I have argued that traditional consent theory has a problem with the obligation to die. With Hobbes, the obligation to die is always problematized by his initial claim that no individual can relinquish the right to self-preservation. Rousseau knew that a part of what makes the state what it is, is its ability to demand of its citizens that they risk their lives on its behalf if necessary. The ability of the state to wage war is contingent on it being able to conscript an army, and once the idea of the army became tied to the nation and not, for example, to foreign mercenaries, consent theorists had to find a way to explain how the citizen could be presumed to be justifiably obliged to risk his or her life by being sent into war. Rousseau saw this connection in ancient Greece and of the ideal Spartan citizen who knew that as a citizen it might be necessary to risk his life in war. Yet Rousseau did not see this type of citizen in the modern world. Rousseau saw a human being that was corrupted and fragmented, and he hoped that the idea of the social contract would enable these corrupted beings to become moral creatures in civil society. The contract includes the obligation to die, and the morality of the citizen is supposed to include a recognition of this fact, and as a consequence it becomes possible to think of how the modern citizen could consent to the obligation to die. Yet, Rousseau’s argument is doubtful since it remains questionable how a fragmented and confused individual could come to terms with how the obligation to die is justified. Rousseau’s argument starts with the idea that there are two different ideal-types of human beings, those that exist outside of civil society, “men,” and those that exist inside of civil society, “citizens.” His hypothesis is that humans become citizens and in the process achieve a form of morality that was unnecessary in “man” but was, in a sense, latent, which is why Rousseau claims that humans are born good and that they need to find this good as citizens as best as possible in conditions of civil society. It is this dichotomy that lies at the root of consent theory, since it makes it possible to understand how humans share a universal morality that makes them morally equal and how this universal equality is transferred to the particularities of politics that are state bounded. An ultimate expression of this transference is Kant’s ideal of the perpetual peace, since the peace is made possible by a federation of republican states and not some singular global state. Kant is also troubled by the obligation to die, since in one way it is immoral to send anybody to their possible death in war for the sake of the state, but in another, the state has the right to such an obligation if it is in the state’s (or better still, the people’s) best interests. As Kant knew, the obligation to die exists as a part of state life, but what I have argued above is that the traditional

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distinction between human beings and citizens, as argued by Rousseau and then Kant, cannot justify the obligation to die. The basic problem with the human/citizen dichotomy is that it presumes that there is a universal human morality, but it also presumes that this morality is meaningless outside of citizenship, and citizens are not necessarily presumed to share the same morality as citizens from other countries due to the circumstances or exigencies of state-based political life. This problem is important for the obligation to die because consent theory justifies the obligation to die according to the morality of citizenship, which in turn is justified according to the project of trying to bring universal human morality into state-based socio-political life. If the distinction does not work, the obligation to die cannot be justified. In the remainder of this chapter I will examine Michael Walzer’s examination of the obligation to die before making some more general critical comments about consent arguments justifying the obligation to die. The human/citizen dichotomy is not the only serious problem with consent theory justifications for the obligation to die, and after completing my examination of select consent theorists (Hobbes, Rousseau, Kant, and Walzer), I will turn to the general problem of what consent means in consent theory. I then, in the final section of this chapter, turn to modern Jewish history to illustrate how the human/citizen dichotomy of consent theory ran into trouble by making possible an argument that could not justify an obligation to die, but did justify an obligation to be killed by the state, and how when consent is involved in the obligation to die it is not difficult to jettison consent and replace it with force.

MICHAEL WALZER Michael Walzer has been exceptionally influential in reviving the subjects of just war, consent, and political obligation. Walzer’s unique combination of these traditions or political discourses solves some of the confusion, but also creates a few problems or uncertainties. One objection to Walzer’s account of obligation is that it is “ultimately deeply ambiguous.”71 Indeed, Walzer’s exploration of the obligation to die is notably inconclusive. Nevertheless, Walzer does clear up some of the confusion involving the obligation to die. In particular, he offers a solution to a fundamental problem in contract theory. The fundamental problem that Walzer addresses is how to reconcile contradictory assumptions: that of the moral and rational unjustifiability of war, the idea that human beings are innately equal, and the political construction of an international system that in liberal theory is based on these claims but

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also often rejects these premises. The problem is as follows: As Kant indicates, going to war is a rational and moral absurdity. War does not correspond to the categorical imperative and killing other humans clearly violates both this moral law and the argument to treat humans as ends in themselves. Yet, war happens. Moreover, there is a problem with contract theory that illustrates a greater problem for consent theory: why it is logical for consent theory to explain conditions of peace inside the state while in the process setting up a condition of war or chaos or anarchy in between states? Walzer addresses this problem but he does not explain it. Consequently, to explain the problem I will return briefly to Rousseau. According to Stanley Hoffmann, Rousseau paints a pessimistic view of international affairs. As Rousseau argues . . . [by] the very effort to assure domestic order (the state) provokes chaos and conflict on the international level. Consequently, the citizen is caught in what Rousseau calls in The State of War a ‘mixed condition’—torn between the laws of the domestic social order and the violence that results from sovereign states in a world state of nature.72

Rousseau writes in The State of War that, “With the first society formed, the formation of all the others necessarily follows. One must either belong to it or unite to resist it. One must either imitate it or let oneself be swallowed by it.”73 In Emile he comments on the destructive tendencies of republics in international relations: “Thus the wars of republics are more cruel than those of monarchies. But if the wars of kings are less cruel, their peace is terrible; better be their foe than their subject.”74 The war of all against all that Hobbes presents as the state of nature but not of international relations75 is in fact quite close to what Rousseau has to say about international relations. Yet, how does this disturbing portrait of international relations square with the logic of the social contract which implies that all people respect the right of others to “sign” their own contract? Why is it presumed that the contract sets up those conditions in between states which it seeks to avoid inside the state? Why does the logic of contract not involve the mutual respect of other people’s rights to contract and thus lead to nonaggression—even liberal democracies have been aggressive against other countries. In his critique of contract logic, Andrew Linklater notes this problem in, Men and Citizens in the Theory of International Relations, where he references Sir Robert Filmer.76 Filmer (1588–1653), an ardent monarchist and patriarchalist, recognized that if all people have the same rights then if one group decides to have a monarchy, it must respect the rights of others to make the same decision.77 Linklater similarly argues that any social contract theory must respect the right of other communities and other peoples to form their

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own contract and establish their own state. Consequently, contract theory implies that all of humankind consents to dividing the world into separate states.78 David Novak notes this tension as well, when he writes, “Because the social contract stems from the rights of persons even prior to their becoming citizens of a democracy, a society based on a social contract can also respect and defend the human rights of all human beings everywhere or anywhere.”79 Walzer avoids this tension and offers a possible solution to these problems by adopting the language of international law and claiming that a just war is based on a response to an illegal act of aggression. Therefore, the just party is not rejecting anybody’s rights, but is reacting to a rejection of its own rights. At the heart of this argument is a Hegelian belief in the intrinsic value of the state or community. In Spheres of Justice, Walzer writes, “The community itself is a good—conceivably the most important good—that gets distributed.”80 In his various writings, Walzer provides two theories of state. The first one is the social contract argument, an argument that he refers to in Just and Unjust Wars and in The Moral Standing of States, whereas his second theory, found in Spheres of Justice, is critical of the contract. In The Moral Standing of States he writes, And I will compound my putative conservatism by saying at the outset that that community rests most deeply on a contract, Burkeian in character, among “the living, the dead, and those who are yet to be born.” It is hard therefore, to imagine the assembly at which it was ratified. Contract, as I wrote in [Just and Unjust Wars], is a metaphor. The moral understanding on which the community is founded takes shape over a long period of time. But the idea of communal integrity derives its moral and political force from the rights of contemporary men and women to live as members of a historic community and to express their inherited culture through political forms worked out among themselves. . . .81

He has a different argument in Spheres of Justice where he is highly critical of the social contract argument as argued by John Rawls. Walzer challenges the plausibility of Rawls’s “veil of ignorance.”82 For Walzer, the question is not about what rational individuals would choose, but “what would individuals like us choose.”83 In Obligations he writes, “The individual’s contract is obviously not a founding act; nor, I think, is it simply a solemn promise upon which all subsequent obligation is based…. Rather, the contract must involve some acknowledgment of the reality of the common life and of the moral transformation which it makes possible.”84 Walzer’s use of two different theories of state results from his leaning toward the Kantian version of the contract, a hypothetical agreement that exists for heuristic purposes, while recognizing the empirical reality of human differences and the importance of society or community for moral and political obligations.

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Walzer’s use of these two different approaches also provides an illustration of the difficulty in linking domestic political theory with international relations. Walzer’s confused use of the domestic analogy—he conflates it with the legalist paradigm85—is a way of sorting out the same problem. As the obligation to die illustrates, even the most sympathetic account of the value of life in the state or community can run up against the dangerous possibilities contained in international relations. Thus, while the metaphor of the contract, or the logic of consent, can presumably eradicate war inside the state, it cannot destroy the possibility of war between states. Consequently, the obligation to die needs to be justified by a theory that is intended to remove a particular kind of violence (war) while maintaining the possibility of the state calling its citizens to go to war. For Walzer, a just theory of state involves some form of consent or contract because of the intrinsic moral value of being human. Walzer is here restating the basic liberal premise that emphasizes the individual subject, even though he is critical of treating the individual as a total abstraction. Consequently, when it comes to the obligation to die for the community, Walzer focuses on the significance of the individual and not on the value of the community.86 He ends his essay on the obligation to die by claiming that, All this comes dangerously near to suggesting that a man is obligated to die only if he feels or thinks himself obligated. That seems to be the consequence of arguing first, with Rousseau, that there are moral goods for which a man might well be bound to die, and arguing, secondly, against Rousseau, that it is never possible to say that a particular man is bound to die for a particular moral good (unless he has said so himself).87

To claim that the obligation to die exists only if it is presumed to exist by each citizen is true in a sense, since at issue are social constructions. Moreover, there is something comforting about presuming that this obligation exists in the minds of the citizens and not in the abilities of the sovereign or the remote halls of government. However, this conclusion is not especially helpful or illuminating. It is ironic that this is one of Walzer’s conclusions considering that he wrote this essay in response to the Vietnam War, which involved a draft for a war that many did not support. However, so long as Walzer’s conclusion is of this kind, then the draft in this war would be just, which would seem to run counter to the intent of Walzer’s examinations on war and ethics. The lottery of the draft at this time surely lends some empirical doubt as to how far consent really matters when it comes to war. To be fair, Walzer’s essay, The Obligation to Die, is exceptional in scope and detail, and the strengths of the essay are in his observations about some of the classical arguments that have served to justify this obligation. As an argument serving to

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explain how the obligation could be just, however, the essay is lacking for Walzer does not explain how the obligation to die can be justified. His final statement on the obligation is to claim that people will choose to accept the obligation to die because it is a part of choosing to live like a citizen. Yet, as I argue, it is a complete fiction to presume that such a choice takes place, and it is doubtful that all those who were drafted into the Vietnam War went feeling that they were acting as responsible citizens. Moreover, this argument does not explain what it is about the state that enables it to justifiably oblige its citizens to risk their lives in war. One of Walzer’s conclusions in the essay is that feeling obliged and being obliged are different, and that being obliged is in a sense contingent on being a good citizen, bound to the common life of the community. Hegel, Rousseau, and Socrates heavily influence this argument. Indeed, the death of Socrates is an important example of the obligation to die. Yet, what does it mean to be a good citizen? Does being a good citizen mean that one has to be prepared to die for the state? If so, why? How does being a good citizen explain why the sovereign may justifiably oblige its subjects (in this case, citizens) in this manner? Why does being a good citizen mean that the sovereign can be presumed to have the power to oblige in this way? Walzer is either curiously silent or overly brief in regard to these questions insofar as they serve to justify the obligation to die. His justification of the liberal egalitarian state could provide some headway into what is necessary for the obligation to be just, although this line of inquiry would lead to a debate about what sort of state could justifiably oblige, which is a different question from what is it about the state that gives it the ability to justifiably send its citizens to their possible death in war and, subsequently, how this obligation is justified. If one were to take the consent argument at face value and presume that consent does take place, what would happen in a state where consent does not take place, or if people do not consent and are forced to go into war anyway? In this case, the obligation could not be morally justifiable, but in general remarkably little would be affected since the obligation would still stand and most citizens would still be sent or go into war, as was the case in the Vietnam War.88 Nevertheless, it may be important to consider whether or not the character of the state is important for the obligation to die to be just. The majority of Walzer’s essays on obligation follow the citizen/individual focus, which is often the way with liberal philosophers. As Carole Pateman writes, “We are told (how often by political theorists!) that we are citizens and political obligation is inferred from this. . . .”89 The common consent theory approach is to presume that political obligations exist and to then provide some justification for political obligation instead of asking why political obligations exist in the first place.90 To claim citizenship as an answer is not

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enough. Walzer is both inside and outside of this tradition, although this location does not resolve any ambiguity in his conclusion about the obligation to die. Part of the reason Walzer’s argument for the obligation to die is inconclusive is because liberal philosophy requires such uncertainty. Any theory that is based on the value of the individual human being and treats moral and political problems as they exist in relation to individual moral autonomy is going to run into such difficulties. One can try to work one’s way out of these problems, as Harry Beran, Carole Pateman, and Margaret Gilbert do.91 Yet regardless of how successful one’s theory of political obligation may be, there is always the problem of this obligation to risk one’s life by being sent into war. It is significant that Gilbert starts her account with the illustration of Socrates’ willingness to go to his death, and yet she proceeds to ignore this problem. The obligation to die is a sore spot for any liberal thinker since even the possibility of this obligation arising implies that the moral autonomy of the individual can be constrained and put at risk by what should be, according to the theory, a prime illustration of a voluntarist issue, but cannot be. To be fair, Walzer recognizes these features of the state and of sovereignty, although his most sophisticated analysis of this issue is not in his essay, The Obligation to Die for the State, but in his other essays, Political Alienation and Military Service and Conscientious Objection.92 These essays, however, do not explain how the sovereign may justifiably oblige its subjects to risk their lives by being sent to war, other than with a reminder that the ability of the sovereign to oblige in this way has a history that goes back to ancient Greece and that this ability is somehow linked to the positive value of life in the state. CONSENT AND CHOICE That consent and contract theories have difficulty explaining political obligation is well known. Prior to Pateman’s book, J. P. Plamenatz and T. H. Green noted that these theories are highly complex and may not offer that which they promise. In a classic about political obligation, T. H. Green claims that it is impossible for contract theory to explain political obligation. So long as the contract argument is used obligations to the sovereign, . . . can only be met either by some device for representing the individuals as so consenting to the exercise of sovereign power over them that it is no violation of their individual rights, or by representing the rights of individuals as derived from the sovereign and thus as having no existence against it. But it is obviously very often against the will of individuals that sovereign power is exercised over them; indeed if it were not so, its characteristic as a power of compulsion would

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be lost; it would not be a sovereign power; and the fact that the majority of a given multitude may consent to its exercise over an unconsenting minority is no justification for its exercise over that minority, if its justification is founded on consent; the representation that the minority virtually consents to be bound by the will of the majority being an obvious fiction.93

Moreover, sovereign power alone cannot explain obligation since such an argument confuses “I ought to” with “I am forced to,” thereby ignoring the basics of “human consciousness.”94 Even one of Green’s critics, J. P. Plamenatz, suggests that consent alone is not enough to explain why citizens will obey the government, even in a representative democracy.95 Furthermore, contract theory is disingenuous since it is to some extent deterministic. Since the world is already divided up into states, in which moral individuals are presumed unable to live amongst each other without the limits imposed by citizenship or state sovereignty, to argue that the world needs to be divided up into states is to say remarkably little other than that while life inside the state could be improved, this life is the only life attainable by humans. Contract explains the way things are but it presumes that no other possibilities for human life are possible or how human organization of the world into sovereign states could be improved. As a presentist theory it has a difficult time responding to change or to any sort of spatial politics that views political space in non–nation-state or sovereign-state terms. There are always other possibilities and one role of political theory is to think about alternatives and to challenge the logic of the present. These are all issues that should be kept in mind since the obligation to die is an obligation that emerges out of the construction of the world into sovereign states, and is an obligation that is possible only so long as humans are prepared, as citizens, to wage war against each other. Historically, the terms and practice of consent also pose a problem for consent theories, and further challenge the human/citizen dichotomy. Consent theories emerged out of a political climate that universalized the human being in a moral way. The Declaration of the Rights of Man is possibly the first explicitly political expression of this universal humanism. To belong to this universal humanity, one would have to become a citizen, with full legal and political equality. In other words, the state makes it possible for a person to be a human being by becoming a citizen. However, the state, especially when the concept of the nation merged with the idea of the state, has been a poor guarantor of these universal rights. The state became the power that could entrench these universal rights and in the process has the ability to define rights and decide who gets them. There are two problems here. First, the abstract universalism contained in consent theory is meaningless since consent theory presumes that everybody is the same. Communities,

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however, have never been homogenous. Consent universalism presumes that differences do not matter, which is clearly false and this falsehood has given way to various theories of minority rights that challenge the homogeneity of the state, but are not necessarily challenges to the underlying assumptions behind the human/citizen dichotomy.96 Second, for any of these rights discourses to make sense, for consent theory to adequately explain how it is possible for humans to take on duties on behalf of the institutions of the state, the theory needs to involve an account of choice. If a theory is going to presume moral equality, then it follows that these moral agents need to be given the choice to accept any kind of obligation or duty. Any kind of consent imagined needs to involve a fair choice. However, as a theory of state, consent does not provide any such choice. The few choices that are available are restricted to spheres of activity that the state is prepared to accept (such as civil disobedience, and anyone who has ever participated in such acts knows, the state places firm rules on what sort of disobedience is acceptable, where it can take place, and so on).97 In a more extreme but perhaps more significant example, the choice of whether to consent or not to the institutions of the state are often not really choices at all; one can always reject the laws of the community, but to do so is to place oneself outside of the law and to become a criminal. To choose between being a criminal or a law-abiding citizen is not really a fair choice. One logical solution to this problem is to claim that if enough people do not support the laws of the community, they can change them, leave the community, or secede and create a new state.98 Again, these are not realistic options. One has to have the means and opportunity to move to another country and any act of secession would almost certainly involve a war. Laws can change, but such changes are heavily circumscribed. There is a serious deception at the heart of most consent and contract versions of the liberal state. Pateman writes, For three centuries liberal theorists have claimed that the relationship between citizens and the liberal state rests upon the voluntary creation of, or agreement to, political obligation. It is now so widely accepted that the liberal democratic state is based on consent, on ‘will not force,’ that this has come to be treated as a fact about the state. A critical analysis of the liberal theories of political obligation, and an examination of some aspects of the realities of the liberal democratic state, shows that this claim, like the social contract, is a political fiction. Liberal voluntarism is hypothetical voluntarism—and the hypothesis is unfounded.99

This fiction reveals itself when faced with the problems posed by the obligation to die. The introduction of voluntary armed forces instead of national

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draft does little to resolve this problem. A government has the ability to conscript. That a government chooses not to does not mean that the state has permanently relinquished this ability. Moreover, it is worth asking who volunteers for the armed forces, what demographics does such service attract, and is joining the armed forces made by those on a level playing field as the rest of society.100 Life in a community, in a state, clearly does not involve free choice, but this is what most classical liberal theories of consent describe and promise. Without free choice, one might wonder what the point of consent is? While consent theory does promise a lot, it would be a disservice to presume that consent theorists have not provided caveats to their theories or recognized that at stake in consent is not absolute freedom, but as much freedom as possible. Nevertheless, even when consent theory is recognized by those within its ranks to be deceptive, the solution is to make the theory additionally abstract so its deceptions can be glossed over. For example, political philosophers have not been so naïve to presume that actual consent exists. In fact, it is well known that consent theory does not necessarily involve any actual consent. The liberal philosopher’s solution to this problem is to introduce the concept of tacit consent, which John Locke does in his Second Treatise of Government.101 Locke’s innovation of tacit consent establishes consent as a heuristic device designed to illuminate the moral framework of political life, although even tacit consent presumes that some form of actual consent takes place.102 Consequently, Locke has been tremendously influential in this regard. Pateman writes, Most consent theorists implicitly follow Locke, and assume that all adults who remain in their country of birth have voluntarily taken up the opportunity of membership (and political obligation), so that what remains for the theorist is to indicate through which of their voluntary actions they continue to give consent.103

However, Pateman is critical of this approach due to its presumption that political obligations are simply presumed to exist. The idea of tacit consent makes for an easy target due to its uncritical and presentist characteristics. Tacit consent also leaves much to be desired since, as Pateman, notes, almost anything could be construed to be a consenting act. Silence can be consent, regardless of what one is silent about.104 Thus, consent is generally thought of as an abstract category referring to political, social, and legal compliance. The idea of tacit or imagined consent is an additional abstraction to an already abstract concept. Consequently, the idea that the already abstract notion of consent can be made more real by

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making it more abstract is odd. Moreover, if the consent is tacit, it is difficult to know how far the consent goes (as Locke recognizes), which serves to provide additional doubt about how much consent there actually is. Unsurprisingly, Locke links the notion of tacit consent to property; however, since property is already a social construction (as Marx points out), then there needs to be some pre-tacit consent to the social construction of property. Furthermore, the recognition of tacit consent seems to indicate a begrudging acceptance that there is a problem at the heart of consent theory—in this case contract theory—which the premise of consent cannot resolve. It may be desirable to try to make sense out of contract, to replace tacit consent with something else or to use the moral framework of moral universality upon which consent is based to rewrite a theory of political voluntarism in the hopes of establishing a more convincing account of how human morality can apply to politics. However, as I have demonstrated, there are some serious problems with the basic assumptions in consent theory. This liberal individual approach, which is often a contractual approach, is, as Cheyney Ryan argues, to take the obligation to die for granted, but to attempt to circumscribe the obligation in such a way so that it is a not too controversial addition to theories that emphasise a right of self-preservation.105 Ryan suggests that because the liberal individual tradition of consent and contract cannot explain the obligation to die, but merely acquiesce to its existence, the entire liberal tradition should be re-examined.106 He has a point. Significant contract theories cannot justify the obligation to die, because of a paradox internal to the theory, questionable assumptions, or tensions between how it becomes possible to transfer individual human morality to the sovereign. Contract is the best-known metaphor that seeks to accomplish this transfer and I suggest that it fails. The failure is noticeable in theory and, as I will now illustrate, in practice.

THE JEWISH EXPERIENCE OF THE HUMAN/CITIZEN DICHOTOMY The purpose of this section is to demonstrate the dark side of the human/citizen dichotomy with reference to modern Jewish history. Consent theory works, if at all, because of the way it recognizes human beings who are moral creatures but are unable to live amongst each other without becoming citizens. The obligation to die is justified in consent theory by claiming that humans need to live as citizens, and one of the duties of being a citizen is to possibly risk one’s life for the state. The purpose of this section is to further

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question the human/citizen dichotomy that serves as the foundation for the consent account of political obligation. Using Arendt’s classic, The Origins of Totalitarianism, I intend to demonstrate how this dichotomy can go tragically wrong and how Zionism and assimilationism were not sufficiently critical of this dichotomy. Both Zionism and assimilationism accepted the basic logic of modern consent theories: that individuals are born with innate rights that should be respected and protected by the state. In defense of assimilationism, Moses Mendelssohn wrote a political tract trying to convince Jews that they could be Jewish and citizens in the Christian states of Europe, and trying to convince Christians that granting Jews equal citizenship would not threaten the state.107 Assimilationism and Zionism did not, of course, argue the same thing but they did accept similar assumptions and ultimately assimilationism, and Zionism in particular, illustrate a problem of the modern project of turning human beings into citizens. This dichotomy between the moral human being and the political human being is described by Hannah Arendt as “the secret conflict between state and nation.”108 Arendt claims that this conflict became visible in the aftermath of the French Revolution, when the Revolution “combined the Rights of Man with the demand for national sovereignty.”109 The sovereign state redefined universal human rights into national rights. In other words, human rights could be “protected and enforced only as national rights. . . .”110 Arendt’s critique of modern Jewish history is not just a critique of the Jewish Question111 and of Zionism,112 but also of modern consent theory. Consequently, in order to illustrate how Zionism and the Jewish Question duplicate the problems in consent theory, I explore Arendt’s critique of the supposedly moral universalism of modernity. A consequence of this merger of state and nation was that nationalism eventually came to triumph over universal human rights and that the particularity of the citizen trumped the universality of the human being. The individual human being came to be recognized as a citizen with rights, but rights that only the state could provide and protect. However, accompanying this modern combination of human rights and national politics was the unfortunate discrimination against national minorities who were not necessarily recognized as citizens of the nation-state, and in the inter-war period the protection of national minorities came under the purview of the League of Nations.113 The League was not up to the task and the incompetence of the League further established how only the state could protect human rights. Ultimately, the merger of the Rights of Man with national sovereignty created a modern paradox whereby the sovereign nation-state is a necessary condition for human rights and is its worst violator. Nevertheless, this merger’s most long-lasting lesson is the need for a state or some equivalent. “The fundamental deprivation of human rights is mani-

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fested first and above all in the deprivation of a place in the world which makes opinions significant and actions effective.”114 However, at stake here is something “more fundamental than freedom and justice” but the right to have rights.115 In the process of creating a theory of rights, the most fundamental of rights was forgotten, the right to have rights.116 Paradoxically, and to great misfortune, this right was not recognized until the modern world created peoples who could have no rights. In Europe it was the discrimination and destruction of minority populations that illuminated the importance of the right to have rights and demonstrated how fragile the abstraction of universal human rights is. The Jewish Question is an empirical illustration of this fragility, and from multiple angles. First, the Nazi Final Solution made it clear that the modern merger of human rights with the nation-state is not the solution for the entrenchment of human dignity. Second, the Jews learned that having any rights at all was contingent on belonging as citizens to a nation-state, which led to Zionism and the creation of their own state. Thus, and paradoxically, the Jews of modern Europe learned that universal human rights were meaningless without a state to enforce them, but that the only way this enforcement could take place was if there were no minority populations, which could challenge the homogeneity of the nation or the perceived homogeneity of the state. During the two decades preceding World War One, many Jews were faced with the odd situation of having citizenship, which was recognized abroad more than at home, as “it was far easier for an Austrian Jew to be accepted as an Austrian in France than in Austria.”117 The international society of these years, characterized by fin-de-siècle cosmopolitan ideals was, paradoxically, the only place that equality of citizenship actually meant something. “The spurious world of citizenship of this generation, this fictitious nationality which they claimed as soon as their Jewish origin was mentioned, in part already resembled those passports which later granted their owner the right to sojourn in every country except the one that issued it.”118 According to Arendt, the Jewish Question ignored the context in which, for the most part, citizenship was more important internationally, whereas for the Jews it was the concept of humanity that mattered the most at home. Therefore, it is not surprising that international society was seemingly more tolerant of the Jewish citizen than was his or her state, for international society recognizes the equality of citizenship as a human right without having to account for the different social and cultural groups which comprise the citizenry. Any political obligation to die would, consequently, make sense in terms of what international society recognizes but domestic political life ignores, namely the importance of enabling the citizenry equality of condition before the law and the opportunity to become involved in political life. However, since this obligation is state-based locating its justifiability in the international sphere makes no sense.

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The greater problem of citizenship, of the pursuit for assimilation and thus of equal political condition is “among the greatest and most uncertain ventures of modern mankind. The more equal conditions are, the less explanation there is for the differences that actually exist between people, and thus all the more unequal do individuals and groups become.”119 With political life being framed in the aftermath of the Universal Rights of Man, it became additionally important to emphasize how different peoples are equal. Consequently, in the pursuit of political equality, the advocates of Jewish rights, including nationalist philosopher J. G. Herder, emphasized how different the Jews are. “Eager to stress the basic unity of mankind, they wanted to show the origins of the Jewish people as more alien, and hence more exotic, than they actually were, so that the demonstration of humanity as a universal principle might be more effective.”120 Consequently, the politics of the universal rights of humans-turned-citizens are based on de-emphasizing the importance of the differences contained in humanity, differences which need to be emphasized before they can be reduced in value. The ultimate perversion of this already disturbed logic is that whereas being a Jew could be considered criminal before the universal discourse of human rights, afterwards being Jewish could be considered no longer a crime but a vice, with devastating consequences. As far as the Jews were concerned, the transformation of the ‘crime’ of Judaism into the fashionable ‘vice’ of Jewishness was dangerous in the extreme. Jews had been able to escape from Judaism into conversion; from Jewishness there was no escape. A crime, moreover, is met with punishment; a vice can only be exterminated.121

Ultimately, the distinction between the human and the citizen did not bode well for European Jewry. Paradoxically, and tragically, whereas this dichotomy serves to make possible the obligation to die for the state, for the Jew, being a citizen carried with it a very different obligation. Rather, the history of the Jews shows that this dichotomy did not so much provide the conditions of possibility for an obligation to die for the state but an obligation to be killed by the state. The traditional categories of citizen and humanity used in consent discourse may provide a philosophical basis to explain political life among morally equal beings, provided that one ignores how disturbing these categories are or can be. This fateful truth became, unfortunately, additionally visible in Zionism. A basic problem in the human/citizen dichotomy is that it does not contain any insurance against what happens when the universal human rights that it presumes to protect fall apart. As a critique it is easy to point to gross violations of human rights inside a state as an indication that the state is not nec-

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essarily the best defender of the universal human values that consent theory is based on. But any response to such a critique would most likely argue that such a state is a deviant from the expected and defended norm. However, in any sovereign community there is the chance of ignoring the moral universality that led to consent becoming a moral and political category. An example of this is when in the aftermath of the Second World War Jewish Displaced Persons in Europe were forcibly conscripted into a Jewish army in Palestine. These Jews should have been accorded every political right and moral courtesy possible after surviving the Shoah but instead the Jewish authorities in charge of the camps eventually forced some of them into military service. The military forces they were conscripted into were intended to be used in the fight for a Jewish democratic state, thereby further illustrating how even when democratic politics are at stake consent can be easily discarded, as it indeed was. In 1947 Nahum Shadmi, a future Brigadier General in the Israeli army, was sent to Europe by the Haganah where he helped set up paramilitary training camps and schools for Jewish survivors. Shadmi knew that there would be a military manpower shortage in Palestine, and he tried to consolidate Zionist activity in Europe in order to set up the possibilities of mobilizing already trained survivors. His proposal was rejected at first, but once the UN passed Resolution 181, on November 29, 1947, the Haganah command changed its mind.122 In late February 1948, Zionist organizations (the Jewish Agency, political party leaders, and Haganah representatives) met in Paris and passed a resolution requiring all men and women between the ages of 17 and 35 in the Jewish Displaced Persons (DP) camps to register for the forthcoming Israeli army. Shadmi proposed that such a requirement made sense since being a Jew was the equivalent to being a Zionist, a potential citizen of the Jewish state even though this state did not yet exist. Instituting a national draft in the DP camps was an exceptionally difficult, not to mention contentious, task. The historian Yosef Grodzinsky writes, The necessity of a general mobilization was obvious, yet the leadership had none of the formal authority that a sovereign state has, by virtue of which it can call on its citizens to come out and defend their country. Whatever powers the leadership possessed depended on its legitimacy within the Yishuv, not on the law. Worse yet, security matters were all in the hands of the paramilitary Haganáh, an organization with no capability of carrying out a compulsory draft, especially one aimed at reaching people from all walks of life.123

The solution was to create, in November 1947, a civilian agency, ha-Merckaz le-Sheyrut ha-‘Am, that took over setting up the infrastructure for a future

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draft of Jewish DPs in Germany.124 A draft in the Yishuv, while legally dubious, had at least the popular support of the Jews in Palestine, but a draft in Europe on behalf of the Yishuv was another matter. In this case, not only was the drafting agency moving to infringe on American and British sovereignty in Germany, but also, the draft was for an entity that was not even a state. Moreover, the candidates for the draft were not inhabitants, let alone citizens, of the geographic region in which statehood was about to be proclaimed. The Yishuv leadership was calling on Jewish DPs in Germany and Austria to come defend a territory that they did not know, and whose language they did not speak.125

Surprisingly, the Yishuv leadership did not discuss any of these issues. In fact, “The Zionist leadership took the allegiance of Jewish DPs to its cause for granted.”126 There was infighting within the Zionist establishment over this draft, but it was over internal power issues and individual jurisdiction.127 The international and greater moral issues were not addressed. The plan for the draft had four stages: Zionist propaganda, registration of DPs, a voluntary draft, and finally a forced conscription. Orders were also coming from the Yishuv that only draft-eligible Jews were to be brought to Palestine for immigration, anyone not suitable to fight was to be left in the DP camps. The propaganda and the voluntary draft did not work. Morale in the camps was low, the Cold War was accelerating rapidly, and Jews from the Soviet side were trying to get into the American and British DP camps. There was a large black market in the camps, emigration to the United States was proving to be difficult due to political deliberations in Congress, Jews saw former Nazis getting elected to local political posts in Germany, and violence in Palestine was not proving to be much of a lure to emigrate there. Consequently, with the failure of the voluntary draft (under a thousand signed up), the policy changed to forced conscription. Eligible draftees who refused to sign up suffered. Employees in the local Zionist agencies (the Central Committee) who refused were fired, “residents were evicted from their apartments, others were fined,128 or denied the supplementary food rations that the [American Jewish Joint Distributive Committee] was distributing to all camp Jews; others were simply beaten up.”129 There were violent attacks on draft dodgers across the DP camps in Germany and Austria (primarily from March to August 1948). In at least one case, a father was beaten up because his son refused to sign up.130 The example of the Zionist draft in the DP camps illustrates how consent is presumed to function in relation to the obligation to die. Individuals are given the choice to sign up and go to war, under the assumption that they will accept this obligation. However, once it becomes clear that most are unwilling to consent to being placed into war, the value of consent is disregarded.

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The sovereign decides, and in such cases it is difficult to morally justify the obligation to die according to the presumed values of consent. Interestingly, it is Hegel who was most aware of this problem, not the traditional consent theorists, since Hegel knew that he had to provide a significant enough reason why anybody would consent to the obligation. The consent theorists, enamoured perhaps by their moral discovery of individual greatness and universal morality, missed this point. What is needed, and what I propose in the next chapter, is to provide a version of politics that is not prone to rejecting the moral significance behind the value of consent.

CONCLUSION The idea of incorporating into Zionist thought an obligation to die for the sovereign appears in the political novels, theories, and strategies of early Zionist thinkers, culminating in a forced draft of Jewish DPs. Not only did Zionist thought include such an obligation, it articulated this obligation in a variety of ways that mirror the modern discourse of how the human becomes the citizen. Zionism, by adopting the idea that state and nation can be joined, recreated the basic problem contained in the universal rights discourse of modern consent theory. Arendt writes, Not only did the loss of national rights in all instances entail the loss of human rights; the restoration of human rights, as the recent example of the State of Israel proves, has been achieved so far only through the restoration or the establishment of national rights. The conception of human rights, based upon the assumed existence of a human being as such, broke down at the very moment when those who professed to believe in it were for the first time confronted with people who had indeed lost all other qualities and specific relationships—except that they were still human. The world found nothing sacred in the abstract nakedness of being human. And in view of objective political conditions, it is hard to say how the concept of man upon which human rights are based—that is created in the image of God (in the American formula), or that he is the representative of mankind, or that he harbors within himself the sacred demands of natural law (in the French formula)—could have helped to find a solution to the problem.131

The unfortunate reality is that the Zionist answer to the Jewish Question did not resolve all the problems the Zionists claimed to have resolved. Rather, Zionism replicated the underlying problems contained in consent theory’s abstract universalisms. The basic premise of consent theory, that humans are morally equal beings requires the consent theorist to find some way to bring this morality and this

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equality to bear on political life. This challenge reached a high note with Kant’s project of perpetual peace, but it was also in describing this project that Kant claims that perhaps a bad person can be compelled to become a good citizen. With this statement Kant indicates that there is some doubt as to how precisely the universal moral good of humanity can actually be transferred to the political project of statehood. The obligation to die is a significant problem for the consent theorist, and Kant’s attempt to claim the need for all citizens to be given the chance to consent to the obligation to die while simultaneously arguing that one must obey the authority of the state is an illustration of how difficult it is for consent to justify sending anyone to their possible death. Indeed, this difficulty is why Hobbes has such a problem with the obligation to die since his entire political philosophy is based on the right to self-preservation, a right that no one can be asked to give up, and yet is required to be given up by soldiers. Presumably, a soldier would have to give up the one right that Hobbes says no one can relinquish. This Hobbesian paradox is avoided by Rousseau. However, Rousseau has his own problems, namely that he seems to be highly skeptical of the justifiability of anybody being able to consent to this obligation. First, there is always the risk of an obligation or contract involving the subordination of one’s will to another. Second, if the obligation is just the citizen who goes into battle does so because s/he realizes with a full mind that his life has been given to him by the state and thus when the state asks for him to risk his life, he is giving back to the state what it has provided. However, Rousseau’s description of the human individual as a fragmented self, troubled and confused, hardly lends any plausibility to this claim of self-awareness. Moreover, there remains, as Hegel argues, the problem of why anybody would risk dying for the sake of what he or she signed the contract in order to protect. The traditional social contract theorists would, most likely, not have accepted Hegel’s argument in this regard, although Michael Walzer does. Yet Walzer’s solution to justifying the obligation to die is to claim that the obligation is a social construct, as if somehow this recognition then makes it possible to recognize how the citizen would recognize the importance of the obligation in regard to being a citizen. While Walzer’s argument does lend a few plausible claims to be made in a Rousseauist and Hegelian line about the importance of being a citizen for human freedom and of how the state makes citizenship possible, the argument is also vague and is really more of a survey of the ideas involved in thinking about the obligation to die than an argument explaining how the obligation to die could become justified. The obligation to die is always both a question for international politics and domestic political theory, and a problem for both. Consent theory, and in particular contract theory, has a problem with the obligation to die since the obligation

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challenges the underlying abstract universalisms that consent theory needs to function. The men/citizens divide enables the possibility of the obligation to die since its emphasis is on the state, but it also provides doubt for the justifiability of the obligation because the dichotomy does not stand up to scrutiny. Humans need to be both if either citizenship or humanity is to be a worthwhile category. Consent theory must also overcome the obstacle of why any rational person would consent to risk his death for the benefit of the community, if given the choice, except perhaps in cases of self-defense. Whether or not consent theory can overcome this obstacle is a judgement call based in large part on the moral value that consent theory is presumed to involve and not on the strength of consent theory as an argument—which is why Walzer claims that the obligation exists so long as citizens are prepared to accept it, because by making this claim he can remain true to the moral value of consent without having to explain the content of consent. It is troubling, however, that a seemingly progressive theory of human morality and political rights cannot account for an obligation that has to exist in a world of sovereign states. Consequently, in the next chapter I will provide an argument for how the obligation to die can become justified. NOTES 1. Hannah Arendt, The Origins of Totalitarianism (London: Andri Deutsch, 1986), 300. 2. Patrick Riley, Will and Political Legitimacy: A Critical Exposition of Social Contract Theory in Hobbes, Locke, Rousseau, Kant, and Hegel (Cambridge, Massachusetts and London, England: Harvard University Press, 1982). 3. Such as between political, economic, and/or cultural rights. 4. Tim O’Brien, If I Die in a Combat Zone (London, New York, Toronto and Sydney: Harper Perennial, 2006), 45. 5. Peter Paret, “Justifying the Obligation of Military Service,” The Journal of Military History 57, no. 5 (1993). 6. Cheyney Ryan, “The State and War Making,” in For and against the state: New Philosophical Readings, ed. John T. Sanders and Jan Narveson (Lanham, Md.; London: Rowman & Littlefield, 1996). 7. The state’s ability to enforce this obligation is, according to Cheyney Ryan, one of the defining characteristics of the obligation to die in war, as opposed to other situations where one might be obliged to risk one’s life. See, Cheyney C. Ryan, “SelfDefense and the Obligations to Kill and to Die,” Ethics and International Affairs 18, no. 1 (2004); Ryan, “The State and War Making.” 8. Kant is the key philosopher in this regard. One example of this kind of theorizing in international political theory is, John Rawls, The Law of Peoples; with, “The Idea of Public Reason Revisited” (Cambridge, Mass.; London: Harvard University Press, 1999).

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9. John Plamenatz, Consent, Freedom and Political Obligation, 2nd. ed. (London: Oxford University Press, 1968). 10. Riley, Will and Political Legitimacy. 11. James S. Fishkin, The Limits of Obligation (London: Yale University Press, 1982). See also, Paret, “Justifying the Obligation of Military Service.” 12. Plato, Gorgias, trans. Robin Waterfield (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1994), Plato, The Laws, trans. Trevor J. Saunders (London: Penguin Books, 2004). 13. Plato, The Last Days of Socrates: Euthyphro, Apology, Crito, Phaeda trans. Hugh Tredennick and Harold Turrant (London: Penquin Books, 2003). 14. Thomas Hobbes, Leviathan, ed. Richard Tuck, Rev. student ed. (Cambridge; New York: Cambridge University Press, 1996), 151–52. (Ch. 21) 15. Hobbes, Leviathan, 126 (Ch. 18) 16. Hobbes, Leviathan, 93, 141, and 51. (Chapters, 14, 20, and 21). In chapter 14 he claims that is preferable to be a slave than to die, and in chapter 21 he claims that the sovereign may not ask a subject to kill himself or another individual. 17. Michael Walzer, Obligations: Essays on Disobedience, War and Citizenship (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1970), 85. 18. Hobbes, Leviathan, 153. (Ch. 21) 19. Walzer, Obligations, 87. 20. Jean-Jacques Rousseau, The Social Contract and Other Later Political Writings, ed. Peter Gourevitch, trans. Victor Gourevitch (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1997, 2006), 41. 21. Jean-Jacques Rousseau, Emile, trans. Barbara Foxley (London: J. M. Dent & Sons, 1911 (1957)), 10. 22. Rousseau, Emile, 53. 23. Jean-Jacques Rousseau, The Discourses and Other Early Political Writings, ed. Victor Gourevitch, trans. Victor Gourevitch (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1997, 2004). 24. Rousseau, The Social Contract and Other Later Political Writings, 58. 25. Gerald Mara notes that Rousseau offers two different accounts of political obligation, one empirically based and one based on the normative rules of politics. See, Gerald M. Mara, “Rousseau’s Two Models of Political Obligation,” The Western Political Quarterly 33, no. 4 (1980). 26. Rousseau, The Social Contract and Other Later Political Writings, 49–50 (Social Contract, Book I ch. 6). 27. Walzer, Obligations, 91. 28. Rousseau, Emile, 252. 29. Rousseau, The Social Contract and Other Later Political Writings, 63–64 (Social Contract Book II ch. 4). 30. Rousseau, Emile, 8. 31. A similar argument is made by F. H. Bradley who writes, “we find everywhere the state asserting itself as a power which has, and, if need be, asserts the right to make use of and expend the property and person of the individual without regard to this wishes, and which, moreover, may destroy his life in punishment, and put forth other powers such as no theory of contract will explain except by the most palpable fictions. . . .” Francis H. Bradley, Ethical Studies (Bristol: Thoemmes Antiquarian Books, 1990), 149.

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32. See, Riley, Will and Political Legitimacy. 33. Riley, Will and Political Legitimacy, 112–13. 34. Judith N. Shklar, Men and Citizens: A Study of Rousseau’s Social Theory (London: Cambridge University Press, 1969); Judith N. Shklar, “Rousseau’s Two Models: Sparta and the Age of Gold,” Political Science Quarterly 81, no. 1 (1966). The gendered language here is obvious, and at times I will refer to this dichotomy as human/citizen. 35. Shklar, Men and Citizens, 179. 36. Shklar, Men and Citizens, 170. See also, Terence E. Marshall, “Rousseau and Enlightenment,” Political Theory 6, no. 4 (1978). 37. Rousseau, Emile, 5. 38. Shklar, Men and Citizens, 128. 39. Shklar, Men and Citizens, 72. 40. He tries to resolve this fragmentation of the human self by introducing the concept of the General Will, but this solution brings back the problem of the supposedly different types of wills. 41. Rousseau, The Social Contract and Other Later Political Writings, 71. 42. Rousseau does not provide much leeway for allowing citizens to be deluded into accepting the General Will. The Lawgiver is supposed to convince, not trick, even if the end result is in the citizens’ best interests. 43. Joseph Heller, Catch-22: A Novel (New York: Simon & Schuster, 1999). 44. Margaret Gilbert, A Theory of Political Obligation: Membership, Commitment, and the Bonds of Society (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 2006), vii. 45. Shklar, Men and Citizens, 127. 46. Shklar, Men and Citizens, 8. 47. Shklar, Men and Citizens, 5. 48. Riley, Will and Political Legitimacy, 131. 49. Immanuel Kant, Kant: Political Writings, ed. Hans Reiss, trans. H. B. Nisbet, 2nd ed. (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1991), 133 (The Metaphysics of Morals). 50. Hannah Arendt, Lectures on Kant’s Political Philosophy, ed. Ronald Beiner (Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 1992), 17. 51. See, Allen W. Wood, Kant (Malden, MA; Oxford: Blackwell Pub., 2005). 52. Immanuel Kant, The Moral Law: Groundwork of the Metaphysics of Morals, trans. H. J. Paton (London and New York: Routledge, 1948), 97. 53. By adding an imperative of reason Kant is in effect reworking the Socratic moral principle of being true to oneself. See, Some Questions of Moral Philosophy in, Hannah Arendt, Responsibility and Judgment, ed. Jerome Kohn (New York: Schocken Books, 2003). 54. Riley, Will and Political Legitimacy, 155. 55. Kant, Kant: Political Writings, 79. (On the Common Saying: “This May be True in Theory, but it does not Apply in Practice”) 56. Howard Ll Williams, Kant’s Critique of Hobbes: Sovereignty and Cosmopolitanism (Cardiff: University of Wales Press, 2003), 163. 57. Kant, Kant: Political Writings, 166. (Italics in original). 58. Kant, The Moral Law: Groundwork of the Metaphysics of Morals, 105 (428:65).

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59. Arendt, Lectures on Kant’s Political Philosophy. 60. Kant, Kant: Political Writings, 112. (Perpetual Peace) (Italics added). 61. Arendt, Lectures on Kant’s Political Philosophy, 17. 62. Kant, Kant: Political Writings, see pages 81, 85. (Theory and Practice) 63. Peter Nicholson, “Kant on the Duty Never to Resist the Sovereign,” Ethics 86, no. 3 (1976): 217. (Italics in original). 64. Kant, Kant: Political Writings, 80. (Theory and Practice) 65. See his, Answer to the Question: What is the Enlightenment in Kant: Political Writings. 66. Although the distinction originates with Aristotle, who claims that the good of the citizen is relative to the good of the state and that, consequently, there can be a variety of different types of “good” citizens, whereas there is only one good of the “man.” See, Aristotle, The Politics and Constitution of Athens, ed. Stephen Everson (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2001). (Book III 4:30–40) 67. Kant, Kant: Political Writings. (Perpetual Peace). However, in opposition to this conventional view of Kant’s antagonism toward just war thinking, Brian Orend argues that Kant does provide his own version of a just war theory. Orend’s argument relies in large part on finding in Kant’s writings claims that disprove the idea that Kant is a pacifist (and considering Kant considers that citizens may be trained as voluntary soldiers, although there should not be a standing army, this claim is not difficult to make) and from this point, elaborate on the moral claims Kant provides in relation to war. Whether or not such claims amount to an actual theory of the justice or morality of and in (and after) war is debatable. See, Brian Orend, “Kant’s Ethics of War and Peace,” Journal of Military Ethics 3, no. 2 (2004). 68. See, Martin Wight, “Why Is There No International Theory,” International Relations 21, no. 1 (1960). 69. The issue of nationalism and national rights, which could be thought to challenges this dichotomy will be examined later. 70. I explore this contradiction more in the next chapter. 71. Carole Pateman, The Problem of Political Obligation: A Critical Analysis of Liberal Theory (Chichester: Wiley, 1979), 92. 72. Stanley Hoffmann, David P. Fidler, and Jean-Jacques Rousseau, Rousseau on International Relations (Oxford; New York: Oxford University Press, 1991), xlix. See also (for a shorter version), Stanley Hoffmann, “Rousseau on War and Peace,” The American Political Science Review 57, no. 2 (1963). 73. Rousseau, The Social Contract and Other Later Political Writings, 167. 74. Rousseau, Emile, 7 fn.1. 75. Hobbes, Leviathan, 90 (Chapter XIII). 76. Andrew Linklater, Men and Citizens in the Theory of International Relations, 2nd ed. (London: Macmillan in association with the London School of Economics and Political Science, 1990). 77. Robert Filmer, Patriarcha and Other Political Works (Oxford: B. Blackwell, 1949), 285. Robert Filmer and J. P. Sommerville, Patriarcha and Other Writings (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1990), 139–40.

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78. Linklater, Men and Citizens in the Theory of International Relations, 14. A similar Kantian argument is made by George Kateb in, Kateb, The Inner Ocean: Individualism and Democratic Culture (Ithaca, N.Y.; London: Cornell University Press, 1992). 79. David Novak, The Jewish Social Contract: An Essay in Political Theology (Princeton and Oxford: Princeton University Press, 2005), 3. 80. Michael Walzer, Spheres of Justice: A Defence of Pluralism and Equality (Oxford: Robertson, 1983), 29. 81. Michael Walzer, “The Moral Standing of States: A Response to Four Critics,” Philosophy and Public Affairs 9, no. 3 (1980): 211. 82. John Rawls, A Theory of Justice, Revised ed. (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1999). 83. Walzer, Spheres of Justice, 5. 84. Walzer, Obligations, 97. 85. Depending on how it is argued, the legalist paradigm may not be a domestic analogy but an example of using a definition of domestic law for international law. On the domestic analogy see, Hidemi Suganami, The Domestic Analogy and World Order Proposals (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1989). 86. Walzer, Obligations. 87. Walzer, Obligations, 98. 88. Tim O’Brien comments on this precise issue. For example, when one of the characters in his book asserts his opposition to the war and to going into battle he is called “a pansy” and is then ignored. In another exchange a military chaplain says to a doubting soldier that he has no choice, he has to go and fight and to just have faith in America and God. See, O’Brien, If I Die in a Combat Zone, 43, 45, 64. 89. Pateman, The Problem of Political Obligation, 94. 90. See, Pateman, The Problem of Political Obligation. 91. Harry Beran, The Consent Theory of Political Obligation (London, New York and Sydney: Croom Helm, 1987); Gilbert, A Theory of Political Obligation; Pateman, The Problem of Political Obligation. 92. Walzer, Obligations. 93. Thomas Hill Green, P. Harris, and John Morrow, Lectures on the Principles of Political Obligation and Other Writings (London: Cambridge University Press, 1986), 107. (Italics in original). 94. Green, Harris, and Morrow, Lectures on the Principles of Political Obligation and Other Writings. 95. Plamenatz, Consent, Freedom and Political Obligation, 172. 96. See, for example, Will Kymlicka, Multicultural Citizenship: A Liberal Theory of Minority Rights (Oxford; New York: Clarendon Press, 1995); Will Kymlicka and W. J. Norman, Citizenship in Diverse Societies (Oxford; New York: Oxford University Press, 2000); Charles Taylor and: Examing the Politics of Recognition (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1994); Jackson Gutmann, Multiculturalism, Amy Preece, Minority Rights (Cambridge: Polity Press, 2005); James Tully, Strange Multiplicity: Constitutionalism in an Age of Diversity (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1995).

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97. On the challenge posed to the state by a right to civil disobedience see, Pateman, The Problem of Political Obligation, 59–60. 98. See, Beran, The Consent Theory of Political Obligation. 99. Pateman, The Problem of Political Obligation, 163. 100. This is a particularly politicized issue in the United States. In a 2002 op-ed in The New York Times the Democratic Congressman from New York, Charles B. Rangel wrote, “A disproportionate number of the poor and members of minority groups make up the enlisted ranks of the military, while the most privileged Americans are underrepresented or absent.” This perspective about the American Armed Forces is repeated in a November 2005 article in The Washington Post that claimed that Army recruits were primarily poor and from rural areas. The article implied that the Army effectively provided these individuals with a job, shelter, and something to do. Another New York Times article claims that minorities feature heavily in the U.S. Armed Forces, unlike the British Military where in the UK there remains a tradition of the upper classes enlisting in the Armed Forces. In 2005 the right-wing think tank, The Heritage Foundation, countered these views of U.S. Army demographics, claiming that the Army is in fact representative of the American population. Moreover, the Heritage Foundation argued that in 1999 army recruits were more educated than the “equivalent general population” and the “household income of recruits generally matches the income distribution of the American population.” This argument is questionable, however, due to significant segments of the American public not growing up with any equality of opportunity. According to the U.S. Army’s 2004 Demographic Report, from 1990–2004, approximately half of all Active Duty Officers have a bachelor’s degree (47.2%–54.0%), although this is not the case with the Active Duty Enlisted. In 1990 94.8% of Active Duty Enlisted men and women had less than a bachelor’s degree, although only 1.8% had no high school diploma. These figures remain relatively constant from 1990 until 2004. In 2004, 0.8% had no high school diploma and 93.7% had less than a bachelor’s degree. The Army Enlists are generally without any noticeable post-secondary education. In the same period (1990–2004) 18.3% of Active Duty members are Black or African American, 64.0% are White. In 2000, the U.S. Census showed that 12.3% of the American population is Black or African American and 75.1% are White. In relation to other minorities, it is clear that they are proportionally over-represented in the U.S. Military. The ratio of poor enlistees is difficult to determine specifically since comparisons by state are inconclusive, and contrary to what the Heritage Foundation claims with its statistics, there is no readily available and accurate data on the income level of army enlistees prior to enlisting. Ultimately, there is doubt as to how much choice possible enlistees in the U.S. Army face in their life prospects were they not to join the Army. In other words, it is possible that the voluntary force in the United States at least is not so voluntary as it may appear. Many people may sign up because they have little other choices available to them and because, as the Christian Science Monitor reported in 2005, the Army offers the best economic opportunity. Alan Cowell, “Ideas and Trends: Class Wars; Britain’s Upper Crust Still Soldiers On,” The New York Times, September 7, 2003; Bob Herbert, “Someone Else’s Child,” The New York Times, June 20, 2005; Charles B. Rangel, “Bring Back the Draft,” The New York Times, December 31, 2002; Ann

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Scott Tyson, “Youths in Rural U.S. Are Drawn to Military; Recruits’ Job Worries Outweigh War Fears,” The Washington Post, November 4, 2005; Tim Kane, “Who Bears the Burden? Demographic Characteristics of U.S. Military Recruits before and after 9/11,” (Washington, DC: The Heritage Foundation, 2005); “Profiles of General Demographic Characteristics,” ed. Economics and Statistics Administration U.S. Department of Commerce, U.S Census Bureau (U.S. Census Bureau, 2000); “2004 Demographics,” ed. United States of America Office of the Deputy Under Secretary of Defense (2004); Mark Sappenfield, “Where Recruiting Runs Strongest,” The Christian Science Monitor, July 19, 2005. 101. John Locke, Two Treatises of Government, ed. Peter Laslett (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1988), 347–49 §199–22. 102. For more on Locke and consent see, John Dunn, Political Obligation in Its Historical Context: Essays in Political Theory (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1980). 103. Pateman, The Problem of Political Obligation, 96. 104. For a different reading of the liberal theory of consent see, Hanna Pitkin, “Obligation and Consent—I,” The American Political Science Review 59, no. 4 (1965); Hanna Pitkin, “Obligation and Consent—II,” The American Political Science Review 60, no. 1 (1966). Pitkin argues that the theory of consent is most coherent when one is obligated to consent, instead of consenting to be obliged. Consequently, the type of government one is obliged to becomes very important. I will address in the final conclusion some implications of placing the character of government at the fore of thinking about the obligation to die. 105. Ryan, “The State and War Making.” 106. Ryan, “The State and War Making.” 107. Moses Mendelssohn, Jerusalem or on Religious Power and Judaism, trans. Allan Arkugh (Hanover and London: University Press of New England published for Braedeis University Press, 1983). 108. Arendt, The Origins of Totalitarianism, 230. 109. Arendt, The Origins of Totalitarianism. 110. Arendt, The Origins of Totalitarianism. 111. See, Richard J. Bernstein, Hannah Arendt and the Jewish Question (Cambridge, Mass.: The MIT Press, 1996). 112. Hannah Arendt, Jewish Writings, ed. Jerome Kohn and Ron H. Feldman (New York: Schocken Books, 2007); Bernstein, Hannah Arendt and the Jewish Question. 113. Arendt, The Origins of Totalitarianism, 272. In addition to what she writes in The Origins of Totalitarianism, the topic of international relations, or topics relevant to international relations have been a consistent subject in her work. For a collection of essays about Arendt and international relations see, Anthony F. Lang Jr. and John Williams, eds., Hannah Arendt and International Relations: Reading across the Lines (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2005). Some of Hannah Arendt’s most explicit comments on international relations can be found in the first part of her short book, On Violence (London: Harcourt Brace & Co., 1970). For an application of her work to contemporary (international) politics see, Elisabeth Young-Bruehl, Why Arendt Matters (New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 2006). Needless to say, Arendt’s

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engagement with international politics is not along any traditional disciplinary or theoretical lines. She consistently and I would say correctly blurs the lines between the domestic and the international. 114. Arendt, The Origins of Totalitarianism, 296. 115. Arendt, The Origins of Totalitarianism, 296. 116. Arendt, The Origins of Totalitarianism, 296. 117. Arendt, The Origins of Totalitarianism, 53. 118. Arendt, The Origins of Totalitarianism, 53. 119. Arendt, The Origins of Totalitarianism, 54. 120. Arendt, The Origins of Totalitarianism, 57. 121. Arendt, The Origins of Totalitarianism, 87. 122. Resolution 181 was the partition plan to divide Palestine into two states, a Jewish and an Arab one. 123. Yosef Grodzinsky, In the Shadow of the Holocaust: The Struggle between Jews and Zionists in the Aftermath of World War II (Monroe, Maine: Common Courage Press, 2004), 172. 124. The Center for the Service of the People. The Center was headed by Levi Shkolnik, future Prime Minister of Israel (he changed his name to Levi Eshkkol), and Binyamin Avni’el. 125. Grodzinsky, In the Shadow of the Holocaust, 176. 126. Grodzinsky, In the Shadow of the Holocaust. 127. These internal squabbles were considered important enough, because of the necessity of Jewish conscripts, by the Yishuv leadership that Ben-Gurion personally got involved to sort the matter out and smooth out any internal bickering about who could draft the DPs and how. 128. In the Jewish DP camps there existed a tax for building up a Jewish military in Palestine. 129. Grodzinsky, In the Shadow of the Holocaust, 199. 130. The name of the father was Richter Aizik, and his son was Moshe Richter. Grodzinsky, In the Shadow of the Holocaust, 199 (see fn. 9). 131. Arendt, The Origins of Totalitarianism, 299–300.

Chapter Seven

Justifying the Obligation to Die

A true human life cannot be led by people who feel themselves detached from the basic and simple laws of humanity nor by those who elect to live in a vacuum, even if they be led to do so by persecution. —Hannah Arendt1

INTRODUCTION The scope of arguments that have traditionally justified the obligation to die have ranged from individual heroism, the normative value of life in the state, the need for political obedience, spiritual salvation or redemption, and moral arguments based on individual consent. What these accounts share (with the possible exception of the heroic argument) is a concern with how politics can justify this obligation, that there is something worthwhile about a political life, a “good life,” which makes this obligation not only a possibility but potentially necessary. Yet, it is not clear that the arguments examined so far are sufficiently robust to withstand the moral pressures and logical strengths required for this obligation to become justifiable. Indeed, out of all of them, it is Hegel’s that seems to have the most going for it. Hegel recognizes that the state has a normative value and that there needs to be some way to account for why an individual would agree to risk his or her life for the state. To be fair, Rousseau and Kant also recognize these issues, but Rousseau’s argument is so confusing that while offering significant insight into the politics of human psychology, it does not suggest how the obligation could be justifiable. Kant’s argument suffers from being unable to escape the dichotomies of political life and human morality that, in his account, contradict each other but 183

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should be able to coexist. Indeed, it may be the case that there is no way to justify the obligation to die if the obligation is to retain any kind of moral legitimacy. Kant seems to suggest as much, and this argument could certainly be inferred from Hobbes’ account of politics that is based on the right to selfpreservation. However, it is not a satisfying answer to argue that in no circumstances can the obligation to die be justified because there are no moral grounds strong enough to suggest why anybody can be obliged to risk their lives for the sake of a bounded community. This answer is not satisfying because it bypasses much of human history and does not seem capable of being able to confront any future horrors of violence that may erupt between states. The Jewish experience is one empirical ground attesting to this dissatisfaction. During the middle of the twentieth century, the “crime” of being Jewish was part and parcel of a world that was in the throes of a lengthy project involving the joining of nation and state, a project that had no room for the initial requirements of difference found in the Aristotelian vision of politics. Aristotle’s account was, of course, highly exclusionary and hierarchical, and while exclusion and hierarchy continued to dominate human political history, the implication of the initial distinction he made between the home life and the political was missed. In this distinction is the claim that for politics to happen there needs to be difference inside the state. In the modern project of the nation-state this distinction was lost in a sea of thought that was overly concerned with the idea of human universality and national homogeneity under a single sovereign authority. Human universality, enshrined politically in the Rights of Man and already alluded to in medieval natural law, promised a political equality to match the idea of human equality. However, the universality that supposedly existed in natural law or in the Enlightenment value of universal morality was in trouble as Europe came into contact with peoples, both inside and outside of Europe, who were noticeably different from the perceived norm.2 In the process, in order to emphasize the importance of universal humanity, differences had to be exaggerated in order to then be able to demonstrate how welcoming humanity is.3 However, the result of this emphasis of difference was not to enable politics, but to turn difference into a negative challenge since the more different people are the more inconvenient they are to the idea that we are all of the same kind. Only in the extremely abstract could this sameness mean anything, which is to say that when it came to political decisions, the abstract nakedness of being human came to be meaningless. Consequently, it makes little sense to justify political obligation, including the obligation to die, on shared universal rights of humankind and even less sense to demand that citizens risk their lives because this universal equality is sup-

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posed to be guaranteed by the state. The history of the Jews is a testament to how the moral universality of humankind came to be an empty ideal for those to who sought protection and security inside the modern nation-state as citizens.4 The ultimate perversion of this faith was to discover an obligation to be killed by the same state that was supposed to offer protection and other benefits. The normative value of the state has, for most of their history, not been for the Jews. It is a bitter irony that in Israel there is yet another example of the problems involved in establishing a political community based on the value of homogenous nationality. This final chapter will provide an argument that respects this Jewish history, and recognizes that sometimes it may be necessary to fight for the community and risk one’s life in the process. However, I do not want to provide a blueprint for justifying the obligation to die nor provide an account that would justify dying for the Jewish state—on this a few comments are offered in the book’s conclusion. The reference to Israel represents a tragic past, a difficult present, and an uncertain future; but it also represents the Jewish attempt to come to terms with what a political life means in the modern world, and thus this chapter focuses on what it is about a political life that could contribute to justifying an obligation to die. Consequently, this chapter proposes a return to the classical idea that politics is crucial in justifying the obligation to die. As demonstrated in previous chapters, those theorists who provide justifications for the obligation to die do not assume that there is anything innate about the state, which grants it this obligating power. The obligation is presumed to be an integral part of the state or of sovereign authority, but it is an obligation that needs to be explained and in the act of providing explanatory justifications these philosophers, jurists and theologians demonstrate that this obligation requires explanation and justification. As suggested in previous chapters, the obligation to die should not be an assumed component of the state or of sovereignty. With the possible exception of the religious argument that is focused on salvation, the justifications for this obligation converge on how what the state makes possible is a good that makes the obligation to die justifiable. This chapter argues that this good is a political life, and explores what it is about a political life that contributes to justifying this obligation. Any obligation to die has to be based on a claim that ultimately, politics is about human life and that humanity, as defined by plurality and diversity, is at stake in politics. Politics has to be highly valued for it to justify the obligation to die. If politics were worthless, there would be no reason for politics to involve any obligations, nor any conditions that make the obligation an obligation and not a choice or a whim. If the state is the type of entity that can oblige its inhabitants to die on its behalf, it follows that there should be something particularly special about the

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state, polity, or sovereign. One basic assumption in modern political theory is that humans have an innate right to self-preservation, that the right to life is the basic foundation of the human condition in a social and political world.5 Hobbes built an entire theory of state from this premise.6 Consequently, if the state or sovereign can then demand of its inhabitants their lives for its benefit, the justification for this obligation must be of a tall order. It may be that the ability to oblige the citizenry into war is a definitional characteristic of the sovereign state, which is possibly the only way to explain Hobbes’ attempt to justify the obligation. However, to claim that the state can oblige in this manner because that is what the state can do is tautological. There needs to be some justification for what it is about the state that makes this obligation justified, and this justification rests with the normative conditions for human life that exist inside the state. This chapter begins by suggesting how the obligation to die could become justifiable by providing a political account of what it is about the state that enables it to justifiably oblige its citizens in this regard. I am concerned here to provide some necessary conditions for the justifiability of the obligation to die. I am not saying that if these conditions are met the obligation will be justified, but that these are some requirements. There needs to be, as Aristotle knew, specific normative features of the state that provide its legitimacy, and by implication, if these normative features are absent, the state cannot justifiably oblige its citizens to do much of anything. Certain aspects of how the obligation to die can be justified may pertain to the type of state at issue and what form of government characterizes the state. For example, in cases where there is no possibility for legitimate disobedience or conscientious objection, the obligation to die cannot be justified. A state that does not respect the rights of its citizens cannot be just in demanding that they die for the benefit of the state that persecutes them. However, what I aim to show here is not so much what type of government is necessary for the obligation to die to be just, but what are the normative benefits of the state that make it possible to begin to understand how the obligation could become justified. The type of politics that occur inside the state are thus important in justifying the obligation to die, but there are a variety of different ways in which political practice is translated into particular types of governance. To justify the obligation to die, a particular type of politics is required. One of the key aspects of the type of politics needed for the obligation to die to become just is a politics that may actually involve consent. The modern consent theorists got it right that human morality as a basis for equality should be a building block for politics. However, what they got wrong was the way to bring this moral equality into political life. The idea of transforming abstract human beings into citizens as the way to enable morality in civil

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society does not provide a suitable basis for justifying an account of politics that could serve to justify the obligation to die. Hegel knew this which is why he critiques the contract argument, and Walzer took this criticism on board. Consequently, in order to justify the obligation to die, an account of consent theory is needed that opens the door to a politics that does not require humans to become citizens, but in a Kantian twist, makes it possible for citizens to act as humans, and to do so in a version of politics that requires difference and is thus plural. Such an account of politics can be found to turning to two sources: Socrates and Hannah Arendt. Socrates provides what is possibly the original example in Western political thought of the obligation to die. The Socratic argument is used as a heuristic device to provide an alternative version of consent theory that could be used to justify the obligation to die. However, Socrates, like Aristotle, emphasized exclusion and hierarchy as opposed to difference. The seeds are there, but more is required in order to bring this kind of politics to germinate in a way that is suitable for the obligation to die to be just. Socrates opens the door to how politics needs to be understood if the obligation is to be justifiable, and Arendt updates his argument by complementing his genius with original insights relevant to today’s world.7 Arendt is used not to provide an account of political obligation, but an account of politics. The argument presented below is that consent needs to play an important part in the obligation to die, but following from my critique of consent theory in the previous chapter, I present a different reading of consent theory. This different version of consent is anticipated by Socrates, in the argument he puts forward in defense of his self-administered execution by the state. Socrates suugests an account of consent that although problematic due to its solipsism makes it possible to emphasize the role of politics in justifying the obligation to die. However, due to the solipsism and overly exclusionary version of Socratic politics, it is necessary to turn to the political thought of Arendt to finish this account of politics.

THE DEATH OF SOCRATES There is one example in the history of Western political thought that incorporates most of the arguments I have examined for the obligation to die: the example of Socrates’ death, as told by Plato. The death of Socrates is the archetypal example of being obliged to die. In 399 BCE, at the age of seventy Socrates was tried and executed by the court of the city-state of Athens. He was “guilty of corrupting the minds of the young, and of believing in supernatural things of his own invention instead of the gods recognized by the

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State.”8 Even though this example is a criminal trial and legal execution, there are some notable parallels with the obligation to die for the state in war. First, Socrates consents to the ruling of the court like a soldier accepting the authority of the state to enlist him in war. He declines the punishment of exile and when he is given the opportunity to suggest an alternative punishment his first suggestion is that they award him with a complementary feast for his unselfish attempts to teach morality. His second suggestion is a fine. He is also given the opportunity, and encouraged by his friend Crito, to escape, but he refuses and chooses to accept the decision of the court. Socrates is given more than one chance to avert the punishment of death, all of which are either refused or squandered. He accepted the obligation to remain and to drink the poison hemlock. Second, Socrates himself notes the parallel between consenting to this ruling of the court and facing death in battle. He says, In a court of law, just as in warfare, neither I nor any other ought to use his wits to escape death by any means. In battle it is often obvious that you could escape being killed by giving up your arms and throwing yourself upon the mercy of your pursuers; and in every kind of danger there are plenty of devices for avoiding death if you are unscrupulous enough to stop at nothing. But I suggest, gentlemen, that the difficulty is not so much to escape death; the difficulty is to escape from wickedness. . . .9

Socrates did serve the state in war. He was a foot soldier (a hoplite) in the military campaigns of Potidaea (432 BCE, prior to the Peloponnesian War), Amphipolis (422 BCE, although there is some dispute over whether or not Socrates actually served in this instance), and Delium (424 BCE, where he reputedly “showed great gallantry”).10 In the Apology Socrates recounts how he “remained at his position like anyone else and faced death.”11 Thus, in addition to the theoretical moral equivalence he claims for facing death in either war or legal trial, Socrates makes the connection from firsthand experience. There is, in sum, more to the trial and death of Socrates than an example of capital punishment. There is the issue of an individual’s moral obligations to the state as well as to him or herself, and the issue of what the state can justifiably demand of its citizens and why such demands are justified. Why does Socrates not fear his death? Why does Socrates refuse opportunities to escape his punishment? Why does he accept the judgement of the court, of the city-state, and accept the obligation that it imposes upon him? Socrates does not provide the most convincing defense before the court. He seems to be inviting the court to convict him and in some ways Plato has him remonstrate against the idea that the death penalty is really any kind of punishment, that only fools would fear death. Why does Socrates consent to the obligation to die?

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Socrates accepts the will of the court because to do otherwise would be to compromise his moral and political philosophy. In Crito, Socrates provides a variety of reasons for not escaping from jail. First, he claims that to refuse the judgement of the court would be to compromise his moral values. Second, exile or escape would involve breaking a covenant that exists between him and the city of Athens. Third, Plato introduces the concept of the soul and has Socrates argue that one should not fear death but be ready for it. In Crito, Socrates claims that “one must not . . . return injustice when one is wronged,”12 even if one is the victim of an injustice. Crito is trying to convince Socrates to escape from prison, which Crito can arrange. However, Socrates claims that to escape his punishment would be to wrong the court and break the law. Socrates is not willing to flout the court’s ruling. The Socratic moral argument, and the reason for his decision, is that “doing wrong [is] worse than suffering wrong.”13 He claims that most people hold this view of morality, even if they do not know it. According to Socrates, this moral argument is true because it is always better to be a good person, to be a “paradigm of goodness,” and that becoming a good person is to have self-control, to “act in an appropriate manner towards both gods and his fellow human beings because inappropriate behaviour indicates lack of self-discipline.”14 Moreover, “We should devote all our own and our community’s energies towards ensuring the presence of justice and self-discipline, and so guaranteeing happiness.”15 Therefore, to lose self-discipline is to harm justice as well as to lose one’s happiness and possibly one’s virtue as well. Socrates argues that, “It is never right to commit injustice or return injustice or defend one’s self against injury by retaliation.”16 Consequently, Socrates asks Crito, “If we leave this place without first persuading the State to let us go, are we or are we not doing an injury, and doing it to those we’ve the least excuse for injuring? Are we or are we not abiding by our just agreements?”17 The just agreements that Socrates refers to are a form of contract or covenant made with the Laws and the city of Athens. Foreshadowing social contract theory, Socrates claims that his life has been made possible by the Laws, and that he has “deliberately” chosen to live in the city (not even having left temporarily for a vacation) and to “observe [the Laws] in all [his] activities as a citizen. . . .”18 Speaking as the voice of the Laws, Socrates asks, “Are we or are we not speaking the truth when we say that you have undertaken, in deed and not in word, to play the role of citizen in obedience to us?”19 By living in Athens, by having children there and adhering to the Laws, Socrates has in effect made a covenant with the Laws, with the city-state of Athens, to abide by them. Consequently, the Laws say, It is a fact then, that you [Socrates] are breaking covenants and undertakings made with us, although you made them under no compulsion or misunderstanding, and

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were not compelled to decide in a limited time; you had seventy years in which you could have left the country, if you were not satisfied with us or felt that the agreements were unjust.20

If Socrates were to escape from jail to save his life he would be breaking these agreements. For Socrates, the Laws are good, they promote the well-being of the society. To break the Laws, he would threaten the state, “for [the state] cannot exist when legal decisions are undermined by private individuals.”21 Provided that the laws are good for the city, Socrates is unwilling to disobey them.22 In addition, by breaking the covenant with the city-state of Athens, he would have sacrificed his morality, including any trust in himself, by violating a covenant he had abided by for his whole life and had no reason to break. Socrates would have to live with himself knowing that he relinquished his morality in order to save his life, and would, consequently, live the rest of his life as an unjust and morally dubious person. Socrates says as much to the court during his trial. He claims that he cannot change his morality and thus cannot alter the way he conducts his life. He was, he claims, sent to Athens by God for the purposes of discovering wisdom and moral well-being which he then tried to teach to the people of Athens. Indeed, this argument is both a part of his defense and one reason why he could not accept exile as a punishment since it would require him to forgo his mission given to him by God. As he says to the court, “I would much rather die as the result of this defence, than live as the result of the other sort.”23 Socrates’ argument is based in part on the need for political consent, which he implies has to involve a free choice. Socrates consents to die, he accepts the judgement of the court, refuses to void it, and ultimately drinks the poison hemlock without compulsion, almost voluntarily.24 Who is eligible to have such a choice is, however, limited to the citizens of Athens, and the Socratic moral argument is also limited. Socrates’ argument is morally solipsistic and completely subjective. Even though by arguing that he is correct in accepting his sentence, that others would be correct to do the same, the way he decides that the sentence must be accepted is to claim a moral law that is based exclusively on how much the subject, as an individual, is prepared to suffer. There is no attempt here to place oneself in another’s position or to think about how others would react to one’s actions. In this regard, the moral law is about the individual subject being completely and exclusively concerned with him or herself, that it is preferable to be at peace with oneself and at odds with everybody else. As Arendt writes, “The trouble with this argument is of courses that it is entirely subjective; its authenticity can be demonstrated only by the willingness to suffer.”25 Socrates’ moral argument claims that, “If I do wrong, I am condemned to live together with a wrongdoer in an unbearable intimacy; I can never get rid of him.”26

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The Socratic moral argument takes an extreme position when thinking about life and death, and it is this same claim that needs to be thought of in relation to war and the obligation to die. Will one be prepared to live with standing aside while others risk their lives? Will those who are sent to risk their lives be prepared to live with the possibility of dying or surviving? Can the society live with itself knowing what it has demanded? In this regard it is the subjective element of the argument that is important, but it is also the basis for questioning the argument’s plausibility since it is based on how far each person is prepared to be at odds with the world instead of him or herself. Any obligation that is refused (as well as those that are accepted) is something that one has to live with. There is no way to confirm Socrates’ argument that, “‘It is better to suffer wrong than to do wrong,’ and its strange substantiation, ‘For it is better for me to be at odds with the whole world than, being one, to be at odds with myself.’”27 In effect, Socrates is claiming that he would rather die than lose the ability to participate in the life of the city, that he would rather die than lose his self-respect. Socrates claims in Gorgias that it is more important to be morally true to oneself than to satisfy the desires of others, and he bases his account of political obligation on this moral principle. It is ironic that he makes this argument in relation to his inability to defend himself in front of a jury because he would refuse to pander to the expectations of the jury.28 In this regard, Socrates claims that he is the “only genuine practitioner of politics in Athens” because of his unique concern about “moral improvement rather than gratification and pleasure. . . .”29 This argument probably sounded just as arrogant to his jury as it does to contemporary ears. No doubt to the exasperation of the court, Socrates claims that even were he punished by death he would “greet death without any worries” because he remained true to himself.30 This did not help his case before the court and in classical Socratic fashion the argument is aporetic.31 However, this argument also demonstrates that one possible remedy to the solipsism of his moral argument is to explain what it is about being a member of the state that makes the obligation just, and from this it is not far to suggest that what makes the obligation just is not what it is about the state per se, but what it is that the state enables that makes the obligation to die at least partially justifiable. If Socrates is the best politician in the state, and the state is demanding his death, for him to accept a change in his ways is to lose what makes him the best politician in the land. Socrates’ moral argument is not just an argument of moral philosophy, it is also a statement about political engagement. Socrates does not claim to be good at public speaking (an important part of politics) but he does claim to be involved in another aspect of politics, the moral wellbeing of the city’s inhabitants. Yet the Socratic moral argument is applicable “only to people who are used to living explicitly with themselves. . . .”32 Arendt refers to this isolation as representing the conscience, and she notes

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that there is no obvious link between this conscience and political participation. Indeed, how could there be a link between a moral hermit and a life among others? Socratic morality is exclusively based in the mind of the individual without any relations to others. However, a political life cannot function in this way, and as Socrates demonstrates there is a strong connection between politics and morality. Yet it is this paradoxical relationship that Socrates seems to be inviting both the court and his followers to work out. The obligation to die, as illustrated by Socrates, is always both moral and political. The difficulty lies in how the morality of the obligation can accompany the political necessity of it. Recall that Socrates consents to the ruling of the court because were he to give in to any desires to live and go against the court, he would be constantly faced with having to live with someone, himself, who had performed a moral injustice that would harm his soul forever. Consequently, how can Socrates claim to be the best politician in the land if the politicians reject him to such a degree that they execute him? Plato is clearly critical and disdainful of the city, and he has Socrates rise above the philosophic abilities of the state more than once. The Platonic lesson here is to withdraw from politics, that politics is not compatible with wisdom and goodness. Yet it is unlikely that the Socratic moral proposition would support this argument, since the argument emerges out of the challenges posed by life in the political world. Socrates does not advocate isolation—he rejects exile as a punishment—and his entire philosophical life was dedicated to helping others achieve wisdom. Moreover, Socrates seems to be proud of his service to the city as a hoplite. None of these factors, however, resolve the problem of the moral solipsism of Socrates. The assumption behind the Socratic moral argument is that moral and political deliberations are ultimately carried out in one’s mind, with judgements rendered insofar as one remains true to oneself with seemingly little concern about how one’s actions will affect others. With the exception of introducing the concept of the soul, Plato leaves these problems unresolved. The moral argument of Socrates is an aporia since it offers no resolution except, perhaps, in extreme circumstances. That the argument is an aporia becomes evident when Plato, knowing that that he cannot defend Socrates on the moral/political line of thought alone, introduces the concept of the soul.33 Plato has Socrates claim that to do wrong would be to harm one’s happiness and damage one’s soul. The addition of the soul further establishes the subjectivity of the Socratic moral argument since to be concerned with the soul is to be concerned with the relationship between one’s actions and one’s soul, one’s self in all its entirety.34 To act for the benefit of the soul is a subjective enterprise.35 Plato has Socrates refer to the soul repeatedly and Plato explores it at length in Phaedo. Socrates claims that since one does not know what

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happens after death, there is no reason to fear death. The worst that could happen is an eternal sleep more restful than any sleep one has while alive. The best that could happen is some form of permanent existence of the soul in the company of all those who have already departed. Moreover, the soul is of greater worth than the body, since moral injury is worse than physical injury. Consequently, it is best to keep the soul morally virtuous since the well-being of the soul is a greater good than the health of the body. Therefore, Socrates does not fear his death, but he welcomes it as a good philosopher would who seeks the separation of the body from the soul.36 Plato emphasizes the concept of the soul and links it to his concept of Ideas, the true Forms which metaphysically explain the world and which it is the philosopher’s role to discover.37 The separation of the body from the soul is the final step in discovering the true Forms, since it is life in the body that hides this wisdom from the living. However, the argument for the soul is weak. First, the concept of the soul is sufficiently vague to warrant doubt as to its being the foundation for welcoming the possibility of death. Second, the soul as Plato understands it is tied to his theory of Ideas,38 and even if one is prepared to accept this metaphysical theory, it is a difficult political link to make between metaphysical belief and dying for the state. Socrates does it (as did Hegel), and Plato hopes that the laymen will respect the philosophers for their ability to make this link. However, there is no presumption that everybody is able to make this connection; indeed Plato thinks that remarkably few will be able to, and consequently, this argument is not good enough to apply to the citizenry at large. Third, there is some difficulty, as Plato acknowledges, in trying to explain why one should welcome the benefits of death while simultaneously condemning suicide. Plato’s answer to this problem, which is repeated by Saint Augustine, is to claim that taking one’s own life is an affront to God’s creation and the divine ordering of the world, although accepting one’s execution (and in the case of Socrates, administering his own poison) is an acceptance of the ordering of the world. Fourth, the concept of the soul can explain why any individual might be prepared to accept death, but this argument does not explain why the individual is prepared to accept the sovereign’s ability to oblige one to die or to risk death. It is one thing to be ready to die; it is another to recognize the legitimacy of being placed in a position to face death, and it is the latter problem that concerns the obligation to die. Obligations cannot be forced, which is why there is an element of choice in any just obligation. In this regard an obligation is similar to a promise, an “ought,” which means there can be serious moral repercussions in refusing an obligation. Consent theories in particular emphasize this aspect of obligation, thus requiring some way to explain how consent, and choice, applies. However, how much of a choice is there with the obligation to die? Kant is confused on

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this issue since his moral philosophy is clearly against any obligation supporting war, and if the obligation to go to war arises, he says that those obliged must be given the opportunity to refuse, even though he is firmly against any resistance to sovereign authority and is thus also claiming that the obligation to die has to be obeyed. Socrates has something more helpful to say about the obligation to die. Socratic morality can provide an account of how consent could justify this obligation since individual morality has to be, in this instance, subjective to the individual being obliged and of the situation encountered. Consequently, the individual has a choice: assuming that he or she survives the experiences of war, what is the individual more prepared to accept, the possibility of living through the hell of fighting in a war or the possibility of living knowing that one refused to fight?39 Yet, the solipsistic nature of this argument is morally troubling, based as it is on individual willingness alone. Socratic morality does not enable Socrates to convince the jurors of his innocence and in fact, it condemns him. Moreover, his morality is unable to persuade his friends to accept either the verdict or his punishment. Consequently, Socrates’ morality helps him but is almost useless in any other context. A moral system is inadequate if it does no more than allow its holder to be at peace with him or herself. Morality needs to recognize that one is not alone in the world, although Socratic morality disputes this. Socrates’ politics, which he subscribes to for moral reasons, do not assuage his friends’ desire for him to live and the state has no patience for his moral philosophizing. Hannah Arendt writes, “In other words, the city had no use for a philosopher, and the friends had no use for political argumentation.”40 Moreover, Plato implies that persuasion is useless when it comes to political and possibly moral matters as well. If Socrates could not persuade the court to find him innocent or his friends to accept the logic of his execution, what good is Socratic morality, politics, or even philosophy? The Platonic solution is to condemn the city for its callousness toward knowledge and virtue,41 and to imply that what is good does not require any explanation or persuasion, it will be selfevident.42 This conclusion fits with the classical understanding of political obligation, but it is not so readily applied to the example of Socrates’ death. Socrates does not claim that the obligation to die is self-evident. Were it self-evident, he would not need to explain why he is comfortable with the verdict. Plato would have us believe that such political obligations are selfevident to the philosopher, but since the philosopher is unable to convince anybody that there is anything self-evident about being ready to die for the state, Socrates suggests that the obligation to die is not self-evident. His friends certainly do not see the obligation to be self-evident. They condemn the verdict and want Socrates to escape. Socrates’ inability to defend himself in court and his inability to convince his friend Crito of the logic of accept-

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ing his punishment illustrate that there is nothing self-evident about any of the moral or political issues surrounding the obligation to die. Only Plato seems ready to accept the self-evidence of this political obligation, but by doing so he would have to side with the political body that was responsible for the death of Socrates since the self-evidence is possible only if one takes the side of the state, something that Plato could not in good conscience do. The example set by Socrates points to two issues at the heart of the obligation to die. The first asks how the moral individual can be presumed or even able to accept this obligation. This problem involves a series of questions about how the obligation could reach a standard of justice or justifiability from the perspective of individual or collective morality. Whether or not moral discourses can justifiabily overwhelm political considerations that lead to sending people into war is to invoke the pacifist debate, and whether or not violence can ever be morally justified. This is not a debate that is being addressed here,43 in part because this project follows some of the underlying moral assumptions contained in just war thinking, but it is one that could be studied further. The second is about the normative purpose of the state. Socrates feels that as a citizen it is his role to educate the citizens by helping them to think for themselves and not to fall prey to sophistry. This is a role that Socrates could only do as a citizen, and it is a role that he takes on feeling it to be the most political of roles required of the citizen, which is why he suggests that he is the best politician in the land (presuming, of course, that either no one else is trying to educate the citizenry or that Socrates is doing a better job.) However, Socrates’ emphasis here could be either on the value of the state for its citizens, or the value of being a citizen in the state. Justiying the obligation to die turns on this distinction and on how a discourse of obligation functions or emerges out of being a member of a political society, and of what kind of politics characterises the polity.

POLITICS AND PLURALITY The obligation to die cannot be justified without there being some reason why what the state enables makes it justified to send segments of its population to risk their lives on its behalf. According to Aristotle, the state enables politics and according to Socrates, a political life is the highest form of life since it involves the betterment of individual morality. Justifying the obligation to die is more than trying explain the morality of being placed in the position of having to risk one’s life in war, it is also about the justifiability of a set of political structures that make this obligation possible in the first place. Consequently, to justify the obligation to die is to justify a political system, both the

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international system that makes state war a possibility and the domestic political life from which emerges the authority of the obligation. As such, I want to claim that if the obligation to die could become justifiable, the type of politics from which the authorization for the obligation emerges must have certain characteristics. The politics must be plural and respect the difference that makes political life possible without discriminating against such difference. Politics need to respect human individuality, human spontaneity and involve some version of consent. The origins of this version of politics are with Socrates. Socrates’ morality may be singular, but his politics are plural. Politics are not something that one can do by oneself. In one sense, this is stating the obvious, but in another Socrates is claiming something quite radical. Socrates would not remove himself from public life because he felt it was his moral and political duty as a good citizen and philosopher to help people by using dialogue to think through their opinions. In the process of these dialogues Socrates sought to uncover hidden contradictions. The problem of the contradiction is that “someone who contradicts himself is unreliable.”44 Socrates demonstrates that the only way to uncover contradictions is to openly discuss one’s opinions, to discover what one is really saying. In the process, the self that is alone in the world, and might be at odds with itself due to contradicting one’s self (being of two minds), is brought into the world. Overcoming fear of contradictions is what brings the individual, especially the philosopher, into the open, as it is by conversation that the individual can uncover his or her contradictions and thus be at one and at peace with oneself.45 Socrates, however, does not provide any kind of incontrovertible argument of truth. He is interested in uncovering contradictions in the hope of resolving them, but he does not claim to provide an answer that will end all contradictions. It is the contradiction that interests Socrates, not the solution to contradictions. Plato does that with the Ideas. Socrates has no such wisdom, for his wisdom is in recognizing his ignorance. For Socrates, what matters is the process of discovering and debating contradictions, not resolving them once and for all. Such a resolution would be the end of politics since it would no longer require that one openly discuss and debate opinion. Consequently, Socrates illustrates how philosophy is always a political activity, and that politics are always plural—in this case, plural by way of a diversity of opinions and of dialogue. From the Socratic example, Arendt argues that one is never truly alone, but always with others. Paradoxically, even when one is alone there is a plurality since thinking is a plural activity involving a conversation with oneself. “Men not only exist in the plural as do all earthly beings, but have an indication of this plurality within themselves.”46 The radical suggestion of Socrates, “to make philosophy relevant for politics,”47 ultimately in-

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fluenced his trial that led to his execution by the state, but it is also a provocative way of thinking about politics. In this formulation, being political is to debate one’s opinions in the open, and contradictions become important not because they make one unreliable, but because they are necessary for debate and are a crucial aspect of the human experience that reaches its highest achievement in political participation. It is difference of opinion that forms the basis for any kind of politics, and it is the ability to debate these opinions and to act on them that characterizes politics. Politics requires plurality, and in a variety of ways.48 There are limits, however, to Socrates’ definition of politics and how this definition relates to his moral argument. First, it is insufficient for Socrates to suggest that nobody needs to either understand or appreciate one’s actions in order to live a moral life. If being a citizen and engaging in political life is so important, then morality needs to take into account the importance of life with others and their opinions, and not only one’s internal dialogue. Second, his version is plural but it is also exclusive. Only the citizens of Athens, those who could participate in public debate, were included. Women, outsiders, slaves and others did not count. As The Republic makes clear, starting with the exit of the elder Cephalus, political life for Socrates involves many exclusions (including the ejection of tradition, represented by Cephalus).49 These exclusions compromise the veracity of Socratic plurality, and thus Socrates must, like those he excluded from debate, take his leave along with them. A just state is one that provides all its citizens with the opportunity to engage in public debate, and for those that are not citizens there must be reasonable ways to become one. Socrates was ahead of his time, but he was not so far ahead to inquire how the obligation to die could be justified in the light of twentieth century knowledge and belief about humanity and human rights. The importance of plurality for justifying the obligation to die responds to the fact that the state or its equivalent is not a homogenous entity. The state has always been made up of different constituencies and even in the Zionist case different types of Jews became participants in the Zionist project. For the obligation to die to become justified, the politics behind this obligation need to respect the importance of human difference, since it makes no moral sense to presume that an unjust state may justifiably demand that its citizens risk their lives on its behalf. The idea of the good life that the state enables needs to be a good life for as many of the inhabitants of the state as possible. Plurality is important for politics, as the growth of minority rights and the multicultural literature demonstrates.50 It is on the point of diversity that Walzer, in part, differentiates himself from Rawls’ political theory of the state and of justice.51 Since people are different, and the state is made of various constituencies and communities, all of which have their own unique traits, it

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seems logical to recognize that diversity takes place inside the state and that diversity is an important characteristic in any account of political life. Yet, the project of the nation-state has been to minimize the significance of difference and presume instead that the state is made up of a homogenous population, which is a fallacy.52 No state is homogenous. Diversity cannot be ignored; it can either be embraced or fought against. Aristotle’s model indicates that diversity is important but that discrimination is inherently involved in contextualizing what diversity means for political life. The modern project of pluralism or multiculturalism (and other related versions of liberalism) try to remove this negative discrimination from this account, and replace it with the claim that a diverse population provides an additional richness to the state and should be welcomed. There is a recognition that difference is important for politics to take place. The debate is over how much difference can be included in order for political life to function.53 The assumption is that too much diversity could be problematic but that difference cannot be ignored. Consequently, politics is always about difference in some regard and any theory of state and of political obligation needs to include in a central way this basic feature of politics. As such, for the obligation to die to be just the state needs to enable a version of politics that includes a favorable account of plurality. The plurality of politics also suggests that for the obligation to die to become at all justifiable, the obligation is not an authoritative act of sovereignty, which is to say that the obligation becomes justifiable when it emerges as a part of a collective life among others in a bounded community. It is the membership of individuals into a polity that forms the possibility of the obligation becoming justifiable, and not the characteristics of sovereign authority. In short, it is not the state that obliges. It is not as if there is an empirical obliging authority that commands. However, the opposite is also false, for there is more to it than to suggest, as Walzer does, that the obligation exists only to the extent that people are prepared to accept it. The obligation to die exists because of the potential for violence among bounded political communities, and thus it is both the political structures of these communities that makes the obligation possible but also could make it justifiable. In this regard justifying the obligation to die, to the extent that such justifications are possible, is to explain how politics makes risking one’s life a potentially justifiable action.

ARENDT AND THE OBLIGATION TO DIE The problem of political obligation traditionally assumes not only an authority that obliges, but also a generality to the problem. The assumption is that the general problem remains the same in all cases. Yet empirically there is

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some doubt of the extent to which this generalization is sufficiently accurate. For example, there are laws that impact some genders more than others, such as those dealing with abortion. The obligation to die has traditionally been an obligation expected of men. Consequently, there may be a gendered discourse in thinking about the obligation to die. While the argument for women or men being obliged may be the same as in regard to other laws that do not discriminate against gender, such generalizations may nevertheless be missing important features of political obligation. Certain constituencies may view the problem of political obligation as ignoring the specificity of their experiences as members of the political community, and may find that political obligations emerge out of membership and not because of sovereign authority. Moreover, it is easy to think of political obligations that would challenge the institutions of the state, which is where theories of resistance become important. The way the community incorporates the different experiences of its members should be taken into account when thinking about political obligation. However, such an approach would not provide an answer to the question of political obligation. Such an approach would imply that the general question of political obligation is mistaken, and the question more accurately phrased would be: How does the condition of plurality affect the ways in which members of the community affirm their commitment to the state by obeying the law? In other words, it is not why would anybody be obliged to obey the law, but why are these constituents obliged, and how could different members be obliged differently in relation to both the different obligations they may face and their unique experiences of membership? What is important to take note of here is that there could be different justifications for the obligation to die when those being obliged have different experiences of membership in the political community. Consequently, it follows that in order to justify the obligation to die it is not necessary to explain the problem of political obligation, but the problem of this obligation. It is in this regard that I turn to the political though of Hannah Arendt. Arendt does not argue on behalf of an account of political obligation, but she does argue for a form of politics that could characterize an experience of those who may be obliged. The argument presented here is that if the sate enables this kind of politics, the obligation to die could become justifiable. The crux of this account of politics is a deep respect for plurality. Plurality is important for politics to take place, and the politics of plurality have become a rich field of inquiry into how to best understand the place of difference in the modern democracy. Sometimes this literature takes inspiration from Hannah Arendt.54 For Arendt, it would be difficult to recognize politics without plurality. However, Arendt does not focus on theories of state. She also does not provide a theory of political obligation, let alone an account

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of the oblibation to die, although she recognizes something similar to this obligation to exist as a part of political life.55 Consequently turning to Arendt here may seem odd. However, there is a growing recognition that Arendt offers insight into thinking about war and international relations. In an essay on just war theory, Elshtain turns to Arendt’s account of violence and politics, and there are recently published books on Arendt and international relations as well as Arendt’s thinking about war.56 Arendt was sympathetic to both the possibility of dying in war and that this death may be necessary for political freedom. She notes that, in ancient Greece, “The political freedom of the citizens . . . required . . . the practice of war.”57 Subsequently, it is not difficult to think that Arendt would have been interested in the problem of the obligation to die. Yet, Arendt’s insight on this issue does not turn to the problem of what makes the state justifiably oblige its citizens into war. For example, in one interesting account about the Jewish refugees in France during the Second World War, she notes that the Holocaust led Jews to find the possibility of freedom in death. We are the first non-religious Jews persecuted—and we are the first ones who, not only in extremis, answer with suicide. Perhaps the philosophers are right who teach that suicide is the last and supreme guarantee of human freedom: not being free to create our lives or the world in which we live, we nevertheless are free to throw away life and to leave the world.58

When the possibility of dying in war is addressed by Arendt, she does so from “the perspective of the irregulars and accordingly distinguished between civilians who took up arms and the professional soldier . . .”59 Her writings on the possibility of a Jewish army further attest to this perspective.60 In a different example, in the Human Condition, she notes that while humans live and die, any public space in the world must “transcend the lifespan of mortal men. Without this transcendence into a potentially earthly immortality, no politics, strictly speaking, no common world and no public realm, is possible.”61 Arendt clearly thought about death, war, and politics, but what does she tell us about the obligation to die? Arendt was not a theorist of political obligation, she was critical of the concept of a unitary sovereign authority, and by turning to the individual in thinking about fighting and dying for a political community, she follows Kant who argues that when faced with an obligation to die, the individual must choose. However, what Arendt suggests, in her readings of Aristotle, Socrates, and in her own political thought, is that the obligation to die could become justifiable if the state makes possible a kind of life worth risking one’s life for. The state or its equivalent does not oblige, but the conditions of life it enables

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make obligations possible if not necessary. In her essay, To Save a Jewish Homeland, written in 1948, she suggests that the Jewish homeland should not be lost. She also claims that this homeland should be nonviolent and involve Jewish-Arab cooperation.62 She did not enivision a Jewish nation-state, but something altogether different. Nevertheless, she implies that this homeland is vital for the Jews, and presumably she could not have argued against those who would fight for a bi-national state of Jews and Palestinians. After the destruction of European Jewry, Arendt could not have argued that the Jews had no claim to fight for their own homeland. Indeed, contrary to contrevorsy surrounding her Zionist thought, while she was deeply critical of Herzl’s Zionism and of many of the policies of the Zionists and the Israeli state, she was a Zionist in her own way. She was certainly concerned with the idea of a Jewish army to fight against the Nazis.63 Indeed, in 1942 she wrote sarcastically that, “While we have been busy making sure that the demand for a Jewish army remains on paper, we can console ourselves that four [Jewish] institutions have, with scientific meticulousness, been busy preparing ourselves for peace. . . .”64 She went on to write, Because so long as a Jewish army remains on paper, the best collections of materials in the world are just stacks of dead paper. If we do not manage to achieve what has finally been granted to the Indians—a place in the midst of the United Nations [the Allies fighting the Nazis, not the UN that came into being in 1945]—there will be no peace for us all that soon. This war is not about how big or small a people is, it is about freedom for all peoples. And the struggle of the United Nations will remain incomplete as long as those nations are not prepared to sit at a table with the pariah of all peoples and to include it in the ranks of those on the battlefront.65

Arendt was concerned with the potential of Jews fighting and dying. Consequently, it is possible to read from her work an account of how the obligation to die could become justifiable even if this argument is not one of political obligation per se. Nevertheless, seeing as how Arendt did not provide an account of the obligation to die, and when she does mention the problem of dying in war it is in terms of politics and not obligation, it may seem curious how Arendt can help thinking about how to justify the obligation to die. Indeed, there are some problems in using Arendt to think through a problem of political obligation, and one that involves dying for politics. For example, in The Human Condition Arendt remarks that “politics is never for the sake of life.”66 Yet, in some ways she suggests that politics is about life, or at least a life of unique individuals living amongst each other, which is a hallmark of the condition of plurality. Arendt

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would not, however, describe politics as a matter of life. As John McGowan writes, . . .To put it bluntly, the achievements at stake in the political sphere cannot be matters of life and death, cannot be matters of “necessity,” because such matters lead to violent conflicts that disrupt the very stability and non-violence in the public sphere by trivialising that sphere.”67

Arendt differentiates between the concept of life and the virtue of politics, emphasizing the latter. Yet the distinction is not so clear, since it is impossible to remove a concept of life from the political sphere since it is in the political sphere that people live as members of a community. Arendt places a premium on the good of plurality, “which makes each individual life precious, nonsuperfluous,”68 and thus while she does not argue that politics is about life, politics is indeed closely tied to a condition of plurality, which is about the condition of living in the world. Arendt’s work is as insightful as it is confusing, and in context this quote about politics not being for the sake of life has a specific meaning that is otherwise unclear. She is using life to refer to the domestic life that is not political per se, as opposed to the public politics of the “good life” in the ancient polis. For these citizens, politics corresponded to their lives, as did the possibility of having to wage war for the polis. One of the origins of Arendt’s political thought is with the problem of the Jews finding a political life in the modern world.69 Consequently, for Arendt, politics cannot be separated from the problems posed by a life among others, including the possibility of war between states. Place this recognition alongside her awarness that wars do take place in international relations and may occur again the future, and it becomes clearer how Arendt can be read to say something about being obliged to die, and to read Arendt in this way is to read both with and against her. In this vein, the first thing that Arendt says about the obligation to die is that if it is to be justifiable, it needs to be thought of not as an obligation in the sense of what is it about an authority that makes people obliged to it, but rather as one part of life among others in a bounded political system. In this regard the obligation to die is a conflation of two related questions. First, under what conditions would any given individual choose to risk his or her life in war for the body politic? Second, how can the state be justified in obliging its inhabitants to risk their lives for its benefit by being sent into war? An Arendtian answer would focus primarily on the first, possibly turning to the meaning and importance of membership in a political community, presumably a republic. Yet, these are both vital questions for understanding the potential justifiability of the obligation to die. They point to the ways in which life in the state may involve the obligation to die. Moreover, it seems

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somewhat false to presume that these are entirely separate questions. First, it makes little sense to suggest that the conditions justifying an individual’s choice regarding this obligation would be sufficiently removed from the conditions characterizing life in the state. Second, for the state to justifiably oblige its citizens to risk their lives, surely the state would have to recognize the value of the individual being obliged, which means allowing this individual some options for choice. Arendt recognizes that participation in the political life of the state includes something similar to an obligation to die. “Whoever entered the political realm had first to be ready to risk his life, and too great a love for life obstructed freedom, was a sure sign of slavishness.”70 She is not suggesting that this willingness if specifically a political obligation, and she does not provide a defense of this willingness. However, she is suggesting that as a citizen there may be a duty to be willing to risk one’s life for the state, and this is certainly a close relative to being or feeling onself to be obliged. Consequently, what I propose to do here is, reading both with and against Arendt, to suggest a few ways in which an Arendtian account of politics could contribute to the justifiability of the obligation to die. Arendt provides various explanations of politics, but her fundamental insight is to claim that politics is not restricted to government or to domination over others based on the threat or use of force. Rather, Arendt thought of politics “as the organization or constitution of the power people have when they come together as talking and acting beings. Here her emphasis is on preserving the people’s power in a constituted government: potestas in populo.”71 The bureaucratic machinery of the state was not something Arendt was fond of, for she saw human beings and their capacity for creation (what she calls natality) as being primary to the human condition and to any understanding of politics. Consequently, if the obligation to die could be justified, it would be so because the state makes possible a kind of life worth risking one’s life for. Note that this argument does not suggest a theory of political obligation, but an account of politics. Arendt may have been critical of Socrates’ moral argument, but she also found it to be philosophically convincing, and his argument went alongside a claim of political obligation to the Laws. What Arendt does in her thought is focus on the politics, finding the obligation discourse distasteful. The terms she suggests, contra the philosophical tradition concerned with the authority problem in political obligation, are not those of authority or sovereignty, but of unique individuals forming a polity through common membership. Nevertheless, being sent to risk one’s life in war is a problem of obligation, as Socrates suggests, even though Arendt is reluctant to use such terms. The common membership in the polity that makes political obligations a possibility might as well be described as a political life. This life, I want to

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suggest, is a particular type of political life, one that is characterised by worldliness. Here, Arendt’s thought sits uncomfortably being in such close proximity to a problem of obligation. Nevertheless, without suggesting that Arendt provides an account of political obligation, she certainly provides an account of politics that could clarify how being placed by the polity to risk one’s life in war could become justifiable. Here one needs to read both with and contra Arendt, recalling that much of her work is about moving away from a philosophical tradition that she felt made totalitarianism a possibility. Being obliged to an authority and the problem of this obligation was, in her mind, tied to this possibility, which is why she moves toward thinking about individuals acting together as unique beings born for freedom. However, even in such a community people would be faced with obligations. Consequently, it is the features that characterize a political life respectful of what it means to be one unique person among others that could justify being faced with having to risk one’s life for the community in war. What would such a politics look like? Arendt provides a few suggestions, involving such concepts as plurality, human spontaneity, natality, and worldliness. In worldliness human beings come into the condition of plurality that is one of the features that characterizes her account of politics. The other characteristics involve the exclusion of “violence, force and domination.”72 In these characteristics, and in the account of worldliness, is the pursuit of discovering a political life that could be worth dying for, and it was this kind of life that Zionism tried to provide and Arendt struggles with when she engaged the Jewish Question and the issue of a Jewish politics. An account of politics might be worth dying for if a political life corresponded to the human condition of worldliness, natality, and plurality. Arendt recognizes not only the need for plurality in the state and for politics to take place, but also that this kind of politics is deeply serious. As Hannah Arendt knew, the plurality of politics is crucial. For politics to be worthwhile it needs to be plural because plurality is a consequence of freedom. As Jerome Kohn writes, for Arendt, humans are not born free, “but for freedom,”73 and human plurality is not possible without freedom.74 The plural relations of free humans is partly what Arendt means by the term action, but the term action also refers to the plurality of humanity that makes politics possible. She writes, Action, the only activity that goes on directly between men without the intermediary of things or matter, corresponds to the human condition of plurality, to the fact that men, not Man, live on the earth and inhabit the world. While all aspects of the human condition are somehow related to politics, this plurality is specifically the condition . . . of all political life.75

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The term action is different from its normal usage, and refers to a human condition of plurality that involves speech, togetherness or worldliness, and politics. Action is more than doing something, or constructing something. “Action, as distinguished from fabrication, is never possible in isolation; to be isolated is to be deprived of the capacity to act.”76 The capacity to act (as in action) is contingent on the capacity for speech. “No other human performance requires speech to the same extent as action.”77 In the process of “acting and speaking”78 humans reveal themselves to others, thus illuminating their unique identities and becoming a part of the world. “This revelatory quality of speech and action comes to the fore where people are with others and neither for nor against them—that is, in sheer human togetherness.”79 For Arendt, politics flows as part of a trajectory of action, speech, and togetherness. Action is not the same as speech, but action cannot happen without it. One of the many features of action is its inherently nonviolent character, which follows from the necessity of action being plural because violence involves the destruction of difference. Politics would be meaningless if there was no plurality within it, but even though politics cannot be violent, the condition of human plurality does not mean the eradication of conflict or war. Human behavior and the products of human actions, including legal and political institutions, always involve a degree of unpredictability.80 The polis or some incarnation of the state is often presumed or supposed to limit this unpredictability. But a degree of uncertainty is important for politics. If we all knew the outcome of any given event or act, the present would be neither interesting nor relevant to the human condition of uniqueness (which creates diversity) and speech. In short, if there were no uncertainty, no unpredictability, there would be no politics and we would be living in some form of what Arendt describes as totalitarianism. Consequently, attempts at removing uncertainty from politics is the same as trying to end the challenges posed by the basic human condition of plurality which is constantly faced with uncertainties. In this respect, the obligation to die cannot be explained by reference alone to the obligations required of citizens in a democracy, as Walzer does.81 Even a liberal democratic state may cause extreme harm to human individuality and human spontaneity. For example, contract arguments form one of the liberal solutions to controlling human unpredictability. Yet, presumptions that a state is founded on a contract do not necessarily involve achieving certainty (the removal of, in philosophical terms, contradiction, or in political terms, unpredictability). Contract arguments are, as Hobbes knew, founded on the human ability to keep a promise. Without promises, contracts are nothing. If the promise is used to secure the future, as opposed to protecting plurality and

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accepting certain conditions of uncertainty, the promise becomes “selfdefeating”82 because it ignores—and attempts to destroy—the ambiguity that characterizes politics and human existence.83 Arendt argues that, Man’s inability to rely upon himself or to have complete faith in himself (which is the same thing) is the price human beings pay for freedom; and the impossibility of remaining unique masters of what they do, of knowing its consequences and relying upon the future, is the price they pay for plurality and reality, for the joy of inhabiting together with others a world whose reality is guaranteed for each by the presence of all.84

Politics are always a risky endeavor. The challenge should not be to remove uncertainty from politics, but to find a way to act within the uncertainty of political and indeed of human life without destroying or prejudicing this characteristic of humanity, that is, the inevitable state of uncertainty. A polis or state that provides such a way of life could be justified in risking the lives of its citizens in war since they would be fighting not just for the survival of the community, but also for what makes them human and what makes the community (or communities that make up the state) worthwhile: the opportunity to be human among other humans. Consequently, politics needs to be taken especially seriously. George Kateb writes about Arendt’s concept of politics that, “Politics is deeply serious; it can be mortally serious, depending as it does on the actor’s willingness to risk his life.”85 Arendt’s understanding of politics and of action are linked to how politics can justify the obligation to die, and provided that the state enables this kind of political life, the obligation to die could become justified. Yet Arendt does not claim that politics refers to life itself. Indeed, she makes so many distinctions about what constitutes the political life of human beings that such a claim would be inconsistent. Nevertheless, for Arendt there are certain features of a human life among others that define this life as political and being especially worthwhile. Furthermore, while an individual might have one specific reason why s/he decides to fight for the country, the state or community cannot be so specific. If the state is to justifiably oblige it must provide a general condition that is ultimately worth fighting and dying for. However, Arendt would not claim that the state obliges, and if the obligation is really just an order from some kind of sovereign authority, justifying the obligation becomes exponentially harder (this is the problem that Kant struggled with). At issue is what the state makes possible that could render political obligations to the community possible. Insofar as the obligation to die is concerned, Arendt does raise a connection between politics and life that makes this possibility of risking one’s life for the state conceivably justifiable. That politics may involve citizens risking their lives is an indication not just

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of how serious politics can be, but of a connection between politics and life. This seriousness is manifest daily by respecting that humans are pluralistic beings, who as political beings need some spaces available to them for change and spontaneous actions. The obligation to die could be justified when it is based on a form of politics that allows humans to be humans, that is, to be creatures born for freedom, which means providing them with spaces open for action and human spontaneity. This reading of Arendt is not a strict reading, but an interpretation that is both consistent and critical of her thought. In this regard, the usage of the term political obligation as I have used it, is beginning to take on a different meaning, one that combines the twfold problem of how individuals can be obliged and why the state makes possible the justifiability of such obligations. This reading relies heavily on Arendt’s account of politics. However, and typical of her thought, Arendt’s conception of politics is ambiguous.86 She provides at least two different conceptions of politics; hence the question of what an authentic politics would be.87 On the one hand, Arendt provides an associational version of politics and, on the other, an agonistic version.88 The ambiguity originates from Arendt’s juxtaposition of associational politics, based on speech,89 and an agonistic politics based on disagreement.90 Yet, the ambiguity may not be a serious problem. While agonistic and associative politics are clearly different versions of politics, is it not true that if politics are an ambiguous activity then “authentic politics” might change at various times to involve either version? Surely different situations require different kinds of politics. Machiavelli claimed as much,91 and the possibility for politics involving change is a basic tenet of his political philosophy. Contradictions are what make politics possible and are not, despite convention, a direct line to unreliability. Provided that an agonistic politics does not prejudice the possibility of an associational politics, and vice versa, what matters are the possibilities of political life and not what kind of politics one is engaged in at the moment. True, certain different kinds of politics cannot be compatible. It would make no sense to vacillate between democracy and oligarchy. However, in other cases where the political system is not threatened even if its underlying modes of expression or practice change, such fluctuations may be possible. In such cases, politics would remain plural in multiple senses, not just in the sense of a diversity of human beings and of opinions, but also in the sense of what can be considered legitimate or authentic political practices.92 In both versions of politics, Arendt remains consistent in maintaining the dignity of politics, that it should be memorable (a reference to Machiavelli). One such example of politics being memorable is its worldliness. For Arendt, politics requires concern for living in the world. Dana Villa writes that for

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Arendt, “‘care of the world’ . . . animates all genuinely political action.”93 The care or concern for the world that is a hallmark of politics follows from Arendt’s observations about the “conscious pariah.” The pariah is an outsider, an other. The conscious pariah is one who recognizes the need to join the world in all of his or her distinctiveness.94 Richard Bernstein writes, Throughout Arendt’s analysis of the hidden tradition of the Jew as pariah, there is a tension that she emphasizes constantly. The conscious pariah accepts the responsibility and challenge of being the outcast and the outsider. The pariah is a rebel and an independent thinker who rejects the type of assimilation that requires her to lose her identity to become indistinguishable from other “abstract individuals.”95

The conscious pariah is drawn toward engagement with the world, toward political action, and this attraction is a part of what Arendt describes throughout The Human Condition. This attraction is to retain one’s distinct identity among a community of other distinct humans and provides one aspect of worldliness, one manifestation of plurality. “Indeed, one can say that Arendt’s affirmation of political action as the existentially supreme human activity flows from her desire to preserve worldliness at all costs.”96 An Arendtian account of politics involves plurality, spontaneity, worldliness, action, natality, freedom, and speech. Her thought is not about political obligation, but it is about politics and it relates to the problem of dying for the sake of politics and as Arendt’s Zionist writings claim, there are obligations in pursuit of a political life. Consequently, the obligation to die could become justifiable when politics involves these features because in such a situation the state exists not just for the well-being of its inhabitants but, by enabling various communities of human beings to become participants in politics for the benefit of humanity. “For at the center of politics lies concern for the world. . . .”97 Those being obliged may be acting as citizens, but they do so as humans. POLITICAL ALTERNATIVES IN ZIONISM In this chapter I have so far presented an account of politics that is necessary for understanding the type of “good” that the state provides, in order to justify the obligation to die. If the state enables this kind of politics then it becomes possible to think of how the obligation to die could be justified. At this stage, one may consider additional concerns relating to the character of the state, as well as traditional problems addressed by the ethics of war and international law. These issues are, however, beyond the scope of this book. The

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point here is to attempt an explanation of how the state can, in principle, oblige its inhabitants to risk their lives in war. The answer is that the state does not oblige, but paradoxically enables both the obligation to exist and a life that could render it justifiable. In other words, the obligation becomes potentially justified when the state enables a particular kind of political life that is worth risking one’s life for. However, it remains to show how the understanding of politics has been articulated in practice. As in previous chapters, Zionism provides such an illustration. That violence is sometimes necessary became conventional wisdom in twentieth century Zionism. Yet it would be a mistake to presume that all Zionism involves a justification of violence and a disregard for human plurality. As a national movement, Zionism is exclusively Jewish (and primarily Ashkenazi) and as such is prejudiced against diversity within its membership, but as a national movement Zionism cannot logically claim to reject the national rights of others. Zionist violence has always been presented by its supporters as necessarily defensive, yet sometimes Zionist violence has been offensive against those who are not supportive of the Zionist dream. This tension is indicative of how violence and politics within the Zionist movement have been in constant conflict. In this section I will illustrate by way of Arendt an alternative version of Zionism and thus demonstrate a version of politics that is consistent with the obligation to die to become justified. The successes of Zionism in Palestine have been anything but promising since they ultimately contributed to the continuation of national violence when Zionism’s purpose was supposed to be a positive solution to the problem of minority rights. Zionism was never supposed to be a violent project, even though that is what it became. Yet, there have been alternative versions of Zionism that were more promising and did provide a way to realize the contingencies of political life with a respect for minority rights and human plurality. Hannah Arendt’s Zionism is an illustration of a conception of politics that is political and nonviolent but is cognizant of the violent possibilities in international politics. Dana Villa argues that Arendt sought to maintain a distinction between homme and citoyen.98 Villa claims that this distinction is crucial to her version of agonistic politics. However, in the previous chapter I suggest that Arendt is critical of this traditional distinction because the tradition that provides the abstract idea of a universal “man” with rights is hollow. Indeed, Arendt is critical of the emptiness contained in the idea of the abstract human being with innate rights. “Arendt’s lifelong suspicion of liberalism is in part motivated by her own experience of what it means concretely to be treated as an abstract human being who presumably has (or ought to have) rights in her ‘abstract nakedness of being nothing but human.’”99 Arendt argues that if one is attacked as a Jew

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one should respond as a Jew and not as a human being. It would be “silly,” she once said, to say, if attacked as a Jew, “Excuse me, I am not a Jew; I am a human being.”100 In a 1964 interview with Günter Gaus she said, “If one is attacked as a Jew, one must defend oneself as a Jew. Not as a German, not as a world-citizen, not as un upholder of the Rights of Man. . . .”101 For Arendt, the difference between being a human and a citizen was not the same as that presumed by Rousseau and others. Villa claims that the distinction is crucial for her agonistic politics, but it is not a distinction that any follower of Rousseau or any liberal would recognize since for Arendt there is nothing to the abstract universalism of being human. The distinction, such as it is for Arendt, exists so that the differences amongst human beings are recognized within the construction of a national citizenry, thereby eroding the falsehood of national homogeneity. However, Arendt’s argument also breaks down the distinction since the human condition is marked by political life, and thus to be a human, to have the capacity for spontaneity (for example), is to be political or at least to have the capacity to become political. The human is always both a “man” and a “citizen.” The Kantian idea that humans can become citizens is placed in immediate jeopardy the moment he argues that a bad person can be a good citizen, and thus it needs to be shown how the human can remain a good human being and become a good citizen. Consequently, theoretically the order needs to be reversed so that it is no longer humans becoming citizens, but ensuring that a citizen is also a good human and that politics is made possibly by citizens acting as “men,” not the other way around. The distinction between the human and the citizen needs to be broken down, so that citizenship and humanity are not placed in possible contradiction. The distinction between homme and citoyen is not something that can be sustained, and it is one of the many distinctions that Arendt creates in order to provide an argument that ends by questioning the distinction. In this regard Arendt, like Socrates, provides an aporetic view of human life and politics. She introduces concepts only to then provide reasons for doubting the concepts that she previously suggests are so important. Her thoughts on Zionism follow this pattern, but illustrate nevertheless that it is possible to think differently about the construction of a political community. Arendt is one of the few Jewish intellectuals to be critical of Zionism without rejecting the idea of Jews living in some form of polity of their own.102 This kind of critical activity is sorely lacking since most debates about Zionism veer toward the vitriolic, offensive, condescending, and rude. But Albert Einstein, for example, argued that any future in Palestine would have to be premised on “peaceful cooperation.”103 From the beginnings of Zionism, and especially from the late 1930s onward, there were critical voices within the Zionist community who did not want to reject the need of the Jews to find a

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safe place to live in Palestine and hoped that it would be possible for both Palestinians and Jews to work together in this regard. Even though it died a quick death, the Feisal-Weizmann Agreement indicates that such thoughts were present among the highest echelons of Zionist and Arab statesmanship.104 Arendt was a leading intellectual among the critical Zionist Jews, along with Martin Buber and Judah Magnes. One of Arendt’s constant criticisms of Zionism concerned its desire to continue the European project of joining nation and state, a project that Arendt saw as irrelevant in a world that recognizes or at least is witness to minority populations and the destruction of the myth of homogeneity in the state. Arendt’s involvement in the short lived and unsuccessful Zionist peace group, Ichud, could be seen to provide proof that her arguments were unrealistic, that her criticisms of the Zionist policies in Palestine were out of touch with what needed to be done and what could be done. Yet, as the historian Walter Laqueur reluctantly came to admit, she was clearly more in tune with reality than most of her Zionist critics: “What she wrote about Israel was untrue when she wrote it, but she discerned certain negative trends that became more blatant in the two decades after her death, and with some justification she could now say, ‘I told you so.’”105 In 1944 Arendt wrote, The Zionists, if they continue to ignore the Mediterranean peoples and watch out only for the big faraway powers, will appear only as their tools, the agents of foreign and hostile interests. Jews who know their own history should be aware that such a state of affairs will inevitably lead to a new wave of Jewhatred; the anti-Semitism of tomorrow will assert that Jews not only profiteered from the presence of the foreign powers in that region but had actually plotted it and hence are guilty of the consequences.106

In 1948 she claimed that, “The idea of Arab-Jewish cooperation, though never realized on any scale and today seemingly farther off than ever, is not an idealistic day dream but a sober statement of the fact that without it the whole Jewish venture in Palestine is doomed.”107 She vociferously condemned the Zionist justification of violence. “After two thousand years of ‘Galut mentality,’ the Jewish people have suddenly ceased to believe in survival as an ultimate good in itself and have gone over in a few years to the opposite extreme. Now Jews believe in fighting at any price and feel that ‘going down’ is a sensible method of politics.”108 In 1950 she pointed out that, It was only logical that the evacuation of British troops coincided with the outbreak of a Jewish-Arab war; and it is remarkable how little the accomplished fact of a State of Israel and Jewish victories over Arab armies have influenced

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Arab politics. All hopes to the contrary notwithstanding, it seems as though the one argument the Arabs are incapable of understanding is force.109

The great success of Zionism, that Israel exists, is in many ways also a failure, as Israeli-Arab international relations and the Israeli-Palestinian conflict continuously demonstrate. Arendt’s Zionism illustrates that it is possible to think of a form of political life that responds to the inherent dangers of nation-state politics, based as they are on the misguided belief in homogeneity and an abstract universalism of national rights that does not respect the plurality that makes minority rights possible. Arendt was careful to distinguish political from revisionist Zionism, although both of them were arrogant in their certainty and righteousness. She was more critical of the revisionists who were more openly supportive of violence. It was the revisionist Zionist group Lehi that was behind the assassination of Count Bernadotte, the UN Security Council’s 1948 peace envoy.110 Yet her criticisms of Zionism did not question the basic idea of a Jewish politics or of Jews settling in Palestine. Moreover, nowhere did Arendt say that it was not for the Jews to fight for their rights. In fact, she defended the idea of the formation of a Jewish army to fight the Nazis.111 What she says is that mainstream Zionism ignored the most obvious political problems it faced and focused instead on European anti-Semitism and European nationalism as its justifying features. Consequently, the ethical logic of mainstream Zionism was that the ends justify the means, and the means are justified by the past. Nowhere in this conception of politics is there any recognition that politics involves human spontaneity, and to formalize politics (thereby destroying plurality, uncertainty, and distinctiveness) is to destroy what makes politics political, which was why Zionism could resort to violence without losing a stride—because, in Arendt’s understanding of politics, neither political nor revisionist Zionism were truly political projects. Throughout Zionist activity in Palestine and Israel, the construction of Jewish settlements were used as justification for Zionist policies, so that a Jewish community became proof that the Land belonged to the Jews, thus creating the so-called “facts on the ground.” The Zionists had an efficient tunnel vision that enabled them to see how their project was succeeding without seeing how the effects of this project were altering the political landscape. Consequently, political and revisionist Zionism were perversely apolitical because they ignored what these facts on the ground were doing and instead used them to justify what was being done, that Zionism was in effect a fait accompli that should be accepted since it already existed (a tautological argument). Arendt remarked in 1941 that only on “the moon” would Jews be able to finally escape anti-Semitism and find a land without a people for a people

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without a land.112 Arendt believed that Zionism held political promise, even if its main leaders were sometimes guilty of “dangerous lunacy.”113 She saw Zionism as potentially providing a much-needed explicitly political Jewish response, but she was exceptionally disappointed and sometimes angry at the paths that Zionism took. Though predominately a theorist, Arendt did take some policy positions on Zionism. For example, she supported the federation solution in Palestine, advocated by Dr. Magnes, with Jews and Palestinians governing together via a system of local councils. Considering how far-fetched Zionism was to begin with, it is difficult to think of the federated argument as any less fanciful. In any case, the best that Arendt said about this version was that it was “more realistic” than other versions, even if it was not politically possible at the time due to widespread opposition. More substantially, Arendt provided five “axiomatic criteria” for what to do in Palestine: First, “The real goal of the Jews in Palestine is the building up of a Jewish homeland. This goal must never be sacrificed to the pseudo-sovereignty of a Jewish state.” Second, “The independence of Palestine can be achieved only on a solid basis of Jewish-Arab cooperation.” Third, all terrorist groups were to be eliminated, and punished. Fourth, immigration to Palestine could be limited. Fifth, “Local self-government and mixed Jewish-Arab municipal and rural councils, on a small scale and as numerous as possible, are the only realistic political measure that can eventually lead to the political emancipation of Palestine.”114

The fifth point is particularly interesting, since it would provide a means for actual consent to take place to as great a degree as possible in political life, and indeed, this type of political participation is defended by Arendt elsewhere. Consent is important for the obligation to die, but as demonstrated in the previous chapter, it is not difficult for an account of politics that includes the idea of consent to come to ignore the need for consent. Arendt claims in her Zionist argument that it is possible to provide an actual version of consent in political life (she also sees the founding of the United States of America to represent a form of consent similar to, but not the same as, the consent found in contract theory).115 This consent takes place in the context of local councils. But her account of political consent is different from the traditional version in which consent is readily equated with obedience. For Arendt, there exists a different account of the political

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obligation of consent, one in which consent occurs as “concerted action.”116 This version takes place among “a plurality of men” and is divided into two stages, the initiation of the law and then the accomplishment of many people joining together to support this law.117 Thus Arendt’s account of political obligation is not asking “Why did you obey?” but “Why did you support?”118 Yet, while it is clear that Arendt is in this regard challenging the tradition of political thought that tried to define politics in terms such as obedience and obligation, it is equally uncertain how precisely Arendt’s distinctions provide a version of the political that is radically different, especially considering her favorable account of the local council. Indeed, Arendt’s many distinctions are notoriously difficult to uphold,119 and there are a variety of interpretations of what she means by politics.120 Nevertheless, her critique does indicate some ways to think about the political, and she provides an additional example, which I will briefly turn to, of how consent can be incorporated into the politics required for the obligation to die to become justifiable. The significance of consent in the political system is important for the obligation to die to become just, and while the defining features of the obligation are based on what it is about the state that makes it able to oblige its citizens, to a degree, it becomes difficult to remove this theory of state from the character of the state at issue. Thus, it may be possible that certain types of state cannot be presumed to justifiably oblige its citizens to risk their lives for its benefit. Insofar as it is presumed that humans are morally equal it follows that for the obligation to die to be just it is necessary for there to be some way for citizens to consent to the obligation. In this regard, there must be some kind of political involvement of the people as well as the government in making the decision about going to war. Such participation could involve public demonstrations (in favor or in opposition) and local council meetings. Some sort of democratic war council comes to mind. There could be official war councils held across the country where various representatives of the citizenry would give their opinions. A non-partisan selection of representatives from universities, religious organizations, labour unions, the corporate world, and schoolteachers, for example, could be invited to participate in the council in order to provide legislators with the ability to declare war the opportunity to engage more directly with the citizenry and vice versa. The findings or conclusions of each council meeting would have to be made public. This increased level of political participation seems appropriate considering the life and death obligations of war. This kind of council also has precedent. Other than the aristocratic versions found in Tolstoy’s War and Peace,121 there is a democratic version of the council system, the one that Thomas Jefferson thought of and which Hannah

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Arendt describes as a way for the citizenry to act as citizens and prevent abuses of power by those in the centers of government. She writes, According to Jefferson, it was the very principle of republican government to demand ‘the subdivision of the counties into wards,’ namely, the creation of ‘small republics’ through which ‘every man in the State’ could become ‘an acting member of the Common government, transacting in person a great portion of its rights and duties, subordinate indeed, yet important, and entirely within his competence.’122

In this ward or council, the citizens have a public political space in which to engage in the affairs of state on a regular basis, and not just at election time. While it is unlikely that any state government would be supportive of such regularly scheduled councils since they could detract from the government’s authority, having such councils in relation to the possibility of war seems both necessary and natural in any democratic state. They are necessary because winning an election is not a carte blanche to the elected, and when people’s lives and possibly the survival of the country are at stake, the people have the right to become politically involved to as great a degree as possible without seriously eroding any necessary security requirements—although public debate on war is a necessary process if any democracy is to be at all democratic. That the need for these councils should be obvious is because in a democracy, if the people are going to be asked to risk their lives, to engage in various acts of “sacrifice” or risk for the benefit of the state, they need to be asked whether or not they in fact consent. Tacit consent cannot be enough when life is at stake. A council system would provide at least some means for actual consent and actual democratic debate to take place outside of the partisan or ideological or increasingly remote halls of government. The biggest question with the idea of councils is not whether they are possible, but who would be invited to participate. Arendt’s call for a council system in Zionism is an early example in her writings of how political participation involves consent. Arendt’s version of consent is, to be more accurate, not really one of consent (or of contract) but of “mutual promise.”123 The distinction is between a contract based on reciprocity and equality and brings people together to form an alliance based on each other’s contribution (the mutual promise) or a contract based on a fictional account of individuals relinquishing most of their rights and powers and handing them over to a ruler (the social contract). In Arendt’s account, consent is one of mutual promise, incorporating a presumption of equality among the members who commit, and by virtue of joining together and incorporating each other’s strengths, build a polity. It is in part this understanding of the polity that helps explain what she means by the pseudo-sovereignty of a Jewish state, and not the more important cause of a

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Jewish homeland. Consent, for Arendt, is not tied to the social contract account of sovereignty, in which people give up their rights and are thus subservient to the authority of the sovereign.124 Therefore, the political obligation to die, insofar as it is in fact an obligation and requires some form of consent, emerges from the mutual promise that protects the plurality of a life among others. Insofar as Arendt’s other suggestions for what must be done in Palestine, other than the immigration problem, it is difficult to find fault with her suggestions since they are clearly more reflective about the political and ethical challenges contained in the Zionist project than much mainstream Zionism was (at least openly). The immigration point is, however, difficult to defend (she wrote this in 1948, knowing the fate of European Jewry), but it is also not difficult to understand since an influx of Jews keen on a homeland in Palestine would be and was seen as a threat by the local Arab inhabitants. One possible solution to this problem was provided by Albert Einstein, who in a letter fiercely condemning the violence in Palestine (instigated by Jew and Arab alike) wrote in 1930, One who, like myself, has cherished for many years the conviction that the humanity of the future must be built up on an intimate community of the nations, and that aggressive nationalism must be conquered, can see a future for Palestine only on the basis of peaceful cooperation between the two peoples who are at home in the country. For this reasons I should have expected that the great Arab people will show a truer appreciation of the need which the Jews feel to rebuild their national home in the ancient seat of Judaism; I should have expected that by common effort ways and means would be found to render possible an extensive Jewish settlement in the country.125

Unfortunately, neither Einstein’s nor Arendt’s suggestions were adopted by the leading political agents of the time, but the importance of this list provided by Arendt is that it demonstrates firsthand an account of politics that is precisely of the kind required for the obligation to die to become just.

THE PROBLEM OF VIOLENCE As argued above, it is not the state that obliges people to go into war, it is the condition of life in the state, in a world of states that makes the conditions for such obligations possible. This distinction is important because it means that in thinking about the obligation to die, the justifiability of the obligation lies not in some metaphorical office of power, but with the people who form the political community. Whereas Augustine, Aquinas, and others claim that there

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is an actual authority that obliges, the identity of this authority becomes increasingly murky in the arguments of Rousseau, Hobbes, and Kant. These philosophers began the process of turning attention toward the individual citizens that come together and the process justify the authority of the state over them. However, as Kant knew, there is a problem in this kind of argument when the political obligation at stake involves sending someone into war since it is unclear how the sovereign authority of the state overturns the individual will and obliges the citizenry into war. Some may argue that a volunteer force resolves this problem, but only if one is also prepared to accept that the state could not conscript citizens into the army if the government decided to do so. Such a reduction of state power seems unlikely, and so in order to think about how the obligation to die could become justifiable, we need to turn to alternative accounts of politics and of membership in the polity. Turning to Arendt, who is more interested in those who take action than in the structures of obligating authority, I suggested that what makes the state able to obligate its citizens into war is the kind of political life the state makes possible. It is not, in other words, the state that obliges, but the conditions of political life that the state makes possible.126 However, the conditions of life in a world of bounded states also involves the condition of international anarchy and the possibility of inter-state war. Thus, the positive benefits of a political life inside a state simultaneously coexist with the negative possibility of inter-state war. Moreover, if politics is to engage in a justifiying project that relates to the ability of the state to engage in war, there is an implication that if the obligation to die can be justified, the war is also justified. The political discourse that justifies the obligation to die also suggests a justification of the use of violence, or the potential use of violence. In exploring the justifiability of the obligation to die it is highly likely that there will be some conflation of war and violence. War for the most part tends toward the institutional use of military force directed toward another state. Consequently, war involves various structural features and noticeable characteristics that differentiate itself from the more general category of violence. A war is inherently violent, but violence is not necessarily a war. Nevertheless, while the obligation to die refers to dying in war, the obligation itself is violent in at least two ways: that of being faced with the violence of death on the battlefield and that of the potential violence involved in being subject to the obligating abilities of the state. The person could be forcibly obliged, thus implying a form of violence over individual autonomy and freedom. It would be a serious misrepresentation to presume that those who rush into battle experience the structures of war and not the phenomenon of violence. Thus, while wars involve armies and in the abstract take place at the level of international relations, in the concrete it is the extreme violence of war that is felt by its immediate participants. To be

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obliged into war is to face violence. Consequently, it is important to ask how the state can justifiably oblige its citizens into the violence of dying in war. While states may exist in order to restrict violence they also contribute to the possibility of violence, especially internationally—whether or not they create the violence of the international realm is a classic problem of international relations theory.127 The obligation to die can be justified only to the extent that the state is understood to paradoxically be both a provider of security due to its abilities to restrict the violence faced by its citizens/inhabitants, and its ability to send them into situations of extreme violence in war. This paradox needs to be addressed if the obligation to die can be justified. It is curious that attempts to justify the obligation to die do not focus on the problem of violence. With the possible exception of St. Augustine’s writings on the ethics of war, it is rare to find an account that relates to both the obligation to die and of the ethics involved in sending people to their possible deaths without simultaneously justifying the violence that could kill these people. Walzer, building on Kant and Hegel, does not develop an account of how politics and violence meet in this obligation, even though Hegel recognizes this intersection. In the liberal tradition, politics are not supposed to be violent, and if the obligation to die is to be justified according to liberal tenets, this distinction must be recognized. This distinction is not unique to liberal thought. When Socrates drinks the poison hemlock he is supporting the idea that under no circumstances must citizens be made to engage in violence as a part of the politics of life inside the city. The extreme manifestation of this is that the state will not administer the fatal dose of poison itself in cases of execution, but make the condemned individual do so. Consequently, the citizens can continue to live relaxed in the sense that they have been spared the act of committing violence as a part of their political lives, and have sustained their conviction that politics (inside the city) is exclusively based on dialogue.128 The significance of this unusual perception that ordering someone to die is not violent is in the idea that politics cannot involve violence. Of course, an execution is violent and the relations between states can also be violent and political, even if the citizens of the ancient polis did not see things this way. Nevertheless, as this example illustrates, politics involves restricting violence, and one of the state’s most basic purposes is to restrict violence. To justify the obligation to die implies a justification of the state’s violent characteristics, but this is a disturbing implication. The way the state has traditionally placed limits on violence is to control who may resort to violence inside the state and between states. Arguments that link the state with restrictions on the use of violence are found in variety of sources, from Machiavelli to Hobbes to Weber, and the entire tradition of just war theory is based on the claim that the state is required to restrict who may

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legitimately resort to acts of war. That there is a connection between the state and violence is well known, but problems and doubts arise as to the specifics of this connection and the normative justifications that are used to defend the relationship. For example, and paradoxically, while the state is presumed to restrict the risk of violence against its inhabitants, it is also the agent that can send its inhabitants into the most violent of situations: war. Consequently, the state is the key actor in both restricting and unleashing violence. This paradox is often ignored by treating violence inside the state and international violence as different things. The distinctions that have marked some of the differences between political and international theory replicate treating domestic and international violence as separates, even though the peace that one brings contributes to violence in the other. Indeed, the peace that the state brings comes at the cost of forgetting or ignoring what the state can do: conscript, conduct capital punishment (in some countries), attack its own citizens if they are thought to threaten the state sufficiently, torture, protect the weapons industry, wage mass war, build nuclear arsenals, make its inhabitants targets of attack because of its foreign policies, and so on. That the state is a violent entity is well known. It matters little whether the violence is domestic or international. Nevertheless, both domestic political theory and international theory suggest that the state exists in order to restrict both types of violence. Consequently, and speaking descriptively, it could be said that the state operates a protection racket against its inhabitants.129 The state demands their constant obedience to its authority in exchange for protecting them from violence while also threatening them with its ability to wage war and thus subjecting them to the most extreme forms of violence available (either by sending them to war, or placing them at risk of attack). Arendt noticed this paradox when she claimed that, “The monstrous development of modern means of destruction over which states have a monopoly, but which never could have been developed without that monopoly and which can be employed only within the political arena” led to a widespread public prejudice against politics.130 By fostering the creation of weapons capable of destroying all of humanity the state has effectively provided fodder for doubting the normative benefits of state-based political life. This issue might invite a cost-benefit analysis of whether the goods that the state provides outweigh its negative aspects. However, this response is weak since it does not address the specifics of how the state is both a provider of security and a creator of insecurity. Moreover, when the cost can be the destruction of the human race, which is part of what Arendt is getting at, there is a serious deficit in the political discourse that provides the normative value of how violence and peace play out in our modern state-based life.

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In this vein, a quandary with the obligation to die is that it is an obligation that emerges out of the political practices and structures of the state, but is a difficult obligation to justify politically because life is at stake in the obligation. Once one is obliged, at the moment in time when the obligation takes effect, the obligation to risk one’s life loses a part of its political characteristics. The justifying process behind the obligation is political, but there is little room for politics once one is obliged to run into battle and starts running. Politics at this particular moment in time is limited to an individual decision about whether or not to rush into battle. However, the obligation to die is a problem about the morally obliging conditions of a political life in a bounded community and not about the psychology of facing the possibility of death, even if this possibility is what animates the moral conundrum that is the obligation to die. In order to understand the obligation to die, a heuristic device is needed so that the violence contained in the obligation can be referred back to the political aspects that characterize the obligation’s justifiability. One such device is to provide a distinction between politics and violence, so that the horror of being obliged to die is not forgotten while the politics that underpin the justifiability of the obligation remain. This difficult intellectual terrain is similar to the moral justifications of just war theory that serve to bring morality into a situation that has seemingly little room for any moral behaviour. The obligation to die poses a similar difficulty since at heart the obligation is about justifying what in any other situation would be the murder of citizens for the sake of the state or sovereign. Therefore, in order to justify the obligation to die an understanding of violence is necessary in order to be able to provide a framework in which to work out how citizens or subjects can be justifiably sent into the most violent of situations for political reasons when a defining characteristic of politics is its nonviolence. Arendt’s account of politics reflects this division between politics and violence.131 She points out that war may remain a possibility in international politics since so far “no substitute for this final arbiter in international affairs” has arisen.132 Politics, or the pursuit for a political life, may lead to violence, but a political life is not violent in that once violence is used, politics becomes subsumed within a means-ends category. “The very substance of violent action is ruled by the means-ends category, whose chief characteristic, if applied to human affairs, has always been that the end is in danger of being overwhelmed by the means which it justifies and which are needed to reach it.”133 The means-ends category overshadows the political condition that corresponds to the human condition of action, natality, and worldliness, of being born for freedom. “Violence is,” writes Arendt, “the prepolitical act of liberating oneself from the necessity of life for freedom in the world.”134 Arendt claims that the

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ancient Greeks called this freedom eudaimonia, the happiness that is the good life that Aristotle wrote about. For Arendt, humans are born for freedom and violence is one way to avoid this, which would entail an attack on the meaning of humanity. Dana Villa writes that for Arendt “political action was viewed as the very opposite of violence, coercion or rule.”135 Jerome Kohn claims that for Arendt, “violence destroys what the laws make possible.”136 Justifying the obligation to die is not to justify violence, for the politics that contributes to the obligation to die becoming justified needs to be nonviolent without presuming that under no conditions will the use of violent force be necessary. Zionism provides an excellent demonstration of the pitfalls in the ways that politics and violence relate to each other. The combination of victimhood and moral righteousness that defined Zionism infused Zionist thinking about force as defensive, but it was at best an ambivalent defensive ethos. It was thus in a rather curious moral tone that Herzl recommended a form of population transfer or emigration from Palestine. We must expropriate gently . . . We shall try to spirit the penniless population across the border by procuring employment for it in the transit countries, while denying it any employment in our country . . . Both the process of expropriation and the removal of the poor must be carried out discreetly and circumspectly.”137

Herzl rarely refered to this subject, but this single diary exerpt indicates that the Zionist leadership was aware that there could be a serious problem with the local inhabitants, and that it would be important to find a way to remove them peacefully. Yet, at the same time, they eventually came to realize that such a peaceful emigration was unlikely. Zionists found the idea of a transfer “morally problematic”138 but also were at a loss with how to respond to increasing Arab nationalism. Nevertheless, the trope was a common refrain and it was this ambivalence that marked much early Zionist thought and demonstrated a collective failure to truly take into account the politics of violence as they fought to ensure the success of the Zionist dream. By the 1920s and especially 1930s the need to self-arm and train to fight for the Zionist idea became an accepted wisdom in the Yishuv, thus removing the ambivalence with the certainty of needing an “iron wall” to fight the local Arabs. Without accepting the possible need to fight, it would not have been possible for the Yishuv to have sufficiently armed and trained itself to fight and win the 1948 war. Consequently, while early Zionism did not seriously consider the need to use violence to establish the Jewish state, the Yishuv certainly came to this conclusion thereby establishing a firm connection between the political ideology of Zionism and the use of violence. In the process, mainstream Zionism embraced the means-ends distinction that troubled Arendt in her writings on violence.

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She was not the only one who found the path Zionism was taking to be morally troublesome. The necessity of the Jews to find a political space was not in doubt, but there was concern over the extent to which violence had to be a part of this space. It was in part the possibility of violence in the creation of the Jewish state that led Albert Einstein to write: I should much rather see reasonable agreement with the Arabs on the basis of living together in peace than the creation of a Jewish state. Apart from practical consideration, my awareness of the essential nature of Judaism resist the idea of a Jewish state with borders, an army, and a measure of temporal power no matter how modest. I am afraid of the inner damage Judaism will sustain—especially from the development of a narrow nationalism with in our own ranks, against which we have already had to fight strongly, even without a Jewish state. A return to a nation in the political sense of the word would be equivalent to turning away from the spiritualization of our community, which we owe the genius of our prophets. If external necessity should after all compel us to assume this burnen, let us bear it with tact and patience.139

Einstein demonstrates that it is possible to clearly articulate an account of a political space without having to accept violence as a part of this space. There have been many attempts politically to separate the historical twins of state and violence, and such voices can be found within the historical ranks of Zionism. Violence and politics have often related to each other. Consequently, in justifying the obligation to die it is important to grapple with the underlying paradoxes of a political life tied to and repulsed by violence.

CONCLUSION The Jewish Question had a major influence on Arendt, as Richard Bernstein argues, and as the recent publication of Arendt’s Jewish Writings illustrates.140 This influence may also be why she does not offer an account of political obligation—because of the Jews’ experience of suffering under the obligations of the state. Arendt provides an account of politics that could answer the Jewish Question and provide a defense of Jewish resorts to violence in specific cases. The crux of Arendt’s answer was to understand what politics entails and how Jews could participate as Jews in politics. Consequently, she came to realize that politics is ultimately meaningless without plurality. “Politics is always for Arendt what goes on between a plurality of individuals speaking together about what concerns them in common, generating the power to do what they determined can be done by acting together.”141 Moreover, the plurality of politics involved by definition a care for the world because, “Wher-

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ever people come together, the world thrusts itself between them, and it is in this in-between space that all human affairs are conducted.”142 Just as individual uniqueness creates a diversity of people, just as an individual is always a plural being, a “two-in-one,” politics must reflect these features of human life. Violence destroys politics since it involves none of the underlying features of politics. Political obligations are contingent on politics meaning something important, as Socrates claimed. Socrates suggests that there is something about the polis that makes possible the obligation to die, and his responses to his trial indicate how seriously he took the question of this obligation. Socrates was willing to die for the sake of the polis even though his polis had him executed. Such was his dedication to political life and to his ideals, and through Plato Socrates informs future generations of philosophers what issues are at stake in the obligation to die. The Socratic argument has its pitfalls, notably in its solipsism and in the exclusionary model of citizenship and of politics he describes. Nevertheless there are some positive sides to the Socratic argument, and the influence and significance of Socrates cannot be underemphasized or taken for granted. Almost all arguments for the obligation to die can be found in Socrates, but Socrates’ life itself is the strongest argument since not only did he provide a philosophical justification, he also set the example in his life and with his death. His moral argument is difficult to apply to a concept of politics that is based on plurality, insofar as the Socratic argument claims that it is preferable to be at odds with the world than to be at odds with oneself. Yet, in a sense, this odd claim has some truth to it, since it is with oneself that anybody has to live, and it is this same moral perspective that society or government should take when it obliges citizens to risk their lives on its behalf. Provided that this argument incorporates the fact that morality is also about a life among others, and is suitably altered to respect the differences of others who make up the communities that comprise the state, this is a good place to start thinking about how the obligation to die could become justified. It is in this way that Arendt updates the Socratic argument, taking his moral and political philosophy and applying it to a concept of morality and human responsibility that is concerned with the world and not just with oneself or with one’s nation. With such a version of politics, the obligation to die can start to become justifiable. The obligation to die needs to be founded on the claim that politics is about human life and that humanity, as defined by plurality, diversity, and action is at stake in politics. In order to justify the obligation to die, politics has to be highly valued for if politics has no value, there would be no reason for political life to involve any obligations. For the obligation to die to become justified it must take into account what it is about politics that makes obligations what they are, not choices or whims, and of what binds politics to human life. This chapter has

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shown how politics could be understood to have a meaning worth dying for and worth being obliged for, and it illustrated how violence necessarily but paradoxically relates to the obligation to die, to the politics of the state and of international relations. I am not claiming that the organization of the world into sovereign states is the only or the best way to organize human affairs, nor that being obliged to die for the state is just. I am claiming that the call to risk one’s life for the state in war is a possibility and, consequently, there must be some moral way to question when, why, and how the obligation can be justified. How the obligation can be justified is the question animating this research project, and this chapter has illustrated one way in which the obligation could become justified: by being based on a politics of plurality, natality, worldliness, speech and on the restriction of violence. There are, of course, additional concerns that should influence the justifiability of this obligation. For example, does the kind of war matter, or the kind of state that is obliging? On these and other similar questions, I offer a few comments in the book’s conclusion. That a particular kind of politics is required for the obligation to die to become justified also means that in cases where this feature of politics is absent the obligation is unjust. In order to justify the obligation to die, political theorists since Socrates have turned to what it is about the state that makes it possible to oblige in this manner. The various arguments that have been proposed by these philosophers and jurists to justify this obligation have consistently turned to the value of the state, to an argument in defense of particular types of states, with the implication that while other states may oblige in a similar manner, it does not follow that the obligation is always just and if it is unjust the question of resistance arises. Once the idea is adopted that the state exists in order to provide some kind of normative good, it follows that if the state does not provide this good then the state can be called into question. Calling the authority of the state into question is precisely what so many political theorists tried to avoid, and yet it is a logical outcome of any argument that seeks to justify the state and sovereignty to claim that if the state exists for a normative purposes and does not fulfil this purpose, some kind of resistance or rebellion may be allowed. Aquinas was aware of this logical possibility, which is why he provides some allowances for a theory of resistance (however shallow this theory may be), although not a theory of revolution. Hobbes is, however, the clearest to articulate the idea that a sovereign that fails can be replaced due to a failure in the social contract. With the exception of the religious argument, what makes the state worthwhile is that it provides a door to a political life, and if humans are indeed political animals, it is this feature of the state that can make the obligation to die potentially justifiable. Consequently, the obligation to die can become justified when a version of politics that is up to the task exists. It is not that the state obliges, but it enables con-

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ditions under which obligations become political, and the political makes such obligations potentially justifiable.

NOTES 1. Hannah Arendt, The Jew as Pariah, ed. Ron H. Feldman (New York: Grove Press, 1978), 89. The Jew as Pariah, which is out of print, has been reprinted in a new collection of Arendt’s “Jewish Writings.” 2. For an overview of this problem examined in relation to the concept of racism see, Claude Lévi-Strauss, “Race and History,” in The Race Question in Modern Science (Paris: The United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization and Sidgwick & Jackson LTD, 1956). 3. Hannah Arendt, The Origins of Totalitarianism (London: André Deutsch, 1986). 4. Zygmant Bauman, Modernity and the Holocaust (Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press, 1991). 5. That the right of self-defense can provide a foundation for justifying resorts to armed force is challenged in, David Rodin, War and Self-Defense (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2004). In the conclusion Rodin alludes to the possibility of situations where people come to the conclusion that they should fight and go to war. Rodin appears to be alluding to the possibility that people might be prepared to risk their lives in war, although he does not explicitly explain why the state can expect the people to recognize such an obligation. The book leans toward the moral problem of killing and not of dying. 6. Thomas Hobbes, Leviathan, ed. Richard Tuck, rev. student ed. (Cambridge, New York: Cambridge University Press, 1996). 7. Her relevance today is argued with great conviction by one of her former students in, Elizabeth Young-Bruehl, Why Arendt Matters (New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 2006). This book clearly applies Arendt’s thought to current political and international problems, thus illustrating one way how “her thought matters.” However, the book is short on references regarding the author’s interpretation of specific events, and while the book is at times critical of Arendt, at others it is somewhat obsequious. 8. Plato, The Last Days of Socrates: Euthyphro, Apology, Crito Phaeda trans. Hugh Tredennick and Harold Tarrant (London: Penquin books, 2003). 48 (Apology 24c). 9. Plato, The Last Days of Socrates, 66 (Apology 39a). 10. Plato, The Last Days of Socrates, fn 50, p 219 11. Plato, The Last Days of Socrates, 54 (Apology 28e). 12. Plato, The Last Days of Socrates, 88 (Crito 49b). 13. See, Plato, Gorgias, trans. Robin Waterfield (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1994), 40, 47, 108, 34 (469c) (73a) (509c) (27b) 14. Plato, Gorgias, 105 (507d, 07a). 15. Plato, Gorgias, 106 (507e). 16. Plato, The Last Days of Socrates, 89 (Crito 49d). 17. Plato, The Last Days of Socrates, 89 (Crito 50a).

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18. Plato, The Last Days of Socrates, 93 (Crito 52b). 19. Plato, The Last Days of Socrates, 93 (Crito 52d). 20. Plato, The Last Days of Socrates, 93 (Crito 52e). 21. Frederick Rosen, “Obligation and Friendship in Plato’s Crito,” Political Theory 1, no. 3 (1973): 311. 22. Steven M. DeLue, “Plato’s Crito as a Defense of Critical Inquiry,” The Journal of Politics 39, no. 2 (1977). 23. Plato, The Last Days of Socrates, 67 (Apology 38e). 24. Arendt notes that the separation between politics and violence in ancient Greece is reinforced by excluding violence from inside the polis, including the means of legal execution. Politics inside the polis, where life “was based exclusively upon persuasion and not upon violence. (That these were no empty words, spoken in selfdeception, is shown, among other things, by the Athenian custom of ‘persuading’ those who had been condemned to death to commit suicide by drinking the hemlock cup, thus sparing the Athenian citizen under all circumstances the indignity of physical violation.) However, since for the Greeks political life by definition did not extend beyond the walls of the polis, the use of violence seemed to them beyond the need for justification in the realm of what we today call foreign affairs. . . . Outside the walls of the polis, that is outside the realm of politics in the Greek sense of the word, ‘the strong did what they could, and the weak suffered what they must’ (Thucydides).” Hannah Arendt, On Revolution (New York: Penguin Books, 1965), 12. 25. Hannah Arendt, Responsibility and Judgment, ed. Jerome Kohn (New York: Schocken Books, 2003), 156. 26. Arendt, Responsibility and Judgment, 90. In a written correspondence between Hannah Arendt and Mary McCarthy, the question arises over what is the most convincing moral argument against murder. Arendt claims that the only convincing philosophical answer, however disturbing, is the answer of Socrates, that one should not murder because to do so is to live in the presence of a murderer—oneself—and nobody wants to be in the presence of a murderer. See, Hannah Arendt, Mary McCarthy, and Carol Brightman, Between Friends: The Correspondence of Hannah Arendt and Mary Mccarthy 1949–1975 (London: Secker & Warburg, 1995). 27. Arendt, Responsibility and Judgment, 152. Arendt also notes how this argument involves the axiomatic logic contained in Kant’s categorical imperative, “Thou shalt not contradict yourself.” 28. See, Plato, Gorgias, 127–29 (521a–22e). 29. Plato, Gorgias, 127 (521d). 30. Plato, Gorgias, 129 (522e). 31. An aporia is a problem in philosophy that is seemingly without resolution. It is a deeply perplexing problem. Socrates’ arguments tend not to resolve the question posed, but to provide further grounds for realizing how difficult, if not insurmountable, the original question or problem posed is. This aspect of his thought is addressed in the introduction of, Plato, The Last Days of Socrates. See also, Maurice H. Cohen, “The Aporias in Plato’s Early Dialogues,” Journal of the History of Ideas 23, no. 2 (1962). For discussions on aporias related to the death of Socrates see, David L. Roochnik, “Apology 40c4–41e7: Is Death Really a Gain?” The Classical Journal 80,

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no. 3 (1985); Mary Margaret MacKenzie, “The Virtues of Socratic Ignorance,” The Classical Quarterly 38, no. 2 (1988). 32. Arendt, Responsibility and Judgment, 157. 33. Following Hannah Arendt, I am presuming that there is a difference between Socratic and Platonic philosophy. This reading is supported by Paul Gooch’s brief survey of the way that Socrates had been understood historically (genius with possible divine connection, or annoying sophist). Gooch claims that it is possible that Plato supplemented Socratic philosophy with his own critical approach to Socrates in order to be true to Socrates’ own thought, to maintain Socrates as a thinker of the highest calibre, and also to illustrate his annoying manner of debating with others. One way that Plato elevates Socrates is to give him a divine character, expressed by linking Socratic wisdom to the soul, a characteristic that encouraged future Christians to see in Socrates the spirit of Jesus. Paul W. Gooch, “Socrates: Devious or Divine?” Greece & Rome, 2nd Ser. 32, no. 1 (1985). 34. For an alternative but complementary version examining the death of Socrates, insofar as it relates to the relationship between the body and the soul, Laurel Madison claims that the importance of the soul is in persuading the philosopher to avoid a life of carelessness, thus claiming that Socrates cannot be hostile toward the body and is not favoring the soul over the body. See, Laurel A. Madison, “Have We Been Careless with Socrates’ Last Words? A Rereading of the Phaedo,” Journal of the History of Philosophy 40, no. 4 (2002). 35. Even if one believes that the soul is an objective reality, and that all people have a soul and must act in order to save their soul, as Augustine argues, the only way to do so is for the person whose soul is at stake to act. One cannot save the soul of someone else. 36. Plato, The Last Days of Socrates, 129 (Phaedo 67d). 37. The link is made in Phaedo. The concept of the Ideas is, in addition to Phaedo, articulated in The Republic. Plato, The Republic of Plato, trans. Allan Bloom (New York: Basic Books, 1968), Plato, The Last Days of Socrates. 38. See, Plato, The Last Days of Socrates, (Phaedo). 39. As referenced in the previous chapter, the Vietnam War veteran Tim O’Brien says it is most likely that one of the factors involved in making this decision is whether or not one is prepared to incur the wrath of the society that one refused to fight for. See, Tim O’Brien, If I Die in a Combat Zone (London, New York, Toronto and Sydney: Harper perennial, 2006). 40. Hannah Arendt, The Promise of Politics, ed. Jerome Kohn (New York: Schocken Books, 2005), 7. 41. See, Plato, The Republic. 42. See, Arendt, Responsibility and Judgment, 88. 43. For more on this in relation to fighting and killing in war see, Richard Norman, Ethics, Killing and War (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1995). 44. Arendt, The Promise of Politics, 20. For a connection between this caracterization of philosophy and politics in Arendt’s thought see, John S. Nelson, “Politics and Truth: Arendt’s Problematic,” American Journal of Political Science 22, no. 2 (1978). For an alternative view see, Suzanne Duvall Jacobitti, “The Public, the Private, the

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Moral: Hannah Arendt and Political Morality,” International Political Science Review / Revue internationale de science politique 12, no. 4 (1991). 45. See, Arendt, The Promise of Politics. 46. Arendt, The Promise of Politics, 22. Arendt often refers to this individual plurality as a “two-in-one.” 47. Arendt, The Promise of Politics, 26. 48. See, Arendt, The Promise of Politics, 60–61. Hannah Arendt, The Human Condition (London and Chicago: Chicago University Press, 1958). 49. Plato, The Republic. 50. A few key texts in this regard are, Will Kymlicka, Multicultural Citizenship: A Liberal Theory of Minority Rights (Oxford; New York: Clarendon Press, 1995); Will Kymlicka and W. J. Norman, Citizenship in Diverse Societies (Oxford; New York: Oxford University Press, 2000); Charles Taylor and Amy Gutmann, Multiculturalism: Examining the Politics of Recognition (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1994); James Tully, Strange Multiplicity: Constitutionalism in an Age of Diversity (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1995). 51. John Rawls, A Theory of Justice, rev. ed. (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1999; Michael Walzer, Spheres of Justice: A Defence of Pluralism and Equality (Oxford: Robertson, 1983). 52. See, Tully, Strange Multiplicity. 53. Lévi-Strauss notes this problem and elaborates on the issue of diversity in an essay on racism. See, Claude Lévi-Strauss, “Race and History,” in The Race Question in Modern Science (Paris: The United Nations Educational Scientific and Cultural Organization and Sidgwick & Jackson LTD, 1956). 54. Such as, Seyla Benhabib, The Rights of Others: Aliens, Residents and Citizens (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2004). 55. Arendt, The Human Condition, 36. 56. See, Reflections on War and Political Discourse: Realism, Just War, and Feminism in a Nuclear Age in, Jean Bethke Elshtain, ed., Just War Theory (Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1992), 260–79. I am also by no means the first to bring Arendt into international political thought. See, for example, Anthony F. Lang Jr. and John Williams, eds., Hannah Arendt and International Relations: Reading across the Lines (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2005). For an examination of Arendt’s thought as it relates to war see, Patricia Owens, Between War and Politics: International Relations and the Thought of Hannah Arendt (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2007). 57. Owens, Between War and Politics, 39. (Italics in original). 58. Arendt, The Jew as Pariah, 59. 59. Owens, Between War and Politics, 18. 60. Arendt, Jewish Writings. 61. Arendt, The Human Condition, 55. 62. Arendt, The Jew as Pariah, 178–92, Arendt, Jewish Writings, 388–401. 63. Arendt, Jewish Writings, 136–60. 64. Arendt, Jewish Writings, 153. 65. Arendt, Jewish Writings, 153–54. 66. Arendt, The Human Condition, 37.

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67. John McGowan, “Must Politics Be Violent? Arendt’s Utopian Vision,” in Hannah Arendt and the Meaning of Politics, ed. Craig Calhoun and John McGowan (Minneapolis and London: University of Minnesota Press, 1997), 268. 68. McGowan, “Must Politics Be Violent?” 69. See, Elisabeth Young-Bruehl, Hannah Arendt: For Love of the World, 2nd ed. (New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 2004); Dagmar Barnouw, “Speaking About Modernity: Arendt’s Construction of the Political,” New German Critique, no. 50 (1990); Richard J. Bernstein, Hannah Arendt and the Jewish Question (Cambridge, Mass.: The MIT Press, 1996). 70. Arendt, The Human Condition, 36. 71. Young-Bruehl, Why Arendt Matters, 84. 72. Dana R. Villa, Politics, Philosophy, Terror: Essays on the Thought of Hannah Arendt (Princeton, New Jersey: Princeton University Press, 1999), 135. 73. Dana Villa, ed., The Cambridge Companion to Hannah Arendt (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2000), 115. 74. See, Villa, The Cambridge Companion to Hannah Arendt, 119; Arendt, The Human Condition. 75. Arendt, The Human Condition, 7. Action is one of the three parts of the vita activa. The remaining two are labor and work: “Labour is the activity which corresponds to the biological process of the human body, whose spontaneous growth, metabolism, and eventual decay are bound to the vital necessities produced and fed into the life process by labour. The human condition of labour is life itself. Work is the activity, which corresponds to the unnaturalness of human existence, which is not imbedded in, and whose mortality is not compensated by, the species’ ever-recurring life cycle. Work provides an ‘artificial’ world of things, distinctly different from all natural surroundings. Within its borders each individual life is housed, while this world itself is meant to outlast and transcend them all. The human condition of work is worldliness.” Arendt, The Human Condition, 7. 76. Arendt, The Human Condition, 188. 77. Arendt, The Human Condition, 179. 78. Arendt, The Human Condition, 179. 79. Arendt, The Human Condition, 180. 80. Arendt, The Human Condition, 191–92. 81. Michael Walzer, Obligations: Essays on Disobedience, War and Citizenship (Cambridge: MA: Harvard University Press, 1970). 82. Arendt, The Human Condition, 244. 83. There is a similarity here with Machiavelli’s conception of politics that is also based on unpredictability. Niccolò Machiavelli, The Prince, ed. Quentin Skinner and Russell Price (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1988). See also George Kateb’s contribution to the Cambridge Companion to Arendt in, Villa, ed., The Cambridge Companion to Hannah Arendt, 130–48. 84. Arendt, The Human Condition, 244. 85. Villa, ed., The Cambridge Companion to Hannah Arendt, 134. 86. Indeed, it may more more than just ambiguous, for there has developed a veritable growth industry trying to identity what Arendt’s theory of politics is, or what

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she means by politics (since some claim that she offers no specific theory of politics. As Margaret Canovan once wrote, “Hannah Arendt’s political thought is baffling even to the most sympathetic reading. It is baffling not only because of her fondness for questioning our established certaintites, and not only because her political values are strange and shocking to us, but most importantly because her thought is riven by a deep and serious inconsistency and confused by a persistant uncertainty of stance.” Margaret Canovan, “The Contradictions of Hannah Arendt’s Political Thought,” Political Theory 6, no. 1 (1978): 5. 87. See, Villa, Politics, Philosophy, Terror, 129. 88. See, for example, Seyla Benhabib, The Reluctant Modernism of Hannah Arendt, new ed. (New York: Rowman & Littlefield Publishers Inc, 2003), Villa, Politics, Philosophy, Terror, 107–27. 89. “Wherever the relevance of speech is at stake, matters become political by definition, for speech is what makes man a political being.” Arendt, The Human Condition, 3. 90. Arendt’s “agonism focuses on public-spiritedness, independent judgement, and self-distance in addition to initiatory action.” Villa, Politics, Philosophy, Terror, 127. 91. This is an underlying claim in, Machiavelli, The Prince. 92. Moreover, if the agonistic politics is “tamed” by a Kantian inspired philosophy of judgement or taste, then it is possible that one could use “taste judgements” in relation to politics itself. Consequently, a politics based on judgement would also involve judging the political system and thus enable some kind of potentials for real political change without sacrificing the plurality that characterizes politics (a plurality that is additionally important here since judgements of taste work only when they involve some kind of persuasion about taste, and this requires other people to persuade). The literature on Arendt’s agonistic versus associational politics does not recognize this possibility, although I suggest that this conclusion can be implied from Villa’s article that seeks to place Arendt in between the associational/dialogic reading of Arendt and the Nietzschean agonistic reading of Arendt. See, Dana R. Villa, “Beyond Good and Evil: Arendt, Nietzsche, and the Aestheticization of the Political,” Political Theory 20, no. 2 (1992). For two critiques of Villa’s article see, Bonnie Honig, “The Politics of Agonism: A Critical Response To ‘Beyond Good and Evil: Arendt, Nietzsche and the Aestheticization of Political Action’ By Dana R. Villa,” Political Theory 21, no. 3 (1993); Jeffrey C. Isaac, “Situating Arendt on Action and Politics,” Political Theory 21, no. 3 (1993). 93. Villa, Politics, Philosophy, Terror, 120. 94. Arendt, The Jew as Pariah. 95. Bernstein, Hannah Arendt and the Jewish Question, 44. 96. Villa, Politics, Philosophy, Terror, 135. 97. Arendt, The Promise of Politics, 106. 98. Villa, Politics, Philosophy, Terror, 127. 99. Bernstein, Hannah Arendt and the Jewish Question, 85. 100. Quoted in, Bernstein, Hannah Arendt and the Jewish Question, 101. 101. Hannah Arendt, Essays in Understanding 1930–1954, ed. Jerome Kohn (New York: Schocken Books, 1994), 12.

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102. See, Adam Shatz, ed., Prophets / Outcast: A Century of Dissident Jewish Writing About Zionism (New York: Nation Books, 2004). 103. Shatz, Prophets / Outcast, 62. 104. The Agreement between the Zionist leader Dr. Chaim Weizmann and the Sherif of Mecca (and future King of Iraq), Emir Feisal, claimed mutual cooperation in enabling Jews to move to Palestine, while respecting the rights and needs of both the Palestinians locals and Jewish immigrants. See, Walter Laqueur and Bary Rubin, eds., The Israeli-Arab Reader: A Documentary History of the Middle East Conflict (New York: Penguin Books, 1984), 18–22. 105. Walter Laqueur, “The Arendt Cult: Hannah Arendt as Political Commentator,” Journal of Contemporary History 33, no. 4 (1998), 496. 106. Arendt, The Jew as Pariah, 133. 107. Arendt, The Jew as Pariah, 186. 108. Arendt, The Jew as Pariah, 182. Galut is another word for the Jewish Diaspora, and in this case refers to the Diaspora mentality that Zionists attacked as weak. 109. Arendt, The Jew as Pariah, 194. 110. Count Folke Bernadotte was a Swede who saved Jews during WWII. He was sent to Palestine by the UN Security Council to mediate a truce and long-term settlement. He got the truce, but no settlement. His call for a two-state solution was quickly rejected by both Jews and Arabs. He was assassinated on September 17, 1948. 111. Arendt, Jewish Writings. 112. Arendt, Jewish Writings, 143. 113. Arendt, Jewish Writings. 114. Arendt, The Jew as Pariah, 192. Arendt uses the term pseudo-sovereignty to differentiate the idea of legal independence from a political life in a community. In this case, Arendt is using sovereignty in a different way than it is commonly used, since she is claiming that the sovereignty of an independent state is false. Arendt is here concerned with arguing that it is possible to live some kind of sovereign political life inside a community that is not based on the merging between state and nation. In a sense, Arendt is elaborating on the idea of Palestine being a national home for the Jews, but not a state. 115. Arendt, On Revolution. 116. Arendt, Responsibility and Judgment, 47. 117. Arendt, Responsibility and Judgment. 118. Arendt, Responsibility and Judgment, 48. 119. Benhabib, The Reluctant Modernism of Hannah Arendt. 120. Craig Calhoun and John McGowan, eds., Hannah Arendt & the Meaning of Politics (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1997). 121. Leo Tolstoy, War and Peace, trans. Anthony Briggs (London: Penquin Books, 2005). 122. Arendt, On Revolution, 253. 123. Arendt, On Revolution, 170. 124. For more on Arendt, contract and consent, see, McGowan, “Must Politics Be Violent? Arendt’s Utopian Vision.” 125. Shatz, ed., Prophets / Outcast, 62.

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126. Whether or not groups fighting for national-independence can then claim a justifiable obligation to risk their lives for the causes raises an interesting question, since if it is the kind of political life made possible by the sate that provides a means for the obligation to become justifiable, what about those who have no such life? It seems logical to suggest that people would be justified in fighting and risking their lives for this kind of political life if they are excluded from it. The Jewish Question sought to address such exclusion. However, it remains to be asked whether or not any group fighting for a state or a political space could be justified in risking their lives. They might, but it seems in this case that the real issue is one of being prepared to die for a cause and volunteering for this fight, not facing the potential of an obligation. Using the Zionist example here has not been to suggest that its cause is just, but because the cause was always described according to the basic philosophy behind the modern nation-state, and unlike the state who could take this obligation for granted, the Zionists had to explain what it was or is about the state that could warrant such an obligation. 127. Kenneth N. Waltz, Man, the State and War: A Theoretical Analysis (New York: Columbia University Press, 2001). 128. See above, fn. 24. 129. See, for example, Charles Tilly, “War Making and State Making as Organized Crime,” in Bringing the State Back In, ed. Peter B. Evans, Dietrich Rueschemeyer, and Theda Skocpol (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1985). 130. Arendt, The Promise of Politics, 109. 131. However, the extent to which her account of politics excludes violence is open to debate. Arendt suggests that politics is a response to the apolitical horrors of totalitarianism, but in her essay On Violence she suggests that politics can involve some violence. Moreover, her early writings on the Jewish Question and of the need for a Jewish army also suggest that a political project can involve violence. The extent to which violence becomes political when it is involved in a political project is, consequently, a curiously open question in Arendt’s work. See, Arendt, On Violence; Arendt, The Origins of Totalitarianism; Arendt, On Revolution; Margaret Canovan, Hannah Arendt: A Reinterpretation of Her Political Thought (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1995); McGowan, “Must Politics Be Violent? Arendt’s Utopian Vision.” 132. Arendt, On Violence, 5. 133. Arendt, On Violence, 4. 134. Arendt, The Human Condition, 31. 135. Villa, ed., The Cambridge Companion to Hannah Arendt, 12. 136. Arendt, The Promise of Politics, xxx. 137. Quoted in, Benny Morris, The Birth of the Palestinian Refugee Problem Revisited, 2nd ed. (Cambridge; New York: Cambridge University Press, 2004, 41. 138. Morris, The Rebirth of the Palestinian Refugee Problem Revisited, 43. 139. Shatz, ed., Prophets / Outcast, 64. 140. Bernstein, Hannah Arendt and the Jewish Question. 141. Arendt, Jewish Writings, xxv. 142. Arendt, The Promise of Politics, 106.

Conclusion: The Obligation to Die

We are instructed to do the negative; the positive is already within us. —Franz Kafka1

JUDGING THE OBLIGATION TO DIE In his latest book, the historian Eric Hobsbawm claims that in the twenty-first century, “Men and woman may be prepared to die (or more likely to kill) for money or for something smaller, or for something larger, but in the original homelands of the nation, no longer for the nation-state.”2 The use of professional armies or the contracting out of war to the private sector is “because citizens can no longer be relied upon to be conscripted in their millions to die in battle for the fatherlands.”3 No longer, claims Hobsbawm, can the state count on being able to oblige its citizens to risk their lives for the state and be sent into battle. Yet, the state continues to do this. A professional or voluntary army does not negate the problem posed by the obligation to die, and democracies in four continents have all been involved in wars in the twenty-first century (including the Iraq War, NATO in Afghanistan, and Israel in Lebanon). In any case, Hobsbawm misses the more important point of what could happen if the state tried to conscript and it failed. Perhaps the state is changing, as it loses its monopoly on the conduct of violence, this shift does not means that the obligation to die no loner warrants attention. If anything, it means that one should take greater pains to understand how the obligation to die has been justified historically, if only in order to better respond to how such obligations may be justified in the future. 233

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The problem posed by the obligation to die can, in a way, be summed up with the following example that contrasts opinion with reality. In the eighteenth century, the English jurist William Blackstone wrote that, “In free states. . . . no man should take up arms, but with a view to defend his country and its laws; he puts not off the citizen when he enters the camp; but it is because he is a citizen, and would wish to continue to do so, that he makes himself for a while a soldier.”4 However, Blackstone’s optimism was not met with reality, for in England (and elsewhere) in the late eighteenth century, there was widespread public opposition and resistance, including riots, to serving in the military.5 By the twentieth century the situation had changed and there was no such a problem in conscripting soldiers, as demonstrated by two World Wars. Due partly to this unparalleled ability to conscript citizens into fighting and dying for the state, but also from changes in international law that did not question the authority of the state, attempts in the twentieth century to justify the obligation to die diminished significantly. The state had, so it seemed, managed to consolidate its authority and could conscript with legal, moral, and political impunity. Nevertheless, the problem of the obligation to die briefly resurfaced in the aftermath of the Vietnam War. The contrast in opinion and reality resurfaced, albeit with a modification, for it was no longer obvious that the citizen would wish to make himself or herself a soldier even while the state could count on the majority of citizens being obliged into military service. In either example, the obligation to die is a problem. In response to the moral affront of a war in Vietnam, political theorists were, tragically, provided with the kind of example they needed to justify the merits of political theory in face of a positivist challenge based on empirical political science. When a similar debate about method and epistemology took place in the discipline of international relations the problem of political obligation did not arise even though in his review of Just and Unjust Wars, Hedley Bull commented that Walzer’s research on the just war needed and suggested further work on the topic of political obligation.6 The problem of obligation that is central to any classical account of the justified war did not make its way into contemporary international relations thought even while just war thinking gained in popularity. A basic problem that classical thinkers associated with the just war tradition sought to resolve was why anybody could be justifiably obliged to go to their possible death in war. This problem, belonging more generally to the problem of political obligation (of why anybody should obey another person, or in this case, be obliged to obey the authority of the state or sovereign) was of great concern to the medieval theologians who eventually were read together to form the just war tradition. The problem of being obliged to risk one’s life in war also concerned such significant political philosophers as

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Spinoza, Hobbes, Rousseau, Kant, and Hegel. Of these philosophers, it was Rousseau and Hegel who placed the obligation to die squarely in the center of their respective political philosophies, knowing that no state would be able to survive if it did not have this particular obligating power. In this regard, Rousseau and Hegel were following in the footsteps of medieval philosophy that was greatly concerned with the problem of political obligation. Medieval thought was, more so than what came either before or after, especially concerned with explaining the ordering of the world. For the medieval mind, the world came into being out of a combination of Godly creation and human folly. The purpose of reason, or at least one of its purposes, was to explain this ordering of the universe in such a way to ensure that humans did not sin against this creation of God, having already sinned once and particularly greatly in the Garden of Eden. From this twofold observation, Augustine set to write about the two great cities of God and Man, and then Aquinas sought to restructure Augustinian thought so that humans could view the state as a positive development in human history. In either case, it was necessary to justify why anybody would obey their proper authorities. In this regard, both Augustine and Aquinas claimed that it was necessary for lesser human beings to obey their superiors since they could not know better and, even if they did know better, it did not matter in a life of sin provided that the structures of authority maintained order in the political community. Thus Christian medieval thought came to justify political obligation by recourse to an appeal to authority: God and God’s servants that ruled the community. To go against the ordering of the human world would be to go against the ordering of the world as established by God and, consequently, all must obey their superiors. In addition to the allegories of the city, Augustine had another important revelation: that humans could question their own existence and their own knowledge. Augustine was one of the first to discover the concept of the human will which, according to Arendt, made it possible to question one’s existence and one’s knowledge.7 Yet Augustine did not pursue this discovery since it was foreign to his theological outlook on life. Aquinas, however, took it to a logical next step by noting the ability of humans to discover moral laws by reason and thus imbue in the human mind the ability to question one’s legal and political surroundings. From this recognition Aquinas put forth a highly circumscribed theory of resistance that restricted resistance to the activity that takes place in one’s mind. More to the point, Aquinas noted that there are different laws ordering the world, one of which is based on individual human reason. In addition to the religious laws given to humans by God, there is natural law (which also stipulates the need for obedience or obligation to one’s authorities, just as a body obeys the head) and human positive

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law that, in a way, makes up for the spaces that fall in between natural and religious laws. In these ways, Augustine and Aquinas set up how the individual subject could be presumed to be obliged to risk his life by being sent to war: because he has no choice, due to either the religious ordering of the world and the individual pursuit of eternal salvation, or the human authorities which govern this world. The obligation to die, for Augustine and then for Aquinas, could not be justified without recourse to religion and to the importance of individual salvation, even though for Aquinas the obligation is also justified according to the common good of mankind living together in the state. Yet, while religious belief has been a factor in so many political conflicts, the obligation to die was not originally justified according to religious belief. Rather, in what is possibly the first example of the obligation to die being justified, the reasoning is based on the value of achieving a heroic death and of being remembered. This is the argument provided in Homer’s Iliad, and if being remembered is the key feature justifying this obligation then Socrates has met this requirement as well, for his death is still remembered. With Aristotle, the idea of remembrance forming the justifying feature of this obligation is clearly stated in the Nicomachean Ethics, although in the Ethics he says something else as well. Aristotle argues that the city-state provides a life that is so worthwhile that it should logically follow that if the city orders its citizens into battle, these citizens should willingly go. This “good life” argument has been a constant reference point justifying the obligation to die. Aquinas used this argument, and much later, Hegel took to it almost literally, thinking that any citizen should recognize the value of the state and, therefore, be prepared to die for it in war. These varying views shifted as political thought changed to include a relatively novel idea, that people have, as Augustine knew but did not develop into a political theory, a will. This will, in the modern version, accompanied the idea that people are universally equal which (as Donelan points out)8 is a remnant of the universality contained in the medieval natural law tradition— except, of course, the individual will in the modern version includes the idea of autonomy, and thus any universality is based on individuals sharing something, notably rights and moral laws, in common but as individual agents. However, with the invention or discovery of the autonomous individual with built-in rights that is also morally equal with others came a problem for political obligation. If the obligation to die, for example, is to be justified then each individual person needs to consent to it. Kant argued as much, but he also knew that politically the obligation could not always be a choice, and so he also claimed that people must obey their government. With Kant we find the culmination of the problem of the obligation to die. Individuals are morally equal and for moral reasons they must be given as much real choice

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as possible in the political realm; yet, possibly because of political necessity, such choices are not always possible and thus the individual can presume to be able to think what he or she likes, but when it comes to political obligation the individual must obey.9 Justifying the obligation to die has never been as hard as it was after Kant. It is partly in response to Kant that Michael Walzer provides his distinction between feeling obliged and being obliged. The distinction mirrors Kant’s description of the Enlightenment as involving freedom of thought, but also of having to obey the sovereign authority of the ruler. Consequently, one can feel obliged just as one can think freely, but one can also be obliged by the sovereign and have little choice in the matter. In this regard, Walzer’s argument for the obligation to die does little but reaffirm a Kantian distinction that cannot justify the obligation to die so long as consent is the necessary moral foundation of political life. The problem that consent poses for the obligation to die is visible initially with Hobbes. Hobbes has a logical problem that he cannot overcome since the right to life is the foundation of his political philosophy, and the obligation to die contradicts this right. Hobbes cannot logically claim that the right to life is relinquished in certain cases by the social contract, but this is what he tries, unsuccessfully in my opinion, to do. With Rousseau, this value of consent poses an even greater problem, since he does not believe that people have the moral abilities to either sign into a social contract or become the type of person the contract is supposed to create. Rousseau knew, unlike Hobbes, that he had to find a way to logically justify the obligation to die. He tries to provide such a justification by suggesting that the citizen will, by virtue of being a citizen, accept this obligation, and that to die for the sake of the contract is to fight for what the contract makes possible. As such, to risk one’s life for the state is justified because of what the state and the social contract provide, security, morality in civil society, and freedom. However, for the second part of this argument to work, that the citizen will recognize these normative goods, the citizen has to grasp the full value of the contract, and in this regard, Rousseau fails. Rousseau was an optimist about human nature, but a pessimist about humans. Whereas Hobbes felt humans to have innately negative traits and saw the contract as the means for such people to live amongst each other in stability, Rousseau saw the contract as a means for enabling morality in civil society. However, Rousseau’s pessimism about the people eventually overrides his optimism. Instead of explaining how the individual becomes able, as a free being with an independent will, to consent to the obligation to die, Rousseau suggests that the only way somebody could be obliged in this way is to be guided, to be deceived for a common good. The individual is weak

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and fragmented, and needs direction. Consequently, the obligation to die becomes justified not by recourse to consent, which is what Rousseau wants to argue, but by authoritative guidance. Rousseau tries quite hard to avoid saying that people will be coerced into political obligations, but he also does not state that people are able as free and independent beings to consent to the obligation to die. Rousseau is confused, for although he desperately wants to argue how the individual can be free inside the state, his view of human psychology prevents him from doing so. In this vein, Rousseau demonstrates how significant human plurality is, even if in his version the plurality is a negative fragmentation of the individual mind. Nevertheless, this insight that people are of two minds foreshadows Arendt’s argument that this innate plurality is central to the human condition and that politics must be recognized to respect this plurality. Rousseau did not see plurality in this way, for in his eyes being of two minds was a great problem for it meant that the social human being was incapable of making political decisions. Nevertheless, perhaps, a politics of plurality might be able to justify an obligation to die in part because such an account of politics is more accurate with what it means to be a human being. If one were to read a story into this historical summary of the philosophical justifications for the obligation to die it is difficult to know how the obligation to die can be justified. Its justifications have involved, first, ignoring the individual will and dismissing the idea of individuality, adhering instead to the value of obedience to authority; second, that one base life and politics on religious belief in order to set things straight in life and beyond; or, third, because the individual will and universal moral equality demand that individuals must be given the option to consent to the obligation, but this consent is not possible. There can be no room for actual consent because the state or sovereign cannot risk the obligation being rejected. Rejection in this case at least would be tantamount to rebellion. Along with the human will and a universal morality is the presumption that all humans share the basic and inviolable right to life. The right of selfpreservation is, argues Hobbes, the underpinning of the human condition. That a state can place this right in jeopardy is perhaps what makes a sovereign, but having sovereign authority would not, on its own, explain what makes the obligation justified. Consequently, it would appear that for the obligation to die to become justifiable, the state or polity needs to provide something that gives it the moral and political leverage to claim that the obligation to die is warranted and necessary in certain situations. The Aristotelian idea that the state provides the “good life” is the archetypal illustration of this kind of argument. To this end, I suggested that this “good life” involves enabling a political life that is plural and nonviolent. The obligation

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to die starts to become justifiable when the obligation emerges as a part of membership in a pluralist society. The focus in these pages has been on a polity that enables a form of politics that can serve to justify an obligation that all the citizens might be prepared to face and which includes risking one’s life. I argued that politics is a plural activity that requires difference and must respect the unique features of its inhabitants and involve respect for the moral equality of its citizens. To as great a degree as possible, there should be room for actual consent to take place when the obligation becomes a possibility. In short, if the obligation to die is to become at all justifiable, it needs to be based on some idea of how the good life, as a form of political participation, is rendered possible to those who may be obliged.

POLITICS, MORALITY, THE OBLIGATION TO DIE, AND ZIONISM The obligation to die is, as suggested at the beginning of this book, both moral and political. As such it is on both of these accounts that its justifiability rests. In this regard, the traditional Zionist claim comes to mind about how Zionism was presented as a political project that was also a moral one. The morality of Zionism could not be questioned since at its core was the survival and modern development of the Jewish people; but Zionism would likely have got nowhere if it was not for the political Zionism of Herzl who showed the Jews that they too could become active political agents fighting for their future as equal citizens in a world of nations. In this way the Zionist project has a reference point for claiming simultaneous moral and political justifiability and, in particular, a way to justify a Jewish political life in the modern world. It was in a similar vein that a young Hannah Arendt became a Zionist activist. Arendt hoped that Zionism could provide the political answer to the Jewish Question, for she saw in Zionism a possible solution to how Jews could become participants in political life and not just spectators, or even worse, victims.10 Contained in the search for a Jewish solution to the Jewish Question was the political question of to whom the Jews were obligated: to their place of residence or to the Jewish people? Zionism claimed that the state could not be trusted unless it was a Jewish state, that the sovereign had to be a Jewish sovereign, and that under such conditions Jews could become like other men. The desire to be like other men and women animated how Zionists came to understand what was required of them as political subjects of the new or soon-to-be Jewish state. Even the Labour Zionist pioneers of the 1905 Aliya,

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“the strangest workers the world had ever seen,”11 who saw manual labor as a moral value required for the Jewish social and national cure, eventually came to include an obligation to die in their political Weltanschauung. These and other Zionists saw the idea of dying for the Jewish state as a revived Jewish heroism the likes of which had not been seen since the days of the Great Revolt against Rome. Yet in the process of romanticizing the Jewish Zealots, the Zionists came to lose the moral features of political life that led them to find the need to justify an obligation to die and fight for a political space of their own. Even if Zionism could not have been possible at any other time in history,12 Zionism was also a reaction against and thus product of anti-Semitism. As such, Zionism was a reaction against the project of homogenizing the national population, even though Zionists sought their own nation-state. Consequently, mainstream Zionism eventually came to justify an obligation to die on the same logic that the nation-state did, on the false claim that politics was possible and the good life achievable only within the confines of a homogenous nation-state. The obligation to die was justified because the Zionists felt that this kind of life was one worth fighting for and, moreover, that in discovering an obligation to die, the Jew was gaining a further feature of the kind of life that eluded him or her throughout exile. It is in this vein that Nordau’s play, Dr Kohn, justifies the obligation of Dr. Kohn to die in a duel. Yet, it remained to be explained how a project that emerged because difference was wrongly excluded from political life could turn to a project that professed a rejection of difference, and sought to justify the obligation to die in similar terms. In this regard, Arendt felt that Zionism was losing itself, but she also was not convinced by the assimilationist argument since she did not see in the modern state the promises of the Rights of Man or Enlightenment ideals, and due to Nazism and World War Two became greatly disillusioned with the European nation-state.13 From experience and then from study, Arendt was deeply critical of a project that ostensibly promised human rights but ignored the most important right of all, the right to have rights.14 What Arendt eventually came to recognize was that politics is an activity that may require one to risk one’s life, as Socrates had done, and that the Jews had an opportunity to create a polity in which politics as plurality could take place. The obligation to die is a possibility that emerges out of political life, since one never knows what “final arbiter”15 could be required in the uncertain world of international affairs. Yet the political life that takes place in the states that make up this international world exist for a moral reason. The state is supposed to make possible a kind of life that is not just important but necessary for the human condition: a political life. People are, as Aristotle wrote, political animals. The difficulty is in deciding how the politics takes shape,

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and it is in finding the right kind of politics that it becomes possible to justify the obligation to die. In this way, by combining the seriousness and importance of politics and the moral need of not infringing on the rights of others in finding a political space in the modern world, that Arendt demonstrates how the obligation to die could become justified. Consequently, the obligation emerges not out of a single locus of sovereignty, but out of the politics of mutual promise that contextualizes a political life in the state or policy. Moreover, if the obligation to die is to become justifiable, it must not be based on an account of politics that sanctions violence but on politics that are resistant to the idea that violence is another version of political practice, and are able to control the conditions under which violence becomes necessary and the means by which violence takes place.

THE STATE AND THE OBLIGATION TO DIE I argued that the traditional reasons justifying the obligation to die have been unconvincing because they do not operate with a convincing account of politics. Aquinas marginalizes what it means to be a political animal to such an extent that one wonders what the point is of him repeating the Aristotelian idea that humans are political animals. Hegel’s justification for the obligation to die is based on the way he values the state. He claims that the individual citizen will realize the value of the state for enabling an ethical life of freedom and will, consequently, be prepared to risk his or her life for the state. However, Hegel’s romanticization of war and his need for conformity of the nation for the sake of a metaphysical idea of freedom all undermine his argument. Hegel’s argument sounds good in places, since it is true that there has to be something highly valuable about the state for the obligation to die to become just, but the idea that the individual self-interested modern citizen will come to realize the metaphysical values of the state as a justification for the obligation to die is far-fetched. In the history of political thought only Socrates made this connection, and it is telling that his argument was unpersuasive to either the jury or his friends. The consent theorists presume that people are inherently equal beings with a right to consent to practices that infringe on their individual freedom, but fail to explain fully how this right occurs in the construction of a just political community. As such, Walzer’s argument is both vague and inconclusive, based as it is on the consent myth. The consent myth is, as Carole Pateman argues, based on the hypothesis of voluntarism, but as she states, “the hypothesis is unfounded,”16 and there is always sufficient doubt about how much force or coercion takes the place of this voluntarism.

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Walzer is also indebted to Hegel, and he rightfully takes note that it is the value of life in the state that is needed in order to justify the obligation to die. In this regard, the obligation to die is a problem for the types of political theory that are based on life inside the state. While it may seem obvious that the obligation to die is this kind of problem, it is also significant since one could infer that the obligation cannot be justified because the state is, for all of its benefits, a violent, destructive, and morally bankrupt entity. Indeed, I suggested as much in the previous chapter, and Hobbes’ move that bases politics on a right to self-preservation may be his way of claiming that under no conditions can the obligation to die ever be just. I have also consistently challenged the idea of a homogenous nation-state to be a good thing. However, the state does pose some significant benefits to its inhabitants, and it remains one of the most important characteristics of human political life. Consequently, the value of the state should not be jettisoned, but it should also not be taken for granted or inflated as Hegel does. The obligation to die is a problem that exists in part because of a world divided into states who may go to war with each other, and in this regard the international system may be morally corrupt. Yet, the problem is not about people dividing human societies into states. This research project has been guided by the question of what it is about the state that gives it the ability to justifiably oblige in such a way that the lives of those obliged are at stake. The question is also about what makes the state what it is. In this regard, the focus has been on theories of state, on how the state or sovereign has been defined by reference to its ability to oblige its inhabitants and, although focused on the specific problem of the obligation to die, to the extent that such obligations are justifiable. However, as became clearer by the last chapter, the possibility of the obligation becoming justified has more to do with the politics of membership in a bounded political community than it does with the idea of sovereign authority obliging generally subservient citizens or subjects. Moreover, there may be an incongruity here, between how the character or type of state has not been addressed in an account of political obligation that is based on a theory of state. Consent theories that turn to the “nature of government” argument to justify political obligation take on this distinction, arguing, for example, that what matters is whether or not the government may justifiably obligate its citizens to consent.17 This is a distinction that was not used here, that which distinguishes between a theory of state that explains the state and theories justifying particular types of states by reference to the system of governance or government that exists inside the state. For example, while I have placed considerable doubt as to how Zionism has justified the obligation to die, I have not claimed that the Israeli state, as a product of Zionism, cannot justify the obligation to die. Israel, like any other state, has the ability to demand this duty on

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the part of its citizens, and as will be pointed out shortly, I suspect that in the Israeli case, this obligation is more readily justified in regard to certain wars than others. Moreover, and more to the point, while I pointed out that significant twentieth-century Zionists were democrats, I made only superficial comments about how their theories of democracy stood up. By way of concluding remarks I will address this discrepancy because it relates to additional questions that are related to the obligation to die. A justification for the obligation to die involves explaining and justifying what it is about the state or sovereign that makes the obligation just. The state or sovereign may provide a particularly good kind of life, it might provide a way for the individual to find a way to connect with others or even with history. But can any state or sovereign provide the normative benefits required of it? What kind of state can justify the obligation to die? In this regard, the Zionist example leads to an inquiry into the justifiability of the Israeli state and the forms of governance that take place inside its borders. Yet, these are different questions. As suggested in the previous chapter, the equivalent of “the good life” can happen under different types of governance. A distinction needs to be made here between what the state enables as a form of governance, and the type of governing that takes place under a particular government. In relation to the obligation to die, the focus in these pages has been on the former of these and insofar as the issue of government is concerned, I have implied that it is not possible to defend any type of government or governing without first understanding what purpose the state serves. Therefore, in order to justify the obligation to die one first must explain what makes the state such a special entity that this obligation can become justified. In this regard, it is what is meant by a political life, by the condition of being one human among many others in a bounded community, and the possibility that this community may demand of its members that they risk their lives on its behalf. As such, the argument in this book turns on the importance of understanding how the human condition, as a political condition, is respected when the political communities that we live in go to war. In this vein, my argument has not differed substantially from one of the structural characteristics of consent theory, which is to find a way to extrapolate from the moral condition of being human a set of political guidelines for life in the state. Nevertheless, the one question that has not been addressed directly is this problem of government and governing, of whether or not the type of politics suggested can function in any kind of state. Indeed, this is an important question and is worthy of future study. Whether or not any state can justify the obligation to die is an important question for those who seek to justify or question the merits of a specific state’s policies, for those who are interested in the moral problems relevant to theories of government, or for those

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who, like me, are interested in developing an account of the various aspects involved in the justification of the obligation to die. There is room for future research about the extent to which different forms of government are needed for the obligation to die to become justified. In this vein, the Zionist case also illustrates that there may be underlying problems in relation to the obligation to die that stem from the character of political life that exists inside the state. For example, it is easier to justify the obligation to die in relation to the 1967 Six-Day War than the 1982 War in Lebanon because prior to the 1967 War, the political life in Israel was less exclusionary and violent than it became once Israel turned into an occupying power. From this, it also follows that for the obligation to die to become justified there is good reason to examine the justifiability of the war as well. In this regard, while the 1973 Yom Kippur War was fought after Israel had become an occupying power, it was a war of self-defense, whereas the 1982 War was not a reaction to a military invasion of Israeli territory. As such, the obligation to die might not have been justified in 1973, since Israel was an occupying power, but it might have been justified in this same war because the war was a clear reaction to illegal acts of aggression. Yet in all these cases, Israel has consistently been framed on the idea of a Jewish nation-state, and as such cannot be presumed to serve the plurality necessary for the kind of politics articulated in the previous chapter.18 However, there are circumstances in the Israeli case that may mitigate this problem, due to its democratic institutions and perhaps due to the history of the Jews that led to Zionism, although neither just war theory nor the laws of war would condone any kind of military behavior simply because Israel is democratic. There are a variety of factors that could be taken into account which have not been addressed here, but could be relevant in justifying the obligation to die. For example, in addition to the character of the state it seems logical to reason that the obligation to die also requires a just war in order for the obligation to become just. However, as the introduction points out, this aspect of ethics and war already has a large body of work behind it. This side of the obligation to die is not specifically a problem of political obligation, but it is important to examine how ius ad bellum and ius in bello tenets of the ethics of war relate to the justifiability of the obligation to die. However, insofar as I am aware, there is no text that examines this specific problem in detail, although George Kateb suggests that one condition for the obligation to be just is for the obligation to arise in relation to a war of self-defense.19 It is common to find texts that examine these tenets in relation to the justifiability of killing, but not being obliged to risk one’s life. An additional site of future research is with what type of state can justify the obligation to die. By claiming that the justifiability of the obligation to

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die rests in part on the state/sovereign providing a particular kind of political life, or at least, the opportunity for such a life, it follows that the obligation to die might not be just if the state/sovereign does not provide this opportunity. It is possible that only certain types of states with certain types of government can justify the obligation to die. The version of politics as plural and nonviolent presented above is most easily tied to a theory of democracy. However, different types of government could enable such a life. There is more than one type of democratic form of governance, and the future may provide new models. As Aristotle demonstrates in the way he structures his book, The Politics, it is necessary to think about the state first before one can engage in questions about different types of government. There is, nevertheless, an important issue here about how the obligation to die relates to the character of government. The Zionist case here is interesting since it is hard to argue against the reasons for Zionism, even if the form of politics that Zionism ultimately ended up using are not of the plural and nonviolent type articulated in the previous chapter. What is the relationship between the reasons of the state and the way that the state is organized in relation to the justification of the obligation to die? This is an important question worthy of further attention. Moreover, if it matters what kind of state can justify the obligation to die, to what extent are citizens expected to participate in the decision to go to war? I have touched briefly on this problem, but more work needs to be done in thinking about the role of individual citizens in relation to war. Surely the citizenry should be made to realize what a war entails (that a war should not accompany tax breaks, for example, but perhaps a tax increase in order to pay for the war). In addition, to what extent can the obligation to die be justified if the citizens feel that the policies of their government are going to lead to another war and thus future instability? Perhaps there needs to be some way to judge how the war will not require future generations to fight, so that there is some element of finality in the obligation to die. It does not seem right to demand an obligation to die of one generation only to then see the next generation suffer the same fate. I am not sure how this issue of finality is feasible, but it does seem to be a morally necessary question to ask. There is already a substantial body of literature on the ius in bello and ius ad bellum tenets, but these texts take the idea of an obligation to die for granted and then provide various sets of conditions under which the state or sovereign can go to war. However, there is less literature on what kind of politics are required to take place inside the state in order for it to go to war, although it might not be difficult to infer from specific texts the perspectives taken in this regard. The reaction to Walzer’s Just and Unjust Wars, and his subsequent response on the topic of intervention illustrates as much.20 In any

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case, the substantial ethics of war literature ignores a variety of important issues about the type of state, the role of the citizenry in war, the issue of finality mentioned above, and political obligation. What I have done in these pages is to address one question out of many. Applying morality to warfare runs the risk of being accused of being a “sorry comforter,” but so long as the possibility of war remains it would be irresponsible not to question how morals relate to the decision to go to war. In the aftermath of a world that has tried to outlaw war, only to then see two leading industrialized democracies justify a war in Iraq that is not a response to an act of aggression, it is surely more important than ever to examine the moral language that underpins the justifiability of waging war. Just war thinking is an example of this need, but the twentieth and twenty-first century turn to just war theory missed a crucial and important problem that occupied the traditional just war thinkers and political philosophers across time. The obligation to die is a classical problem of political thought, is an important question in the ethics of war literature even if it has not been addressed by the contemporary literature, and is a problem that remains relevant today. While most states are able to send its citizens into war, not all states may do so justly (just as not all wars are justifiable), and this book has been an exploration of one of the normative conditions of this obligation. If anyone is to try to justify any decision to go to war, a justification of why anybody would be willing or obliged to die by going to war should be required. This book has been one attempt to bring this debate into contemporary terms and in light of modern history. War is not a positive turn in human affairs, but it is a human affair. It is also human to see war for what it is and to hope for an end to war. Humans have constructed a great many negative things around us, but we also have, as Kafka says, good within us. Perhaps by thinking fully about what is needed to justify a war it will become increasingly difficult to provide the necessary justifications for going to war. In this regard, the obligation to die is a possible moral aporia, for to question its justifiability might be to suggest that a war can be justified, when some of the reasons for questioning the obligation to die are those that question the justifiability of war in the first place. Yet, as Socrates suggests, aporias should not be avoided but embraced, for it is in debating contradictions that an authentic politics takes place.

NOTES 1. Franz Kafka, The Zürau Aphorisms of Franz Kafka, ed. Roberto Calasso, trans. Michael Hofmann (New York: Schocken Books, 2006), 27. 2. Eric Hobsbawm, Globalisation, Democracy and Terrorism (London: Little, Brown, 2007), 93.

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3. Hobsbawm, Globalisation, Democracy and Terrorism. 4. Peter Paret, Understanding War: Essays on Clausewitz and the History of Military Power (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1992), 40. 5. Paret, Understanding War. 6. Hedley Bull, “Recapturing the Just War for Political Theory,” World Politics 31, no. 4 (1979). 7. As Augustine writes in De libero arbitio voluntatus, “the mind is not moved until it wills it to be moved.” See, Hannah Arendt, Responsibility and Judgment, ed. Jerome Kohn (New York: Schocken Books, 2003), 113. 8. Michael Donelan, Elements of International Political Theory (Oxford: Clarendon, 1990). 9. See, Kant’s “Answer to the Question: ‘What is the Enlightenment?” in, Immanuel Kant, Kant: Political Writings, trans. H. B. Nisbet, ed. Hans Reiss, 2nd ed. (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1997). 10. Hannah Arendt, Jewish Writings, ed. Jerome Kohn (New York: Schocken Books, 2007). 11. Walter Laqueur, The History of Zionism, 3rd ed. (London and New York: I. B. Tauris & Co. Ltd., 2003), 281. 12. Shlomo Avineri, The Making of Modern Zionism: Intellectual Origins of the Jewish State (London: Weiderfeld and Nicolson, 1981. 13. Hannah Arendt, The Jew as Pariah, ed. Ron Feldman (New York: Grove Press, 1978); Jewish Writings; Elisabeth Young-Bruehl, Hannah Arendt: For Love of the World, 2nd ed, (New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 2005). 14. Hannah Arendt, The Origins of Totalitarianism (London: André Deutsch, 1986). 15. Hannah Arendt, On Violence, (London: Harcourt Brace & Company, 1970, 5. 16. Carole Pateman, The Problem of Political Obligation: A Critical Analysis of Liberal Theory (Chichester: Wiley, 1979), 163. 17. See, Hanna Pitkin, “Obligation and Consent—I,” The American Political Science Review 59 no. 4 (1965); Hanna Pitkin, “Obligation and Consent—II,” The American Political Science Review 60 no. 1 (1966). 18. I have not addressed the tension in Israel between it being the Jewish state and a democratic state for all of its citizens. This particular issue is beyond the scope of this research, but those interested in this topic can look up, Steven V. Mazie, Israel’s Higher Law: Religion and Liberal Democracy in the Jewish State (New York: Rowman & Littefield Publishers Inc, 2006). 19. George Kateb, The Inner Ocean: Individualism and Democratic Culture (Ithaca, N.Y.; London: Cornell University Press, 1992), 183. 20. Michael Walzer, “The Moral Standing of States: A Response to Four Critics,” Philosophy and Public Affairs 9, no. 3 (1980).

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Index

aggression, 4, 6, 7, 10n27, 22, 49, 140, 159, 160, 244, 246 Akiba (Rabbi), 22 Alkalai, Yehuda, 100, 109, 111, 112, 120 Anglo-American Inquiry Committee, 133n110 anti-Semitism, 16, 17, 18, 41, 54n32, 75, 77, 211, 212, 240 Aquinas, Thomas, xx, 60–69, 106–8, 117, 126, 224, 235, 236, 241; difference, 59, 63, 67, 68–69; ius ad bellum, 60, 89n7; ius in bello, 60, 89n7; just war, 60, 62, 119, 120; natural law, 59, 62, 63, 65, 66; obedience, 63–64, 65, 99, 107; politics, 63, 67, 68, 87, 106, 118, 119, 125; resistance, 64–65; revolt, 64; salvation, 64; subjectivity, 63, 64, 68, 69, 89n16, 90n35; teleology, 63; use of Aristotle, xx, 58, 62, 63, 106; virtue, 107, 108, 123; will, 99 Arab revolt, xv archaeology, 23 Arendt, Hannah, ix, xviii–xix, 13, 31, 97, 135, 183, 198–208, 223, 235, 238; action, 204–5, 206, 207, 208, 220, 221, 223, 228n75; antiSemitism, 200; controversy about,

xix, xxiv n20; Holocaust, 200; Jewish army (WWII), 200, 201, 212, 232n131; and Jewish Question, xviii, 14, 32–33, 168, 169, 204, 222, 231n131, 239; moral philosophy, 190, 191; natality, 203, 204, 208, 220; Palestine, 213, 216, 230n114; plurality, 199, 201–2, 204–8, 209, 210, 212, 214, 216, 222, 223, 240; political obligation and obedience, 1, 57, 126; politics, 201–8, 209–10, 214–16, 222; pseudo-sovereignty, 213, 215, 230n114; sovereignty, 168, 203, 216; spontaneity, xviii, 196, 204, 205, 207, 208, 210, 212; violence, 217, 219–22; worldliness, 204–5, 206, 207, 208, 220, 221, 223, 228n75; Zionism, 201, 211–16, 239 Aristotle, 32–36, 236, 245; arete, 36; eudaimonia, 36–37, 43, 50–51, 221; the good life, xviii, xix, 31, 32, 35, 36, 37, 40, 44, 45, 50, 51, 67, 68, 70, 90n34, 106, 125, 202, 221, 238; individual subjectivity, 37, 68; just war, 32, 34–35; justice, 36; politics, 33, 40, 43, 51, 138; telos, 36, 37, 88 Arlosoroff, Chaim, 113, 132n80

265

266

Index

Augustine, xiii, 101–5, 112, 117, 125, 235–36; The City of God, 34, 102, 129n33, 130n47; The Confessions, 101, 102, 130n47, 117; death, 129n17; doubt, 61, 130n47; Jews, 109; love, 108; murder, 103; obedience, 99, 102, 105, 117–18; politics, 62, 102, 106, 119, 120, 123, 129n33; resistance, 104, 105; Saint Paul, 104; sin, 62, 103; war, 103–4, 116, 119; will, 99 Avineri, Shlomo, 17, 25, 26n9, 84, 88n5, 91n52 Bar Kochba Revolt, 22, 23, 29n48 Begin, Menahem, 47 Bellamy, Alex, xii, xxii n9 Ben-Gurion, David, 20, 50, 55n67, 181n127 Beran, Harry, 163 Berdichevsky, Micha Joseph, 47, 48, 55n59, 113 Berlin, Isaiah, 1 Bernadotte, Count Folke, 121, 212, 230n110 Bernstein, Richard J., 32, 208, 222 Betar, 20 Blackstone, William, 234 Brit Habiryonim. See Habiryonim Buber, Martin, 120–22, 126–27 Buddhism, xxi Bull, Hedley, 6, 11n30, 234 the Bund, 14 Cahan, Yaakov, 50, 113, 114 Carr, E. H., 39 Catch-22. See Heller, Joseph Cheyney, Ryan, 3, 97, 167, 175n7 citizenship, 155, 156, 158, 162, 164, 168, 169, 170, 174, 175 Clark, Ian, 89n7 Coker, Christopher, 54n49 conscript, xv, 92n66, 137, 157, 166, 217, 219, 233, 234

conscription, x, 9n13, 52n14, 127n4, 172; of Jewish Displaced Persons, 171, 181n127 consent theory, 135–67, 173–75, 193, 242 contract theory. See consent theory D’Entrèves, A. P., 1, 60, 63, 69, 98, 107 Diaspora, 17, 40, 44, 47, 50, 78, 110, 230n108. See also Galut difference, 65–69, 76, 79, 80, 82, 84, 90n34, 125, 160, 165, 170, 184, 196–99, 205, 210, 223, 239, 240. See also pluralism Dinstein, Yoram, 4, 5 Donelan, Michael, 60, 61, 236 double effect, 55n62, 117 Dreyfus Affair (Alfred Dreyfus), 16, 19 duel, xv, 48, 55n58, 77–78, 240 Dyson, R.W., 62, 64, 89n16, 104 Edkins, Jenny, 43 Einstein, Albert, 210, 216, 222 Eisenhower, Dwight, 137 Emir Feisal, 230 ethics of war: and death, xi; and killing, xi, 7 eugenics, 66, 90n28 Feisal, Emir. See Emir Feisal Feisal-Weizmann Agreement, 211 First World War, 5. See also Jewish Legion Galut, 211, 230n108; exile, xiv, 14, 22, 23, 24, 40, 45, 50, 51, 112, 113, 114, 115, 120. See also Diaspora Geist. See Hegel: spirit Gilbert, Margaret, xii, 2, 163 Ginzberg, Asher Zvi. See Ha’Am, Ahad Green, T. H., 163–64 Grin, David. See Ben-Gurion, David Goldmann, Nahum, 19, 85 Gush Emumin, 100, 112, 132n90

Index

Ha’Am, Ahad, 19, 20, 47, 48, 54n32, 54n53, 55n59, 60, 85–86, 87, 94n94, 95n117, 95n120, 95n122 Habiryonim, 113–14 Haganah, 20, 39, 171 Hague Convention (1899 and 1907), 6 Halakah, 14, 131n72 Hall, W. E., 5 halutz (halutzim), 43 Hapoel Hatzair, 50, 132n80 Ha-Shomer, 45, 50, 54n44, 115 Hegel, Georg Wilhelm Friedrich, xii, xx, 69–74, 124, 125, 183, 241; alienation, 58; Aristotle, 58, 70, 73, 82, 86, 88; civil society, 70, 72, 84; community, 73; dialectic, 72, 79, 85, 87; freedom, 74, 75, 83; history, 59, 69, 72, 75, 80, 85; individual subjectivity, 71–72; Jews, 71–72, 84; nationalism, 79, 83, 84; natural law, 69, 70; patriotism, 83; Sittlichkeit, 70, 71, 91n52; sovereignty, 71; spirit (Geist), 71, 85; the state, 58, 69, 70, 71, 73, 83, 88; universalism, 70; war, 72–73 Heller, Joseph, 147 Hemingway, Ernest, xii Herder, Johan Gottfried, 18, 170 heroics/heroism, xii, xiii, xiv, xv, xvi, 22, 23, 36, 47, 50, 73, 183, 236, 240 Herzl, Theodor, xv, 13, 16, 19, 20, 39, 48, 54n32, 55n58, 75, 85, 221, 239; Jewish army, 13; The Jewish State, 13 Herzog, Yaacov, 23 Herztberg, Arthur, 16, 86 Hess, Moses, 24, 85, 110 Hobbes, Thomas, xiii, xxi, 59, 70, 71, 88n3, 135, 139–40, 141, 142, 149, 151, 156, 157, 158, 159, 174, 184, 186, 205, 217, 218, 224, 235, 237, 238, 242 Hobsbawm, Eric, 233 Holmes, Robert, 4

267

Holocaust. See Shoah Homer, xii, 236 homogeneity (ideal of state or national), 75, 79, 80, 84, 165, 169, 184, 210, 211, 212 human rights, xxi, 17, 28n22, 65, 66, 76, 135, 155, 160, 164, 168, 169, 170, 173, 184, 197, 210, 240 Ichud, 121, 211 the Iliad, xii individuality, 37, 58, 63, 65, 67, 68, 73, 74, 75, 78, 79, 81, 87, 125, 152, 155, 196, 205, 238 international relations theory, 218 Iraq war, 5, 10n17, 233, 246 Israel, xvi, xxii n9, 14, 15, 19, 23, 44, 47, 98, 100, 110, 111, 114, 115, 119, 121, 124, 171, 173, 185, 211, 212, 232, 242, 243, 244; Lebanon War (1982), 47, 244; occupation, 244; Six-Day War, 98, 244; Yom Kippur War, 244 ius ad bellum, 2–3, 4, 6, 7, 55n62m 244, 245. See also Aquinas, Thomas ius in bello, 2, 55n62, 244, 245. See also Aquinas, Thomas Jabotinsky, Vladimir, 20–21, 46, 131n67; Betar, 30; Har Herzl, 28n30. See also Jewish Legion Jewish Army: idea of (WWII), xvii, 212; Yishuv (conscription by), 171–72. See also Arendt, Hannah; Herzl, Theodor Jewish Legion (WWI), 20, 80 Jewish Question, xvi, xvii, 14, 38, 74, 169, 239; anti-Semitism, 16; Aristotle, 32, 33; assimilation, xvi, 18; political obligation, 32, 239; territorialists, 55n64. See also Arendt, Hannah; Zionism Judeans. See Jewish Legion just war theory: xiii, 2, 34, 35, 38, 49, 117

268

the just war tradition, xiii, xvii, 2, 3, 4, 8, 23, 33, 98, 109, 137, 155, 234; a Jewish just war tradition, 23. See also Aquinas, Thomas; Aristotle Kafka, Franz, 233, 246 Kalischer, Zvi Hirsch, 100, 109–12, 120, 131n53 Kant, Immanuel, xi, xiii, xxi, 2, 3, 33, 66, 70, 73, 149, 150–58, 159, 160, 174, 183–84, 187, 193, 206, 210, 217, 235, 236–37; categorical imperative, 151; consent, 150–51, 153, 193–94; contract, 151–52, 156; just war, 154, 178n67, 246; moral philosophy, 151–53, 154; perpetual peace, 152, 157; politics, 152, 153, 156, 187 Kateb, George, 3, 9n13, 97, 206, 224 Kedourie, Elie, 17, 80 Kellogg/Briand Pact, 6, 10n27 Kelsen, Hans, 6, 10n27 Kook, Abraham, 100, 112–16, 119–20, 122, 131n67 Kook, Zvi Yehuda, 112 Korolenko, Vladimir, 18 Kunz, Joseph, 11n31 Laqueur, Walter, on Hannah, Arendt, xix, xxiv n21, 211 League of Nations, 6, 10n27, 11n31, 168 Levinas, Emmanuel, 123, 133n15 Locke, John, 160, 167 Maccabean Revolt, 21–22 Machiavelli, Niccolò, 123, 153, 207, 218, 229n83, 229n91 Maimonides, Moses, 22 Marx, Karl. See Marxism Marxism, 44, 167. See also Zionism: Marxist Massada, xiv, 47, 113 Mendelssohn, Moses, 18, 53n24, 123, 168

Index

Metulla, 45 Morgenthau, Hans: On Hannah Arendt, xix multiculturalism, 197, 198. See also pluralism national self-determination, 39, 40, 45, 231n126 nationalism, 14, 17, 23, 25, 46, 53n24, 84, 168, 212, 216, 221, 222 natural law, xx, 58, 59, 60, 62, 74 Nazi/Nazis/Nazism, xxii n18, 15, 115, 169, 172, 201, 240 Nietzsche, Friedrich, 47, 75, 118, 132n97 Nordau, Max, xv, 48, 59, 67, 69, 75, 76, 78–82, 87, 240; A Question of Honour (Dr. Kohn), 76–79, 80, 82 Novikoff, Olga von, 75–76 Nuremburg Trials, 116 O’Brien, Tim, 136, 179n88, 227n39; If I Die in a Combat Zone, xii Orientalism, 49, 90n30 pacifist argument, 21, 250, 178n67, 195 Palestine, xv, xxii n9, 11, 15, 16, 20, 21, 24, 39, 43, 45, 46, 47, 48, 49, 55n65, 80, 81, 108, 110, 111, 112, 115, 116, 120, 121, 124, 171, 209, 210, 211, 212, 213, 216, 221 Paret, Peter, xii, xxiii n10, 3, 9n7, 136 Pateman, Carole, 162, 163, 165, 166, 241 phrenology, 66, 75 Pinsker, Leo, 41, 42 Plamenatz, J. P., 137, 163, 164 Plato, xii, 3, 138, 187, 188, 189, 192, 193, 194, 195, 196, 223, 226n33 pluralism, xviii, xx, 185, 187, 195–98, 199, 201, 202, 204, 205, 206, 207, 208, 209, 212, 214, 216, 222, 223, 224, 238, 239, 240, 244, 245. See also difference Poale Zion, 48, 50

Index

pogrom, xv, xvi, 15, 16 Provisional Council, 46 Pufendorf, Samuel, ix, x race theory, 60, 66, 67, 82 racism, 49, 66, 67, 75, 77, 82 Reines, Yitzhak, 120 revisionist Zionism. See Jabotinsky, Vladimir Rousseau, Jean-Jacques, xiii, 13, 33, 135, 141–50, 151, 154, 155, 156, 157, 158, 159, 161, 162, 174, 183, 210, 217, 235, 237, 238; contract, 141–43, 145, 150; General Will, 144, 145; human will, 143, 144, 145; Lawgiver, 146–47; morality, 141; psychology, 143, 145–47, 148, 153; Will of All, 143 Russo-Japanese War, 45 Sabbatai, Zevi, 127n5 Said, Edward, 49 Saint Augustine. See Augustine Saint Thomas. See Aquinas, Thomas Scholem, Gershom, xix, 108–9 Second World War, xvii, 47, 137, 200; Jewish military units, 47 Shadmi, Nahum, 171 Shapira, Anita, 47 Shintoism, xxi Sikarii, 113 Six-Day War. See Israel Shoah, 15, 26n10, 55n60, 171 Slovik, Eddie, 137 social contract, 135, 138–50, 151, 153, 157, 159, 160, 165, 174, 189, 215, 216, 224, 237 social-Darwinism, 75, 76, 81, 87 Socrates, x, xii, 138, 162, 187–95, 196, 197, 203, 210, 218, 223, 236, 240, 241, 246; death of, xii, 138, 162, 163, 187, 189–91; moral argument, 190–94; trial, 188, 190, 197, 223 Solovev, Vladimir, 18

269

sovereignty, xvi, xxi, 38, 43, 53n31, 71, 164, 168, 172, 185, 198, 224, 241; and Jewish Question, xvi–xvii; sovereignty and ability to wage war, xiv; and Zionism, 38, 39. See also Arendt, Hannah; Hegel, Georg Wilhelm Friedrich; Hobbes, Thomas; Walzer, Michael; Zionism Spinoza, Baruch (Benedict), xii, 80, 235 Suarez, Francisco, 118–19 Suganami, Hidemi, 179n85 suicide, xiv, 47, 113, 114, 118, 193, 200, 226n24 Sykes-Picot Agreement, 45 Syrkin, Nahman, 24 Tel Hai, 45–46 theory of state: and obligation, xii; violent, xiv; war, 137 Tolstoy, Leo, xii, 18, 75, 214; War and Peace, xii, xiii, 214 Trumpeldor, Joseph, 45, 46 United Nations, 6, 14, 201; Charter, 6; Resolution 181, 171, 181n122; Security Council, 6, 212, 230n110 universal/universalism, 37, 59, 60, 61, 63, 65, 66–67, 69, 70, 71, 72, 74, 76, 79, 80, 82, 90n30, 100, 123, 138, 150, 151, 154, 155, 164, 165, 168, 170, 171, 173, 175, 184, 185, 210, 236; law, 74, 52n12, 63, 66, 67, 69, 70, 74, 82, 153; morality, xi, 137, 151, 152, 153, 156, 157, 158, 167, 168, 173, 184, 238; rights, 17, 76, 138, 164, 168, 169, 170, 173, 184, 209, 212 Vietnam War, x, 136, 161, 162, 227n39, 234 Villa, Dana, 207, 209, 210, 221 violence, 216–22 Vitoria, Francisco de, 65, 66, 89n7, 118 voluntarism, 135, 138, 165, 167, 241

270

Index

Walker, R. B. J., xxi Walzer, Michael, ix, x, xi, 2, 6, 14, 22, 35, 97, 117, 142, 158–63, 174, 175, 187, 197, 198, 205, 218, 237, 241, 242; Jewish Question, 14; Just and Unjust Wars, 6, 35, 117, 160, 234, 245; sovereignty, 163 Weber, Max, 38, 218 Weizmann, Chaim, 230n104 women, 42, 53n23, 90n34, 101, 130n39, 160, 171, 180n100, 197, 199, 239 World Jewish Congress, 19, 85 WWI. See First World War WWII. See Second World War Yishuv, 39, 114, 171, 172, 181n127, 221 Young-Bruehl, Elisabeth, xxiv n20, 32 Zeitlin, Hillel, 55n64 Zionism, 15–24, 40–50, 208–16; and anti-Semitism, 14, 17, 18, 54n32, 77, 212, 240; cultural Zionism, 15, 19,

20, 25, 39, 85, 94n94; as European ideology, 14, 16, 17–18, 25, 33; Jewish identity, 14, 15, 21, 23, 43, 44, 45, 46, 47, 50, 55n58, 80, 81, 82; as Jewish political theory, 15, 22–23, 24, 42–45; Jewish Question, 14, 18, 173, 204; labour Zionism, xv, 25, 32, 44, 45, 46–50, 51, 239–40; Marxist, 44, 50, 84, 95n110; messianism, xiv, 24, 100, 101, 108, 109, 111; and political obligation, 15, 214; political Zionism, 14–15, 19, 239; redemption, xiv, 24, 44, 45, 98, 100–1, 108–12, 113, 115, 119–26; religious Zionism, 98–101, 108–16, 119, 120; revisionist Zionism, 20, 46, 212; socialist, 19, 24, 25, 44, 50, 85, 95n110, 110, 113; sovereignty, 38, 39, 41. See also Ha-Shomer Zionist Commission, 46 Zionist Congress, 75, 81 Zionist Organization, 19, 131n56

About the Author

Ilan Zvi Baron holds degrees from the University of Victoria (Canada), the London School of Economics, and the University of Wales, Aberystwyth. At Aberystwyth he was an E. H. Carr scholar and recipient of an Overseas Research Scheme Award. He has been a research fellow at the Institut Barcelona D’ Estudis Internacionals and is a visiting fellow at the Centre for International Studies at the London School of Economics. He has recently been appointed to a Lectureship in International Political Theory at Durham University.

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