In the end only the urge for self-preservation can conquer.... Mankind has grown great in eternal struggle, and only in eternal peace does it perish." Adolf Hitler
Albert Camus, philosophy student and novel writer, worked with the French Resistance during the war. We are therefore not surprised by his keen interest in violence, in suicide, murder, rebellion, revolution, war, or by his struggle to answer the question, When, if ever, is violence justified?
Camus was an atheist who believed God is deaf to our pleas simply because no personal god exists to hear them. Neither is Nature or the world a person: the natural world is surd or deaf to man; the world does not care one way or another for humankind, wherefore the relationship between man and world is absurd. But that is not to say that life is meaningless or that the world is not worth living in. Man is on his own and must decide what to do with his life. Man is a moral creature. Camus was a moralist who found the natural world pleasing in many respects; for example, he liked to play soccer on a sunny day. He was educated by Catholics hence he was unavoidably influenced by traditional Christian morality; that is, he was a Christian atheist.
Limited violence, Camus thought, is justified under certain conditions. People have a natural right to unite and in their solidarity to defend themselves against violence and organized terrorism. For instance, Jews enjoying a game of soccer on a sunny day would be justified in defending themselves against a violent assault by a gang of anti-Semitic thugs or anyone else for that matter. On a much larger scale, fighting the monomaniacal plague of totalitarianism best represented by Hitler was justified. Most of us would agree that World War II was a just war for all of those who fought the Nazi and fascist aggressors.
Although Christ said something about turning the other cheek, a study of Christian literature informs us that "just" wars are traditionally defined as defensive wars, not one-sided conquests. That groups have a natural right to self-defense and that such a right originates in the individual's right to live is a nondenominational, plain and simple, commonsensical truth. But it is not as simple as it seems. For one thing, the question of who strikes the first blow might not matter: pre-emptive strikes on mere suspicion are allowed although not necessarily condoned. The natural right of the individual is its dog-eat-dog right to survive. The exercise of that right might under some conditions include killing others for food or other means of subsistence; if others have no food, they might be slaughtered and eaten.
Few of us, however, live in a primitive state of nature; we have so organized our families, clans, nations and states to resolve internal conflicts; yet those conflicts are never fully resolved, and the nations themselves struggle in an international jungle pending the institution of a global state or "one world order."
"Nature has not reserved this soil for the future possession of any particular nation or race; on the contrary, this soil exists for the people which possess the force to take it.... (If present holders object), then the law of self preservation goes into effect, and what is refused to amicable methods, it is up to the fist to take." Adolf Hitler
If a particular government fails to provide needy people who are not able to find work by regular means, for those who are not able to obtain security or food and shelter if not a job, they have a natural right, instead of defending that government, to repudiate it and resort to crime, which is a revolt against the state, and even to organize the violent overthrow of the government in order to survive. After all, a man who has a duty to work and no attendant right to work or to subsist, has a right to starve, or to rob and to kill if he must do so to survive.
On the government's side of the equation we discover no absolute, theoretical limit to the sovereignty of a state organized by the people for their own "welfare," other than the ability of dissenters to defend themselves against what they perceive as undue encroachment on their natural rights. The government responsible may take all actions deemed necessary to secure the welfare of the governed howsoever that welfare might be defined by the duly constituted authorities. At the very least people should not want for security, for work, food and shelter, no matter what the form of government might be, providing that they do their duty and are obedient to the point of picking up arms to defend the state - the defense might include conquest for resources or pre-emptive strikes against plotting "enemies of our kind of freedom." Those who refuse work or who revolt might be imprisoned in concentration camps or otherwise disposed of. Ultimately, as Kant duly noted, "The ruler has only rights against the subject, no duties." Hegel, who identified the state with a world spirit or ruler of the moral universe, insisted that the state "has the supreme right against individuals whose supreme duty is to be a member of the state.... for the right of the world spirit is above all special privileges."
When, if ever, is violence justified? Germans who traded their right to starve under a democratic republic for jobs subserving Hitler believed organized terrorism and mass violence was justified by the conditions as they perceived them. Of course people who abhor violence find no easy answer, especially if they have the leisure to write about the subject. Shelves and shelves of books have not adequately answered the pressing question. Albert Camus, who abhorred the world-state violence of Hitler and fought against it, found time to ponder the subject at great length.
As for highly organized terrorism - wars - a few scholars have claimed that there is no good reason for war, that war is irrational - war just is. Indeed, there is something irrational about violence. It is lop-sided, it hates or ignores the other side, it struggles for a one-sided victory, for the death of the ratio. Of course there is always a better way to do things, to achieve ends mutually, if only the parties would reach a reasonable agreement. Murdering a member of one's own race is a partial self-murder or suicide. However logical the arguments for peace might be, maybe we cannot become a peaceful race because peace is not something that can be willed because it is not our nature to be peaceful, because peace would require an impossible extirpation of a native "will to absolute power." Maybe human beings are natural born killers. If we are that, then human beings have sufficient reason to be paranoid to make pre-emptive strikes here and there no matter how good the intelligence might be - of course some enemies will be punished for one of the crimes they did not commit, but still they have it coming.
Alas for the pacifists, then, for members of the wise species have such a natural urge to violence and an attendant fear of its consequences that they persistently organize terror and kill people merely suspected of wanting to kill them first. Mobsters kill their fellows simply because they suspect them of being traitors, of talking or stealing or plotting to kill them, and they resort to killing the innocent wives and children of their enemies to terrorize their enemies into submission; states legally use the same tactics. And to excuse themselves, the leaders might say that that they are only defending themselves and their kind, and that a life not worth killing for is not worth living. The extremists opposed claim that a life that must be killed for is not worth living. Some pacifists, we recall, said that even Hitler should have been capitulated to, even if that meant a trip to the showers and the ovens.
When, then, if ever, is violence justified? Should we heed Nietzsche's Zarathustra? "Ye shall love peace as a means to new war, and the short peace more than the long." Should we believe Treitschke? "War is not only a practical necessity, it is also a theoretical necessity, an existence of logic. The concept of the State implies the concept of War.... That war should ever be banished from the world is a hope not only absurd, but profoundly immoral."
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