ON THE LIMITS OF VIOLENCE AND WHERE THE STATE WILL END
Humans
are undeniably situated in institutions such as a state which is a product of
human interaction and the fulfillment of freedoms in individuals. Amidst this
fulfillment of freedoms between individuals, the state has a peculiar role at
its disposal – enactment of violence. Ricoeur noticed this peculiarity because
states have always enacted in someway that uses violence to assert itself with
legitimacy. Thus, Ricoeur asks: “What is the minimum violence instituted by the
state?”[1]
The legitimacy of violence stemming from the state
constitutes its power and authority. Power in the sense that it can do
something i.e., enactment of violence per se. More so, this enactment of
violence compliments its authority, as without the minimal ability to be
violent, the state cannot put to teeth its commanding capability. The minimal
and yet acceptable violence the state can ever do is that which is penal by
nature.
Since
the state can enact violence as its mandate with legitimacy, this causes a
problem as states are not perfect and errors can occur being the arbiter and
implementer of moral consciousness.[2]
As the implementer and arbiter of moral consciousness, Ricoeur highlights the
two ethics wherein the state can find itself in a problematic situation other
than causing errors in judgements. The state must act as a magistrate, thus
implement violence, and at the same time, the Christian practical ideal i.e.,
the ethic of love (love thy neighbor which offers reconciliation and
non-resistance). The duality is present in the Pauline Epistles wherein Paul
preaches about love as how it was delivered in the Sermon on the Mount while at
the same time encouraging the people (to whom he was preaching of which his
message is ripe for the cause of those who do not take Roman authority) not to
take an anarchistic stance (coming from the newly acquired social identity as
“Christians” in a Roman society) out from conscience and to be submissive to
lawful authorities.[3]
Paul
recognized the Roman authority (or any specific authority within the vastness
of the Roman Empire) during his time, and that is evidence of him recognizing
the authority of the state as with it, its capacity to enact violence which he
subtly warns people by looking into their conscience. Again, the limit of this
violence should be penal in nature (no recourse to murder) that is anchored on
justice. And as Ricoeur further investigates he said: “But it is precisely this
established violence, this violence of justice which constitutes a problem.”[4]
As any form of violence negates the ethic of love as violence is simply an evil
given as compensation to the individual who does evil.
The
love that was preached in the Sermon on the Mount is in apparent contradiction
with the magistrate. The magistrate has a commanding appeal to it and
tenderness is not part of its manner in imposing its authority. And from a
subject’s perspective, “the state is not my brother and requires submission.”[5]
This is the undeniable dilemma of the state, and in its enactment of violence
to impose itself, it can never cure evil. It maintains order to preserve the
people institutionalizing it, but never can it eradicate evil altogether.[6]
The
continuation and preservation of humanity through the state is not stable as
violence continually reverberates due to violence committed of humans against
their fellow humans together with the state in its imposition of power and
authority. “[Thus], order is not something tranquil and absolutely stable;
order vibrates; order is a power.”[7]
Up until this point, this speaks of the state managing itself. The brewing
problem is on the state’s survival in the face of other states. Ricoeur recalls
Machiavelli for this, as an undeniable reality between warring states needs
attention. States go to war against other states for it to continue their
continued existence. Machiavelli enticed war as a means for survival and
assertion of existence of which poses a bigger problem. The problem lies in the
act of war itself that is sacrificing individuals for the perpetuation of the
state which violates already the ethic of love and prohibition of murder as the
limit to its violence. Thus, a new tension lies among individuals caught in the
war, (ethics of distress) and that is to continue his or her obedience or
become what Ricoeur calls a “conscientious objector.”
Being
a conscientious objector puts a risk for the one objecting and the state he or
she objected, as the state can enact violence to the apparent treason one is
doing, or the objector will object through violence as the only means to equate
its capacity to “correct” the state in turn, threatening the state. In
despising war as an instrument of the state to perpetuate itself in the face of
other states, those who object create
the possibilities for the inevitability of violence as a means to go against
such mandate. This violence against the state within its subjects is what we
call a revolution, and such poses another dilemma as Ricoeur says:
“For I cannot will, with a
positive and deliberate volition, the death of my state without at the same
time willing, through the conjunction of these major cataclysms, war and
revolution, the violent institution of a new state, of a new sovereignty, a new
power which win turn will summon my armed and murderous disobedience.”[8]
In
the desire to quell the murderous state, one is poised towards the
inevitability of using murder as well first, to contradict the mandate, and
second, to attempt to establish another order, perhaps, a new state. This
situation is the magnification of the ethics of distress into another plane.
Thus, can violence be stopped? Can people “correct” the state in its murderous
path without resorting to the same violence that it shows? And here Ricoeur
then concludes that:
“The end of this duality (tension
between the ethic of love and the magisterium) would be the total
reconciliation of man with man. But this would also be the end of the state,
because this will be the end of history.”[9]
FORESIGHT ONTO THE END OF
HISTORY
Ricoeur’s State and Violence made implications
that a state exists due to its enactment of violence, and the bare minimum and
acceptable form of it is through punishments (penal and corrective by nature).
Since a state cannot do without violence during its imposition of authority and
a reflection of its power, a state cannot exist without its violence as well.
However, Ricoeur shows his subtle opposition of the states using war (another
form of violence) to further its existence by describing what a conscientious
objector does. Yet, even war, a violent act, has its bottom line goal of the
continued existence of the state as its end goal even at the expense of the
subjects who are caught in the ethic of distress.
Would
it be safe to say that to Rcicoeur, a state exists side by side with its
violence? And would it be fair also to consider the possibility that the
absence of violence in any instance whatsoever means there is no reason anymore
that a state exists; thus, the end of violence is also the end of the state?
Even without alluding to Marx’s Historical Materialism, such hints on communism
as this final stage of human history where there are no more contradictions,
and there is a classless society. (I am referring to communism as how it was
postulated when society transcends from the socialistic stage.) Moreover, this
spells of what Vladimir Lenin take of Engel’s Anti-Duhring in State
and Revolution as the “withering of the state.”
The
point where the state completely withers, shows a radical return to what people
are prior to Ricoeur’s Third Person (Institutions) in his lecture The
Problem with the Foundation of Moral Philosophy. A return which means that
the there is the mutual understanding between people in the exercise of their
freedoms minus the institution and along with it, a violence imposed to mediate
and fulfill the freedoms within the institution. This description of humanity
without institutions and in mutual understanding of each other for me, is
ahistorical as to ascribe such as an origin or that which is prior to the state
is not the same simply describing it as an occurrence along and within the fact
that there is a state.
Mutual
understanding (in a perfect sense) is the radical fulfillment of the ethics of
love of which Ricoeur labels as a practical ideal, but still carries with the
ideal nature of such event. Ideal in the sense that the total fulfillment of
such cannot be made manifest in human history. Yet this is also the dream of
the Judeo-Christian tradition, and that is when the Kingdom of God has finally
realized itself within human history. (A utopia yet still bears a magistrate,
God as King which also begs the questions, what use of such magistrate when all
is in perfection, thus, no errors and no reason for such magistrate to enact
penal violence.) So, is human history what it is as it is also the occurrence
of violence from both the individual and the state?
This
cycle of violence, especially when the state uses war as an instrument and when
the people object to such violently, truly brings about the movement of
history. Kingdoms and empires rise and fall via its enactment of violence
within itself and externally, and as well as those who object violently to the
regimes. History is marked with revolutions and long-standing rule of
societies, and the total fulfillment of the ethics of love will be the end of
it all. The cure to all evils ends the necessity of the state’s existence.
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