Bits and Pieces: Justice and War

Are justice and reality mutually exclusive? Is justice a truly irrational object?

Thucydides, at first glance, would seem to say so. But the key distinction he makes is that civilization is not nature. What Thucydides really sets up are two separate realms: that of the real, and that of the ideal. As he writes,

“In times of peace and prosperity, cities and individuals alike follow higher standards because they are not forced into a situation where they have to do what they do not want to do. But war is a stern teacher…it brings people’s minds down to the level of their actual circumstances” (Thuc: III. 82).

Civil society is thus a constructed “ideal.” It is the escape from nature, built by men using their innate abilities to reason, compromise, cooperate, and form institutions. Justice, and systems thereof, are certainly part of this construct.

But as it was forged by imperfect men, with imperfect knowledge, ability and intent, this ideal is frail and prone to relapse into the real. The real is a state of war, not just among nations, but among individuals as well.

It is “nasty, brutish and short” and so extraordinarily terrible that it spurred a self-interested creature to act collectively. This is the state of nature. Man, once devoted to “higher standards,” returns, perhaps not without regret, to his primitive form. He does “what he does not want to do,” but necessarily what he has to do in order to survive.

Those who pursue justice in these circumstances do not live long enough to see the day when power is reallocated and order is restored. For war indeed spawns peace, and peace soon thereafter enkindles justice and the illusion of higher civilization. Yet danger lurks where that illusion is mistaken for reality.

Peace is frail and fleeting.

The specter of war is forever.