Have you ever noticed treachery and contradiction in the Aristotelian claim that continues to echo even today globally? “War must be for the sake of peace;” “military affairs … for the sake of peace;” “peace is the end of war;” “make war that we may live in peace” (Politics, Nicomachean ethics). It is intelligible that, war is not the end, and falls well within the philosophical framework – teleological cause, peace is the end. Well, but have you ever wondered or asked a question to yourself: ‘What! you make war for peace?’ Is not similar to saying, ‘we are quarrelling with each other, and at last one surrenders to the other, so there is peace at the end? Or ‘we the husband and wife engage in a verbal warfare in front of the children, so that at the end of the day one is defeated, and the other wins, and the peace is reinstated. If you are able to make a joke out of it, and come to the self-understanding that we are duped by a false peace, then shouldn’t we think of peace before war? Does not daily life show us that peace is prior to war? Is it not true that we make peace so that we will not have war? Or in a deeper sense or better mystical and metaphysical, we simply love and thereby, without the conditioning of a cause-effect relationship, we have a peaceful life. Then peace must precede war, love is aboriginal and there is no need for a causal relationship between war and peace. In today’s world, are we not cognitively conditioned, rationally intrigued, and morally duped to think that we are at war to have peace? – an everlasting war leaving us with an unquenchable thirst for peace, having little time to letting ourselves to be overwhelmed by the soul-soothing breeze of love.
The need for cognitive
reconditioning
War-peace
binary is coupled with the very act of cognition. Levinas, the Jewish-French
philosopher wrote: “The art of foreseeing war and of winning it by every means
… is enjoined as the very exercise of reason” (Totality and infinity).
How is it connected to cognition? Cognition, from the classical era to the present
day, is conceptualised as the individual’s act of acquiring knowledge. Broadly
defined, the outside objects are made part of the thinking subject through an
act of mental processing and consequently, they are stripped off their
materiality and sentience and are registered as representations, abstractly. Is
not violence involved in this way of individualistic egoistic cognition?
Levinas sees annihilation and the murder of otherness. Articulating differently,
sentient nature and the incomprehensibility of the other are pre-emptively
bracketed. Consequently, the self projects itself as the sovereign entity and
claims that its cognition is definitive and trustworthy, as it was claimed by
Descartes, cogito ergo sum – “I think therefore I am”. Even in Socrates’
dialogical model of knowledge acquisition, the monocratic cognition was
followed. “Socrates is wise, because he knows that he knows nothing”. He indeed
knows nothing; therefore, he ventures to know the other and comprehend him/her.
The tragedy is, the incomprehensibility and the immeasurability of the other is
not respected and valued, but the exercise of the sovereignty of the self is exhibited.
Rather than allowing the cognition to be affected and interrupted, and thereby
allowing the other to reveal herself/himself, egoistic intellectual violence is
unleashed and subsequently ‘war’ becomes normality and cognitively feasible. On
the contrary, existentially speaking, friendships, marital relationships and child-friendly
family atmospheres thrive, because, the autocratic cognitive effort is
overpowered by the immensurable presence of the other, like a smile of an
innocent child, hug from the life-partner, a lovely pat on the back from the
friend, etc. Therefore, the solipsistic cognition must shed off its autocracy
to welcome the other, and allow the other to reveal itself, so that the act of
cognition becomes justifiable. The act of cognition, affected by the other
would lead to peaceful negotiation, prior to war.
Clearing off the rational
intrigues
Kant
famously stated, “Act in such a way that you treat humanity, whether in your
own person or in the person of another, always at the same time as an end and
never simply as a means” (Groundings for the metaphysics of morals). This
has resonance in the human rights claims as well. The seminal moment of
evolution of human rights tradition that began with the issue of the Magna
Carta Libertatum in 1215 by King John of England, culminated in UN’s
Universal Declaration of Human Rights (UDHR) in Paris in 1948 and it solemnly
declared: “Everyone has the right to life, liberty and security of person”.
Levinas decries this claim as illusionary. Kant based his arguments on pure
reason. To have universal applicability for the formula of end in itself,
he removed all ‘impure’ sensible and ‘different’ elements. Human history has
ample evidence to show how the ‘impure’ different others are treated – rather eliminated.
Kant attempted to bring the relationship between the self and the other on the
platform of reciprocity. Self-defence, self-preservation and compliance with
the universal norms become the guiding principle and the other and her/his
claims become secondary. Therefore, the formula of end-in-itself turns into an
illusion and thus, the differently other can be sacrificed for the universals,
or in proportio, the interests of the same can take the priority over
the other. The children’s cry from Gaza, Ukraine or the devoured lives in the
Mediterranean Sea can become secondary, and the primacy of ego, its inviolable
rights coupled with political supremacy and power, can become ultimatum. In
this vein, there is the need to clear off the rational intrigues that glorify
war for the sake of peace.
Escaping the moral duping
Levinas
wrote: “Everyone will readily agree that it is of the highest importance to
know whether we are not duped by morality” (Totality and infinity). It is
quite known that, moral principles are the derivatives of a conceptual
framework, that would uphold the dignity and rights of persons or other
creatures. There is an archaic knowledge that lies behind the moral principle, shedding
light on the persons so that the self can categorise others. This vision helps
the self to judge others, treat them fairly or unfairly. But Levinas,
preferring the term ethical responsibility prior to moral principle, voices for
the ‘anarchic’ transcendence of the other beyond any conceptualisation and
premeditation. Elucidating this ethical openness to the other in terms of ‘face
of the other’, he names the face as ‘naked’ having no
cultural, ethnic and other similar crowning. The primacy that each person is confronted
in the epiphany of the other calls responsibility for the life of the other
prior to moral dictation. Therefore, it is necessary to escape from the moral
duping and become ethically responsible.
It is time to reverse the autocratic cognitive act, clear off rational intrigues that champion egoism, and escape the archaic moral dictation that cleverly emboldens the self to wage war. The need is to let the other express herself/himself, prioritise the other and letting oneself to be overwhelmed by the ethical claims of the other. Peace is a life-engaging natural soul-soothing experience, rather than a product of sovereign, egoistic, self-defensive battle to dominate.
by
Appu Santhosh Kumar
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