Ronan O’ Callaghan – University of Manchester
Talking About War – Secular Theology and Nobel Sacrifice in
Walzer’s Just War Discourse
Abstract
During the last decade there has been an attempt, in some quarters, to solidify debate
on war around the dichotomy of just war and holy war. In this dichotomy, the just war
has increasingly been depicted as the progressive secularised opposite to holy war’s
antiquated religious fundamentalism. While wars argued for under the just war banner
have been extensively critiqued and protested against, the rights based language of
just war theory has largely escaped critical evaluation. Michael Walzer has emerged
as a pivotal figure in just war theory’s modern, secular rebirth within the discipline of
international relations. Walzer’s theory argues that humanity shares a singular moral
vocabulary, embodied in the language of just war theory. Drawing upon the work of
Jacques Derrida this paper investigates the construction of Walzer’s moral language
and its ethical implications. The first section focuses on Walzer’s moral language, its
structure, inconsistencies and theological underpinnings. The second section
addresses Walzer’s justification for the sacrifice of combatants in defence of
noncombatants, assessing the implications of this for his overall theory. The central
arguments presented in this paper are that Walzer’s theory is founded upon a
contradictory theological movement, and that the sacrifice initiated by this language
constitutes the unjustifiable sacrifice of just war theory’s own ethical principles.
Keywords
War, Walzer, language, sacrifice, ethics, Derrida
1
Introduction
The last decade has, in part, witnessed an attempt to solidify the language of
contemporary western debates on the topic of war around the dichotomy of the just
war and the holy war. This dichotomy has, in turn, become increasingly cached in
terms of further binaries, including rational/irrational, civilised/barbaric, modern/premodern and, importantly for this paper, secular/religious. Presented with the Bush
Administration’s reiterated professions that America’s war on terror would ensure that
justice was done, and current US President Barack Obama’s assertion, during his
2009 Nobel Peace Prize acceptance speech, that just wars are an essential component
of global peace and stability 1 , it appears that the conceptualisation of war as an
instrument of justice has become an enduring feature of the modern era in
international politics. Just war theory, of which American secularised variants have
been the most influential in regards to policy, has been to the fore of this
conceptualisation of warfare as a moral enterprise. Despite the potentially problematic
coupling of justice with a most extreme instrument of violence, the idea of a just war
has been elevated, in many regards, by humanitarian notions of rights and protection
of the innocent, a thread firmly advocated by contemporary just war theorists in both
academic and public domains. 2 Endeavouring to detach itself from its theological
heritage contemporary secular just war theory posits itself as the middle ground
between, what it deems, ineffective passivism and morally redundant realism offering
the definitive manual for morality in war-time designed for real world application.3
The just war, reborn as a beacon of modern secular rationalism, promises to promote
civilised society, and defend human rights from the worst excesses of human
barbarism. On the opposite end of the spectrum, the contemporary holy war, primarily
identified in the west under the banner of Islamic Jihad, has been depicted as a relic of
pre-modern religious fanaticism dangerous to the very fabric of modern humanist
cultures. This war between wars has been thematised as a war between two lights, the
edifying light of the enlightenment and the antiquated light of revelation. However,
Barack Obama, ‘Barack Obama’s Nobel Prize Speech Transcript’, October 2009,
http://swampland.blogs.time.com/2009/12/10/barack-obamas-nobel-prize-speech-transcript/ (accessed
07 September 2010)
2‘What We’re Fighting For: A Letter from America’, February 2002,
http://www.americanvalues.org/html/what_we_re_fighting_for.html (accessed 06 September 2010).
“What We’re Fighting For” is a letter addressed to European academics endorsing the use of force
against Afghanistan on the basis of just war principles, the letter was signed by 60 American academics
including many prominent just war theorists.
3
Michael Walzer, Arguing About War, Paperback Edition (Yale: Yale University Press, 2005), xi
1
2
this is fundamentally a battle over meaning, perhaps most importantly the meanings
of justice and sacrifice. We are presented with two languages of justice, the
humanitarian language of rights and divinely ordained language of Jihad.
Accompanying these languages are two seemingly polarised images of sacrifice, the
noble sacrifice of the just war, which lays lives on the line to defend humanity’s
inalienable right to life and liberty, and the modern holy war which harnesses
sacrificial death in the name of conversion and annihilation. As Baudrillard argues,
western society’s promotion of life is confronted by Islamic Jihad’s desire for death;
“our men want to die as much as yours want to live.”4
While the language of holy war and the sacrifice it directs have been extensively
condemned and critiqued in academic and public domains, the language of just war
has largely escaped critical evaluation. Although the intensive public protests against
recent wars argued for under the standard of just war criteria have been well
documented, the rights based language of just war theory has conversely been reified,
with protesters primarily arguing that these wars are morally repugnant because they
do not meet the criteria of human rights doctrine. In short, the fault is seen to lie, not
with the language but in its application; it is a problem of correctly representing the
language of rights, not a problem with the language itself. Presented with the
increasing relevance of the rights based language of just war and its claim to represent
the ordinary language of war5, it is crucial that we critically reflect upon its discursive
strategy and the implications thereof. My central argument posits that the division
between just war and holy war is not as straightforward as contemporary just war
theorists suggest. Focusing on the work of Michael Walzer, largely considered to be
father of just war theory’s modern secularised rebirth within the field of international
relations, this paper argues that not only is just war’s language of rights inconsistent
within itself, this language is only possible through a theological movement at its very
inception. The first half of the paper will map the development of Walzer’s language
of rights, its inconsistencies and the theological undertones it expounds, despite its
desire not to. Drawing on the work of Jacques Derrida, I contend that the language
produced by Walzer’s theory embodies a form of “secular theology.” By this I mean
Jean Baudrillard, ‘L’Espirit du Terrorisme’, in Stanley Hauerwas editor, Dissent form the Homeland:
Essays after September 11 (Durham: Duke University Press, 2002)), 408.
5
Walzer, Arguing About War, 8.
4
3
that the moral vocabulary required by Walzer can only be founded by faith in a
mystical and unavowable origin of universal morality, which subsequently forms the
bedrock of an inelastic moral dogma. Further to this, I argue that Walzer must
necessarily hide this mystical foundation in order to justify his overarching argument
that the morality expounded by his theory constitutes a palpable ontological reality.
The latter half of the paper will discuss the meaning of sacrifice that Walzer’s
language of rights inaugurates, paying specific attention to the impact of this for
Walzer’s notions of justice and morality. This analysis will focus on Walzer’s
justification for the killing of combatants in war. The main argument presented in this
section contends that Walzer’s justification for the killing of combatants proves
inconsistent within his overall theory of morality, and, therefore, the sacrifice of
soldiers’ lives outlined in his theory also constitutes the sacrifice of just war theory’s
own ethical principles. Two parables will be employed as illustrative guides to
navigate our way through the issues raised in this paper. The first section will present
Andrei Tarkovsky’s cinematic interpretation of Stanisław Lem’s science fiction
classic Solaris as parable of the mystical dimensions of the genesis of meaning, while
the second section will draw upon Søren Kierkegaard and Derrida’s readings of the
biblical narrative of The Binding of Isaac as a parable of the ethical implications of
sacrifice.
Solaris: A Parable of the Mystical
Tarkovsky’s imagining of Solaris tells a story of Kris Kelvin, a psychologist who is
about to be dispatched to a space station orbiting a distant and mysterious planet
called Solaris. Solaris is believed to be a sentient being and research is being
conducted to understand the essence of the planet’s nature. However, after many years
of study, the scientists aboard the station have made little progress in their mission.
Kelvin is travelling to the station to investigate strange events experienced by its crew
believed to be the result of psychological afflictions arising from the properties of the
planet, and to asses the viability of continuing with the project. At the beginning of
the narrative Kelvin is introduced to Henri Burton, a former space pilot who was
involved in the Solaris project, at his elderly father’s estate. Together with Kelvin’s
father, the three men watch Burton’s recorded testimony of mystical events he
witnessed while flying above the planet, testimony that was unsupported by video
evidence obtained from Burton’s craft. Despite Burton and his father’s plea to take
4
this testimony seriously, Kelvin rejects it declaring himself to be a man of science
concerned with evidence and reality. Kelvin then bids adieu to his father, knowing he
will not see him alive again, and leaves for Solaris.
Upon arrival at the station Kelvin is confronted by a number of, what he believes to
be, physical apparitions derived from the strange properties of the planet culminating
in the appearance of his late wife Hari who committed suicide some years before.
Kelvin, dismayed with this manifestation of Hari, lures her to an escape pod and
launches her into outer space. Kelvin enacts a type of ritualised sacrificial expulsion
of the mystical in an effort to affirm the real; knowing the true fate of his wife he
violently expels the illusionary mirage. However, Hari returns and upon the
realisation that she is a conscious being and will return despite any attempts to banish
her, Kelvin embraces her, later declaring “you mean more to me than any scientific
truth.”6 In juxtaposition, Hari is completely unaware that she is a mere manifestation
of Kelvin’s memories of his dead wife and not a real person. Upon the revelation of
what she is, she chooses suicide as an escape only to involuntarily resurrect again. At
the climax of the story Kelvin’s brainwaves are transmitted to Solaris and the
apparitions cease to appear on the station. Kelvin is then left with a choice, to travel
back to the real world or to journey to Solaris in search of everything he has lost on
earth.
In the closing scene Kelvin is back on his father’s estate, he appears to have chosen
the real. Nevertheless, the mystical is also present as we witness rain falling indoors
on his now presumably dead father. Upon greeting his father, Kelvin drops to his
knees embracing him in a plea for forgiveness, the camera zooms out and we can see
that Kelvin is now at home in the mystical, on Solaris. But what can be said about this
father from whom forgiveness is sought? A father, although familiar to sight, contains
within himself a secret that knowledge cannot gain access to. A secret that has taken
the shape of a father to reveal itself to a son but in doing so hides the ultimate truth of
its being. This image recalls Levinas’ conception of the non-thematisable Other, “an
alien outside of oneself”7 that is “immemorial, unrepresentable, invisible,” and can
6
Andrei Tarkovsky, Solaris (London: Artificial Eye, 1972).
Emmanuel Levinas, Totality and Infinity: An Essay on Exteriority, trans. Alphonso Lingis (Pittsburgh:
Duquesne University Press, 1999), 33.
7
5
only show itself at the price of its own betrayal.8 An unknowable Other, which in
Derrida is connected to the mystical foundations of language, an absolute Other that is
represented and personified (and thus betrayed) by the name God; “the intelligible
face of the sign remains turned toward the word and the face of God.”9
Minimalism and the Language of Just War
Walzer’s seminal work on war, Just and Unjust Wars, was primarily a response to
what he perceived to be an ethical debasement of the subject spearheaded by realist
thinkers. What is perhaps most interesting about Walzer’s response is that it
fundamentally challenged realism on its own terms. Foregoing the traditional liberal
stance that morality was something that needed to be worked into the mechanics of
war, Walzer argued that morality was already, and always had been, a tangible
component of the reality of warfare. In this way Walzer challenged realism, not with
what could simply be dismissed as moral naivety or good intentions, but with reality
itself, claiming that the reality espoused by realism constituted a fictitious language
utilised to justify immoral actions; “we don’t have to translate moral talk into interest
talk in order to understand it; morality refers in its own way to the real world.” 10 In
contrast, to the deceptive language of realism, Walzer describes the language of just
war theory, at various junctures, as the ordinary langue of war, a common heritage,
the most available common moral language and a moral doctrine that everyone knows.
The underlying argument is that, when we discuss the issue of war, we “talk the same
language” and only the wicked or the simple would reject this language. 11 Although
Walzer states his intention to defend the business of arguing about war, he quite
literally wants to fix the terms of the debate; “it is in applying the agreed-upon terms
to actual cases that we come to disagree.” 12 So to summarise Walzer’s linguistic
theory, he presents us with a universally agreed-upon common language that reflects
the moral reality of war, embodied by the language of just war theory. Walzer poses
an ontological argument, that just war’s moral vocabulary and the language it
expounds show us war as it really is; “what we do when we argue is to give an
8
Emmanuel Levinas, Otherwise than Being: Or Beyond Essence, trans. Alphonso Lingis (Pittsburgh:
Duquesne University Press, 1999), 7-11.
9
Derrida, Of Grammatology, 13
10
Michael Walzer, Just and Unjust Wars: A Moral Argument With Historical Illustrations, Fourth
Edition (New York: Basic Books, 2006), 14.
11
Ibid., xxiii.
12
Ibid., 11-12.
6
account of the actually existing morality.” 13 Mirroring the study of Solaris in our
parable, Walzer is concerned with uncovering the true character of genuine morality.
Therefore, it is essential that we investigate the evidence of Walzer’s universal dialect,
its origin, its structure and its saying. For if we are to be restricted to a singular means
of talking about war, it is imperative that we test the suitability and consistency of this
discourse with all available rigour.
However, Walzer’s conceptualisation of moral language proves more complex than it
first appears, for in his linguistic theory there are two distinct, but not mutually
exclusive, languages of morality; thick and thin. Thick or maximal moral language
constitutes the shared meanings of a political community, and represents their
collective conscience and common life. 14 Morality is negotiated thickly within
specific communities between its members, ultimately constituting a common social
vocabulary. Yet crucially, for this paper, thick morality cannot be universalised.
Walzer assures us that the authority of maximal morality is rooted in the singular
community and any attempt to enforce thick moral standards in another community
(by an outside party) violates the universal rule of self-determination. Therefore, we
must turn our attention to the language of thin or minimal morality, the universal
moral vocabulary, and the non-colloquial dialect of war. This search for minimalism
mimics the scientific exploration of Solaris, what we are looking for lies behind the
apparitions and below the strange events. When it comes to minimal morality we are
trying to crack the core of the planet; the universal core of just war’s moral language.
Walzer quickly asserts that minimalism is best understood as an effort to recognise
and respect a doctrine of human rights, with the rights of life and liberty standing as
absolute values, what he describes as a form of ultra minimalism.15 The centrality of
rights to Walzer’s exposition of minimal morality is underscored by the declaration
that war can only be justified in the defence of rights, and that justice in war is
guaranteed by upholding the rights of life and liberty. 16 In this sense, Walzer’s
13
Michael Walzer, Interpretation and Social Criticism (Cambridge MA, Harvard University Press,
1987a), 21.
14
Michael Walzer, Thick and Thin: Moral Argument at Home and Abroad (Notre Dame: Notre Dame
University Press, 1994), 8.
15
Walzer, Just and Unjust Wars, xxiii-xxiv. Walzer, Thick and Thin, 16.
16
Michael Walzer, Spheres of Justice: A Defence of Pluralism and Justice (Oxford: Blackwell, 1983),
xv.
7
meaning of justice and morality is embodied in his conceptualisation of rights with
significant eminence attached to the meaning of the right to life and liberty. Walzer
unveils minimalism by presenting us with the image of protesters in Prague carrying
signs demanding “truth” and “justice”:
I knew immediately what the signs meant – and so did everyone else who saw the
same picture. Not only that: I also recognised and acknowledged the values that the
marchers were defending – and so did (almost) everyone else.17
For Walzer, minimalism is to be understood as a form of temporal revelation; moral
language reveals itself thinly on special occasions.18 In short, we know the minimal
language when we see it. This intimate, passive and spontaneous understanding and
recognition of minimal language is unsurprising given Walzer’s belief that the rights
underlying the minimal vocabulary are attached to our sense of what it means to be
human.19 However, this is not an unproblematic concept in Walzer’s linguistic theory,
for minimal morality can never be revealed minimally, it can only be stated
maximally:
Minimalism when it is expressed as Minimal Morality will be forced into the idiom
and orientation of one of the maximal moralities. There is no neutral (unexpressive)
moral language.20
Walzer’s minimal/maximal dichotomy recalls Levinas’ distinction between the saying
and the said. For Levinas, language, which is the province of the said, is motivated by
a pre-original saying that constitutes a foreword preceding languages. 21 However, in
Levinas’ dichotomy, this pre-original saying does not move into language, indeed, it
becomes counterfeit as soon as it is conveyed before us; this is the price of its
thematisation.22 Walzer’s theory presents us with a minimal moral language inherent
to the essence of being that, although silent and essentially unsayable, can be innately
extracted from the myriad of maximal moral languages. This image mirrors Derrida’s
17
Walzer, Thick and Thin, 1.
Ibid., 4.
19
Walzer, Just and Unjust Wars, 54.
20
Walzer, Thick and Thin, 9.
21
Levinas, Otherwise than Being, 5.
22
Ibid., 6-7.
18
8
analysis of Rousseau’s Essay on the Origin of Languages23, in which Derrida argues
that Rousseau depicts man in the state of nature being moved to song and
subsequently to speech by a compassion natural to man but foreign to nature. 24
Derrida contends that this movement constitutes a progression-regression cycle by
which man leaves nature, through progress, only to rejoin with a nature that is more
secret, ancient and archaic; “Beginning with an origin or a centre that divides itself
and leaves itself, an historical circle is described, which is degenerative in direction
but progressive and compensatory in effect.”25 In Walzer’s narrative, man must leave
the natural world of minimal morality if he wishes to express morality through
language, however, man can return to this secret nature through the spontaneous
recognition of the minimal motivations behind maximal codifications. When we try to
speak minimally, the thin words are immovably lodged in our throats, nevertheless,
our eyes and ears can still recognise, and attest to this unpronounceable signifying
system through an innate passivity indigenous to humanity. Although maximal
language takes us away from minimalism, we are rejoined with minimalism via
temporal recognition. In this movement maximal language preserves minimal
morality.
Yet, there are further difficulties in Walzer’s conception of morality, as he assures us
that we must interpret the language of morality. He dismisses the two alternative
moral schemas of discovery and invention due to their mystical structures. Moral
discovery is disregarded as it requires God to reveal the moral language to us;
“someone must climb the mountain, go to the desert, seek out the God-who-reveals,
and bring back his word.” 26 While moral invention is disqualified as the inventor
assumes the role of God; “they create what God would have created if they were a
God.”27 Ultimately Walzer asserts that we do not need discovery or invention as we
already have what they pretend to provide; when we interpret the moral world we
give an account of the already existing morality.28 Once again Walzer argues on the
basis of reality; the mystical world of discovery and the mythical world of invention
A similarity that is particularly interesting when considering Walzer’s declared affinity with
Rousseau’s writings.
24
Derrida, Of Grammatology, 195-196.
25
Ibid., 202.
26
Walzer, Interpretation and Social Criticism, 4.
27
Ibid., 12.
28
Ibid., 19-21.
23
9
are unnecessary in the face of interpretation, the first hand experience of authentic
real world morality. Nonetheless, an interpretative real is also a contested real. How
then do we recognise the genuine moral interpretation amongst a sea of competing
fraudulent interpretations? Walzer resolves this problematic by positing a
democratically ordained rule of reason, in which everyone is allowed to speak and the
most persuasive interpretation is adhered to.29 Although this model of interpretation is
somewhat consistent within Walzer’s conception of maximal morality (that is to say
in relation to particular democratic cultures), Walzer holds the interpretation of
minimal morality to a higher standard; we experience minimal morality “as an
external standard, the standard of God or of other people…it only justifies what God
or other people recognise as just.”30 Indeed, Walzer maintains that minimal morality
cannot be extracted from democratic culture as this culture is maximalist in itself.31
Walzer describes a minimal morality, presented in maximal language, which can only
be justified by God or humanity. However, the interpretative model offered by
Walzer to adjudicate over what constitutes authentic minimalism is unable to assure
the justness of its judgement. Walzer’s rights based model proclaims that minimal
morality is encoded in the maximal language of just war, and its minimalism can only
be discovered through a democracy of interpretation. Yet, this maximalist model of
interpretation is incompatible with the minimal external standard it strives toward.
Walzer installs a maximal conception of interpretation at the foundation of minimal
morality, and now the maximal language that promised the ontological manifestation
of the minimal word threatens it with usurpation.
We shall return to Solaris to illustrate the predicament. Like Walzer’s minimal
morality, Solaris can only manifest itself through a maximal projection. Indeed, the
various representations of Solaris also constitute an interpretative experience. Solaris
takes a maximal form that is familiar and understandable to the interpreter, but in
doing so Solaris’ essence, its minimalism, remains absent, hidden and secret. Hari,
although spawned from Solaris, does not illuminate Solaris’ true form, she is
composed from Kelvin’s memories; Solaris and the interpreter are mutually engaged
in the construction of this maximal representation. Solaris, as the minimal
29
Walzer, Spheres of Justice, 304.
Walzer, Interpretation and Social Criticism, 47.
31
Walzer, Thick and Thin, 12-13.
30
10
provocation, motivates Hari’s appearance, while simultaneously erasing itself from
her maximal representation. Hari cannot recall or recount her origin, and Kelvin
cannot see into the true nature of her being; Solaris’ minimal essence cannot be
extracted from its maximal thematisation. This account brings us toward Derrida’s
conception of différance and the logic of the supplement. Différance is a play on the
French word différer and its dual meaning, to differ and defer. Derrida argues that
différance constitutes both a differing between meanings and a deferral of ultimate
meaning; the delay inherent in signification and the difference that founds
oppositional concepts. Derrida asserts that self-present meaning is the ideal of
western metaphysics, however, this ideal proves impossible because différance
inhabits the very core of what appears to be immediate and present.32 He contends
that in language, the sign, which is a representation of the thing, stands in place of the
thing to preserve the thing’s presence, but in doing so heralds the disappearance of
the thing’s natural presence; “that what opens up meaning and language is writing as
the disappearance of natural presence.”33 As illustrated in the examples of Walzer’s
minimal language and Solaris’ manifestations, natural presence, the core that we were
searching for, could not appear outside of representation, but as soon as this
representation took place natural essence was lost.
Derrida insists that every search for an origin, like this, will find a nonorigin;
invariably what we will discover is not a singular starting point but a chain of
supplements with meaning already contested at its roots. 34 The supplement, which
plays an important role in Derridean thought, is maddening as it is neither presence
nor absence, but a mid-point between the two, what Derrida calls a floating signifier
that puts play into play. 35 In Walzer, maximal languages and their interpretation
supplement minimal morality by empowering its real world articulation. Yet, these
supplements are dangerous, as in their promise to compliment natural presence they
simultaneously threaten to supplant it; the minimal vocabulary is itself silent within
maximal systems of expression. Although the supplement threatens to usurp natural
presence, it is also the only way to protect against this danger; “a terrifying menace,
the supplement is also the first and surest protection against this very menace. This is
32
Jacques Derrida, Dissemination, trans. Barbara Johnson (London: The Athlone Press, 1981), ix.
Derrida, Of Grammatology, 159.
34
Ibid., 247.
35
Derrida, Dissemination, 93.
33
11
why it cannot be given up.”36 Without the maximal, the minimal could not become
the palpable feature of the real world, which Walzer requires it to be, however, when
incorporated within a maximal system we have no way of extracting the minimal
dialect except through a maximal judgement of interpretation. Therefore, Walzer’s
theory is premised upon a reactivation or rebirth of the origin, an originary presence
returning untouched from the detour of the supplement. A return exemplified in
Walzer’s moment of intuitive temporal revelation, in which we all recognise the
minimal values that lie behind the maximal expression of rights, thereby allowing us
to join with the Prague protesters. Nevertheless, this recognition of a minimal
language, which is never properly spoken or written, relies on a movement of faith. It
is founded on the faith that the minimal language has always existed, and that this
language is returned unscathed from its maximal detour. It is predicated upon the
faith that the recognition of minimal values is authentic regardless of the maximal
context; we will know Solaris’ true nature no matter what form it takes. Walzer relies
upon faith in the breath of an inarticulate langue, a breath that Derrida links to
theology; “its principle and end are theological, as the voice and providence of
nature…inspired in us by God and may address only Him.”37
Secular Theology
Walzer’s theory presents us with a silent minimal language that can only be
recognised as a feature of the real world if we have faith that the language is
authentically revealed to us, through maximal expression and interpretation, on
special occasions. In addition Walzer argues that mankind possess a collective moral
conscience that has the ability to recognise minimalism and be shocked into action if
minimal values are attacked.38 Therefore, to understand Walzer’s secular theology we
must investigate his conception of the individual consciences that comprise the
collective through his analysis of being. Walzer describes being as an ordered self and
states his intention to challenge religious conceptions of self, which suggest God has
placed a singular conscience in all of humanity.39 Walzer conceives this ordered self
to be, what he calls, a complex maximalist whole, internally divided in interests but
36
Derrida, Of Grammatology, 154.
Ibid., 249.
38
Walzer, Just and Unjust Wars, 90.
39
Michael Walzer, ‘Notes on Self-Criticism’, Social Research, 54, no.1 (1987b): 33-43.
37
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not utterly fragmented40. Self is described as a thickly populated circle with a core “I”
surrounded by a circle of self-critics. This “I” is defined as a newly elected president,
capable of summoning advisors, forming a cabinet and manoeuvring between its
constituent parts.41 Although Walzer is keen to stress the maximalist character of self,
Pin-Fat is quick to remind us that the structure of Walzer’s self is universal; all
human beings are like this.42 Walzer’s self may be maximally constituted but it is
minimally distributed. The “core self,” Walzer’s sovereign “I,” is, as Pin-Fat argues,
socio-historically pre-existent, it “is not dependent on time and place though its shape
may be.”43 Walzer’s self is a manifestation of Solaris’, it is maximally shaped by the
interpreter, here a metaphor for divided interests and specific socio-cultural contexts,
however, its organising principle and spark of origin is the same in all cases; all the
manifestations are born of Solaris. Importantly, it is this “core self” that is responsible
for temporal revelation, it draws its cabinet together, interprets the maximal language
and reactivates the minimal origin. The sovereign “I” is the common element inherent
in mankind that signifies Walzer’s collective conscience; it is the “human” of human
rights to which rights are attached and through which rights can be recognised. Not
only is this a theological conception of self, it is an explicitly Christian conception of
self.
Patočka describes the Christian depiction of the soul as a mystical interiority; “in the
final analysis, the soul is not a relation to an object, however noble (like the Platonic
Good) but rather to a person who sees into me without being itself accessible to
view.”44 In Kelvin’s story, Solaris represents this relation to the soul, a being that can
see into Kelvin and manifest his most intimate emotional desires without being seen
itself. Derrida expands on this theme by linking divine interiority to the structure of
subjectivity:
40
Walzer, Thick and Thin, 85 &96.
Ibid., 98-100.
42
Veronique Pin-Fat, Universality, Ethics and International Relations: A Grammatical Reading
(London: Routledge, 2009), 100.
43
Ibid., 100, original italics.
44
Jan Patočka, Heretical Essays in the Philosophy of History, trans. Erazim Kohak (Chicago: Open
Court, 1996), 107.
41
13
God … is therefore at the same time other than me and more intimate with me than
my self … God is in me, he is the absolute “me” or “self,” he is the structure of
invisible interiority that is called, in Kierkegaard’s sense, subjectivity.45
This structure is of seminal importance to Walzer’s conception of self, we never see
the internal mechanics of being, the presidential “I,” how it calls its cabinet together
and how it extracts minimalism from maximal language. This “core self” that can
enforce the minimal external standard of morality, “the standard of God,” from within
the human, can only do so in secret. Walzer’s theory is predicated upon faith in a
mystical authority and its ability to recognise the unavowable minimal language,
internally and in secret. Faith, Derrida argues, “signifies here acquiescing to the
testimony of the other – of the utterly other who is inaccessible its absolute source,”
and, as such, acts of faith exceed all proof of knowledge.46 Like Kelvin’s desire for
Hari, Walzer’s desire for a universal, minimal, moral code, means more to his theory
than any ontological proof. However, for Walzer’s ontological argument, which
posits a definitive code of real world morality, to remain consistent, he must
necessarily conceal this mystical structure through the construction of a mythical
foundation. As Nancy argues, the ideal of the foundational myth signifies western
metaphysic’s desire to appropriate its own origin and pronounce its own by birth, by
subtracting the mystical secret from this origin.47 Walzer travels to Solaris to build his
home and then conceals this fact by claiming to live in the real world. He weaves an
onto-theological narrative that installs the language of just war as a universalised
dogmatic moral code and grounds this code on a discourse of rights. And yet, this
discourse cannot appear in the minimal dialect that Walzer’s theory requires, and is,
as such, a groundless foundation. Walzer recounts the myth that minimal language
and the language of rights are interchangeable, nonetheless, we never see or hear the
minimal language, which, in truth, exists nowhere. Minimal morality can only be
articulated through maximalist languages of rights. Therefore, for Walzer’s theory to
make sense, it requires theological, albeit secularised, faith in the existence, and
reactivation, of the inarticulate minimal language via the language of just war.
45
Jacques Derrida, The Gift of Death and Literature in Secret, trans. David Wills (Chicago: University
of Chicago Press, 2008), 108, original italics.
46
Jacques Derrida, Acts of Religion, Gil Andijar editor (London: Routledge, 2002a), 70 & 98.
47
Jean-Luc Nancy, The Inoperative Community, Peter Connor editor (Minneapolis: University of
Minnesota Press, 1991), 46.
14
And what of Walzer’s absolute values, life and liberty? How does he expound such
fundamental tenets of the just war creed? Walzer states that these values should be
treated as negative prohibitions, for example, the prohibition on murder.48 However,
these are the very prohibitions that are placed at risk during wartime; lives are placed
on the line and freedom comes into question. Indeed, Walzer argues that the
fundamental crime of war is that it forces men and women to risk their lives in
defence of their rights.49 Absolute values must be sacrificed in the name of their own
defence. Therefore, it is important that we now turn our attention to meaning of
sacrifice in Walzer’s theory. The type of sacrifice legitimised in the language of just
war and the implications of this for Walzer’s conception of morality.
Fear and Trembling Revisited
The biblical tale of The Binding of Isaac has become a quintessential parable of faith
and sacrifice, itself binding Christian, Jewish and Islamic theology, under the mantel
of Abrahamic Religions or religions of the Book. The narrative tells the story of
Abraham and his divinely ordained task to sacrifice his only son Isaac. After many
years of infertility, Abraham’s wife Sarah finally gave birth to a son Isaac. Isaac was
considered a double gift from God, as not only did his birth circumvent Sarah’s
infertility, God also told Abraham that Isaac held within him the future promise of his
people. The Binding tells how God spoke to Abraham and ordered him to sacrifice
Isaac on Mount Moriah, without offering any reason for this sacrifice. Abraham and
Isaac travelled together to the Mountain, and Abraham bound his son to an altar.
However, at the exact moment when Abraham, blade raised, was about to sacrifice
Isaac, an angel stayed his hand. The message is that Abraham’s faith in God had been
rewarded by the return of what he was willing to sacrifice, his son and the future
promise of his people.50
Kierkegaard’s reading of the parable transforms it into a play of faith and ethical
responsibility. For Kierkegaard, the interpretation of Abraham’s sacrifice is
conditioned by faith; “the ethical expression … is that he intended to murder Isaac;
48
Brian Orend, Walzer on War and Justice (Cardiff: University of Wales Press), 31.
Walzer, Just and Unjust Wars, 51-52.
50
Søren Kierkegaard, Fear and Trembling, trans. Sylvia Walsh, C. Stephen Evans and Sylvia Walsh
editors (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2006), 7-11.
49
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the religious expression is that he intended to sacrifice Isaac.” 51 Kierkegaard
describes faith as a prodigious paradox, “capable of making murder into a holy act
well pleasing to God.” 52 More monstrous still, this sacrifice can be imitated by
anyone who does not possess faith. The argument turns on the conception of a
relationship to the absolute, which Kierkegaard argues, can only be entered into by
sacrificing the ethical. Abraham can only hold his duty to God by sacrificing, his
familial duty, the future of his people, and his son whom he loved so dearly. The true
horror of the act is that the ethical is sacrificed in the name of a secret alliance with
the absolute; God’s reason is silent till the moment when Abraham has committed
himself to the sacrifice. This image is mirrored in Walzer’s theory by the concept of
faith in minimalism. Walzer’s belief that minimal values must be upheld makes war a
necessary sacrifice, however, because minimalism is silent and secret, war justified in
the name of minimalism can always be geared toward ulterior purposes. 53 Derrida
expands upon Kierkegaard’s reading with recourse to Levinas’ ethics of the Other,
and his contention that my responsibility to the other is absolute because he is a
mortal, singular and irreplaceable being.54 Derrida argues that what binds me to the
absolute singularity of the other propels me to the space or risk of absolute sacrifice:
As soon as I enter into a relation with the other, with the gaze, look, request, love,
command, or call of the other, I know I can only respond by sacrificing ethics, that is
to say by sacrificing whatever obliges me to respond, in the same way, in the same
instant, to all the others. I put to death, I betray and I lie, I don’t need to raise my
knife over my son on Mount Moriah for that.55
Derrida’s overarching argument is that Abraham’s tale teaches us that we cannot act
responsibly without also sacrificing ethics; “there is no longer any ethical generality
that doesn’t fall prey to the paradox of Abraham.”56 The moral, so to speak, of the
story is that morality itself is complicit in immorality, and that the two work
51
Ibid., 24.
Ibid., 46.
53
It is important here to note that Walzer is aware of such motives and argues that we should support
the good motives and protest the bad ones. However, since his conceptualisation of what constitutes
good motives is, as elaborated in the previous section, under dispute here, Walzer’s distinction between
good and bad motives, in a minimal sense, is itself problematic.
54
Derrida, The Gift of Death, 47.
55
Ibid., 69.
56
Ibid., 79.
52
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simultaneously in the same movement; even as I apply the ethical principal to a single
person in a single instance I have already sacrificed my duty to apply this principle to
every other person in the same instant. Importantly, for Derrida, this sacrifice can
never be justified; “I will never be able to justify the fact that I prefer to sacrifice any
one (any other) to the other.”57 Conversely, as we recall from the previous section,
Walzer believes that just war offers a moral doctrine that abolishes this notion of the
sacrifice of ethics; the rights of life and liberty justify war, and guarantee justice
within war. Although there are numerous moments, within Walzer’s theory, that call
this claim into question, for the purpose of this paper I will focus on one critical
instant, the combatant/noncombatant distinction and Walzer’s justification for the
killing of soldiers in warfare.
Life and Liberty During Wartime
Walzer presents us with the war convention, his codification of the rules of conduct
within war and asserts that “the war convention is written in absolutist terms: one
violates its provisions at one’s moral, as at one’s physical peril.”58 The Convention is
explicitly linked to the defence of rights, which Walzer assures us is a defining
feature of legitimate acts of war:
A legitimate act of war is one that does not violate the rights of people against whom
it is directed. It is once again, life and liberty that are at issue … I can sum up their
substance in terms I have used before: no one can be forced to fight or to risk his life,
no one can be threatened with war or warred against, unless through some act of his
own he has surrendered or lost his rights.59
The combatant/noncombatant distinction is subsequently introduced as the
foundational principle of the Convention:
“Soldiers are made to be killed,” as Napoleon once said; that is why war is hell. But
even if we take our standpoint in hell, we can still say that no one else is made to be
killed. This distinction is the basis of all the rules of war.60
57
Ibid., 71.
Walzer, Just and Unjust Wars, 47.
59
Ibid., 135, italics mine.
60
Ibid., 136.
58
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As we can see, the sacrifice of soldiers’ lives is pivotal to Walzer’s conception of the
rules of war, however, this sacrifice is deemed to occur outside the boundaries of
rights. As such, we must investigate how this sacrifice is justified, and what
combatants have done to lose their rights; in Walzer’s terms, we must “clarify the
meaning of its forfeiture.”61
Walzer offers two primary justifications for combatants’ loss of rights:
They gain war rights as combatants and potentially prisoners, but they can be
attacked and killed at will by their enemies. Simply by fighting, whatever their
private hopes, and intentions, they have lost their title to life and liberty, and they
have lost it even though, unlike aggressor states, they have committed no crime.62
He can be personally attacked only because he is already a fighter. He has been made
into a dangerous man, and though his options may have been few, it is nevertheless
accurate to say that he has allowed himself to be made into a dangerous man. For this
reason he finds himself endangered.63
Let us look at these two justifications in turn, paying particular attention to what
combatants have done to forfeit their rights. The first justification, that soldiers lose
their rights by fighting is instantly contradicted by Walzer’s contention that soldiers’
do not regain their rights by not fighting.64 Although Walzer is keen to stipulate that
soldiers are immune from attack if they surrender, the act of surrender transforms the
soldier into a prisoner of war, thereby, considerably limiting their right to liberty. As
such, Walzer’s underlying argument that a soldier must act in a certain way to lose
their rights is fundamentally compromised because combatants can be attacked even
if they choose not to fight, and, further to this, if a combatant surrenders, hence
relinquishing their status as active combatants, they still lose their absolute title to
liberty. The second justification, that the combatant has allowed himself to made into
61
Ibid., 138.
Ibid., 136.
63
Ibid., 145.
64
Ibid., 138.
62
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a dangerous man65, proves even more problematic. Ignoring the question of allowed,
which will subsequently be addressed in greater detail, we must first look at Walzer’s
conception of danger. Walzer’s argument hinges on the threat posed by the soldier,
the soldier is a fighter and is, therefore, to be treated as a menacing instrument of war;
a legitimate target of attack. However, Walzer fails to elaborate on what dangerous or
to be threatening means in regard to combatants. To understand the meaning of
danger, we must turn to Walzer theory of prevention and pre-emption, and his “nonarbitrary standards” of “what it means to be threatened.”66 Walzer introduces what he
describes as an objective standard of “just fear,” and expounds a clear definition of
threat:
“Threaten” means what the dictionary says it means: “to hold out or offer (some
injury) by way of threat, to declare one’s intention of inflicting injury.”67
This definition of threat is expanded upon by the argument that threat must be offered
in some “material sense,” and is concluded by the declaration that threat must focus
on the present; “the idea of being under threat focuses what we had best call simply
the present.”68 To recap, threat is when a material offering of injury is declared and
intended in the present. Although this conception of threat is described with reference
to states, Walzer contention that the rights of a state ultimately derive from the rights
of the individuals that inhabit it, allows us to posit that the protections afforded to
state’s rights must also be afforded to the source of these rights. Making this
proposition we would assume that a soldier can only be attacked if he is presently
offering a clear and intentional declaration to injure his adversary. However, not only
would such a principle rule out all but direct face-to-face combat, it is a principle that
Walzer adamantly rejects. Walzer describes, what he dubs, a “naked soldier;” a naked
man bathing in the river, no arms by his side, locked in enemy sights. 69 Although
Walzer stresses the moral dilemmas involved in killing these men, he concludes by
definitively asserting that the killing of the naked soldier is justified. As such, the
In keeping with Walzer’s original language, I too will refer to combatants solely in the masculine
form. However, I would like to note the gendered connotations of this language as a point of enquiry
for a possible future study.
66
Ibid., 78.
67
Ibid., 78.
68
Ibid., 81, original italics.
69
Ibid., 140.
65
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definition of threat applicable to combatants is detached from their present action. It
is based upon their past actions, that they became soldiers, and their assumed future
actions, that they will injure their adversaries in the future. As the assumption of
future injury belies Walzer’s depiction of a material offering of threat, and could
easily be applied to any noncombantant that the enemy assumes will join the future
war effort, we are left with a singular justification for a combatants’ loss of rights;
because they have allowed themselves to become soldiers.
The act of becoming a combatant takes us to the crux of the Abrahamic sacrifice
within Walzer justification for the killing of combatants. It is the point at which
Walzer’s desires to justify war, and to guarantee justice within war bump against
each other; when two absolute imperatives prove absolutely incompatible. As
previously stated Walzer’s justification for the loss of rights is dependent on an
individual’s actions, in this case the soldier allowing himself to be made into a
dangerous man. It is therefore surprising that he begins his discussion on war by
arguing that soldiers are forced to fight; “we assume that his commitment is to the
safety of his country, that he fights only when it is threatened, and that he has to fight
(he has been “put to it”): it is his duty and not a free choice.” 70 Walzer buttresses this
point by asserting that fighting is not free when it is a legal obligation or a patriotic
duty; “this is equally true whether the army is raised by conscription or voluntary
enlistment.”71 Walzer sums up the tyranny in stark terms:
Hence the peculiar horror of war: it is a social practise in which force is used by and
against men as loyal or constrained members of states and not as individuals who
chose their own enterprises and activities.72
Paying particular attention to Walzer’s choice of terms let us reflect upon the act of
citizens becoming soldiers. In Walzer’s theory, a soldier loses their rights through the
act of becoming a soldier, thereby becoming dangerous men. However, this act is in
Walzer’s view not a free choice. It is not an activity of soldiers’ own choosing,
therefore, its integrity as an act justifying the loss of a combatant’s rights is
70
Ibid., 27.
Ibid., 28.
72
Ibid., 30, italics mine.
71
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compromised. For if we recall Walzer’s two absolute rights, life and liberty, surely
the forced enlistment of soldiers, whether by moral obligation or legal duty,
constitutes a breach of the latter right. Walzer’s justification for the killing of
combatants hinges upon a prior violation of their right to liberty, for which no
justification is given. Prior to enlistment, combatants are noncombatants, innocent
and immune from attack, it is only when they are forced to become dangerous men
that they are transformed into legitimate targets. Their loss of rights is not a result of
their actions, it is a result of the actions of their state and its adversary. Given these
contradictions, why then does Walzer insist that soldiers are forced to fight? The
answer lies in Walzer’s concept of the moral equality of soldiers. His argument that
war is not the crime of individual soldiers, it is the crime of states, and, therefore,
soldiers face each as equals on the battlefield, both sides justified in kill in selfdefence.73 Walzer argues that if soldiers freely went to war, they would be morally
responsible for that war. Without this concept Walzer’s theory would become very
different, there would be no separation of the justice of war (jus ad bellum) and
justice within war (jus in bello), and only those soldiers engaged in an unjust war
could be considered legitimate targets. As Walzer does not expound, nor desire to
expound, such a theory (which would no doubt raise its own problematic ethical
questions), we are left with an insurmountable ethical paradox. War is necessary to
defend life and liberty, but this defence can only be mounted through the sacrifice of
combatants’ right to life and liberty. Walzer’s theory is unable to justify this sacrifice,
on its own terms, and, as such, the sacrifice of soldiers’ rights also constitutes the
sacrifice of just war theory’s own absolute ethical principles.
Sacrifice as Se Donner la Mort
Derrida describes Se Donner la Mort [The Gift of Death] as the marriage of faith and
responsibility. Expanding upon Heideggerean themes of death and being, Derrida
contends that because no one can die in my place, although they can die for me, death
constitutes the locus of singularity; death must be assumed by every being for
themselves. 74 Se donner la mort then is the possibility of dying for the other, “it
institutes responsibility as giving oneself death, putting oneself to death or offering
73
74
Ibid., 127-128.
Derrida, The Gift of Death, 42-43.
21
one’s death, that is to say one’s life, in the ethical dimension of sacrifice.”75 The gift
describes the economy of sacrifice initiated by Walzer’s language of rights and the
war convention that it founds; soldiers are asked to offer their lives as a gift to
noncombatants. However, Derrida is quick to remind us that se donner la mort is also
to interpret death, to give oneself a representation of it, a figure, a signification or
destination; to endow a meaning to death.76 Walzer’s desire is to construct the death
of combatants as a noble sacrifice; their lives are given in the service of absolute
rights to save the lives of innocent civilians. Yet, as elaborated in the previous section,
the notion of this death as given or offered by combatants is fundamentally
questioned. Derrida argues that the gift can only remain a gift when dying remains the
property of individual. Conversely the war convention offers soldiers’ lives as a
sacrifice to the state and the minimal rights it claims to protect, thereby aiming to
usurp the combatant’s irreplaceable gift. Walzer thrusts the state into the role of
Abraham, commanded by a secret absolute he offers his sons’ lives in the name of
unnameable minimal rights. The combatant, as Isaac, represents the future of the state,
as Walzer assures us that if nobody comes forward to defend the state, we must doubt
the existence of the state, and the state loses its right to sovereignty and territorial
integrity.77 Without the combatant Isaac, the Abrahamic state has no future, therefore,
the sacrifice is even more monstrous; the state risks its own existence, in its own
defence. In Walzer’s theory, our metaphorical Abraham takes Isaac to Mount Moriah,
and binds him to the role of combatant, guided by the unpronounceable name and
secret voice of minimal rights. The blade is held over Isaac’s head when the state
declares war, and yet, no angel can come to stay the blade and no dive profession can
justify the sacrifice. The absolute, as minimal rights, will unavoidably be sacrificed in
their own defence.
To conclude let us pause to look at the opposite side of the spectrum, at Walzer’s
discussion on terrorism, the military method of contemporary holy war. Walzer
clearly outlines what he believes to be the crucial distinction between just war and
terrorism; it is “the moral difference … between aiming at particular people because
of what they have done or are doing, and aiming at whole groups of people,
75
Ibid., 48, original italics.
Ibid., 12.
77
Michael Walzer, ‘The Moral Standing of States: A Response to Four Critics’, Philosophy and Public
Affairs, 9, no. 3 (1980), 213.
76
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indiscriminately, because of who they are.”78 Once again the argument hinges upon
the distinction between innocent civilians and morally culpable combatants who are
legitimate objects of attack. Indeed, for Walzer, the only way to oppose terrorism is
“the refusal to make ordinary people into targets, whatever their nationality or even
their politics.”79 However, in Walzer’s justification for the killing of combatants it is
precisely who that combatant is that transforms him into a legitimate target; it is
because he is young, patriotic, and fundamentally because he is a member of a
particular state. Ultimately the combatant has been forced to fight because of who he
is. It is because of this that he is, in Walzer’s terms, forced into a role that permits his
morally justified death. Therefore, Walzer justifies the sacrifice of combatants
because of who they are, not any freely taken action, and this constitutes nothing less
than a terrorism against combatants. While just war’s terrorism against combatants is
reified as noble sacrifice and an essential atom of minimal justice, the terrorism of
contemporary holy war is vilified as an act viler than rape or murder.80 The sacrifice
of the suicide bomber, whose divinely acquired interpretation of justice legitimises, in
his eyes, the targeting of noncombatants, is admonished by Walzer as brutal and
barbaric murder. This is not to say that either sacrifice is legitimate, or that we cannot
make judgments about their relative moral abhorrence; it is simply to challenge the
absolute moral justification of both. As Derrida argues:
For in the discourses that dominated during such wars, it was rigorously impossible,
on one side and the other, to discern the religious from the moral, the judicial from
the political. The warring factions were all irreconcilable fellow worshipers of the
religions of the Book. Does that not make things converge once again in the fight
to the death previously referred to, which continues to rage on Mount Moriah over
possession of the secret of the sacrifice by an Abraham who never said anything?
Do they not fight in order to appropriate the secret as the sign of their covenant
with God, and impose its order on the other, who becomes for his part nothing
more than a murder?81
78
Walzer, Just and Unjust Wars, 200.
Walzer, Arguing About War, 61.
80
Ibid., 51.
81
Derrida, The Gift of Death, 86-87.
79
23
The contemporary just war and holy war both meet on Mount Moriah in a battle that
seeks to take possession over meanings of justice and sacrifice. Both appear as
Abrahams offering Isaacs in the name of a secret alliance with the absolute, divine
Allah and minimal rights. These sacrifices are made under the absolute authority of
what is absolutely incapable of appearing, of speaking, and of adjudicating over the
justness of the sacrifice; they are made in absolute faith in an absolute language. This
absolute faith can never be definitively confirmed, it can only be revoked, through
scripture or convention, in a fallen mortal, in Walzer’s sense maximal, language. Is it
possible to justify either sacrifice? I tremble at the very thought.
24