My Guest Blogger Fred Dallmayr: A GLOBAL STATE OF NATURE?

Prof. Fred Dallmayr.-Photo: Innsbruck University

Prof. Fred Dallmayr, Emeritus Packey J. Dee Professor of Philosophy, University of Notre Dame, USA; GCGI Board of Advisers, and Co-Chairman, World Public Forum Dialogue of Civilizations

KAMRAN MOFID’s GUEST BLOG: Here on The Guest Blog you’ll find commentary, analysis, insight and at times provocation from some of the world’s influential and spiritual thought leaders as they weigh in on critical questions about the state of the world, the emerging societal issues, the dominant economic logic, globalisation, money, markets, sustainability, environment, media, the youth, the purpose of business and economic life, the crucial role of leadership, and the challenges facing economic, business and management education, and much more.

A GLOBAL STATE OF NATURE?

PLEADING FOR A RENEWED COVENANT

'Our time illustrates a state of increasing brutalization.'- Tzvetan Todorov        

These days, whenever one reads a paper or watches the news on television, one is faced with an avalanche of atrocities and mayhems.  For example, on January 27, 2015, these were the main news items:  U.S. drone kills 12 years-old Yemeni boy; Shiite militias accused of executing 70 unarmed civilians; eight die in attack on Libyan hotel; nine Ukrainian soldiers die; thousands protest in Mexico over disappearance of students.  These are just the headlines on one day.  Other, equally grim stories were reported on the previous days.  And we know:  the flow of horror stories will not stop during the following days.  So, what is happening in our world?  Is world history really the relentless slaughter bench—as Hegel once surmised?        

This verdict does not concur with mere hopeful scenarios depicted by some students of international politics.  According to the latter, the world today is at the cusp of a momentous “paradigm shift”:  from inter-state relations to a genuine “global politics.”  Whereas traditional inter-state politics—inaugurated by the Peace of Westphalia—was marked by the constant rivalries among sovereign states, the new paradigm of global politics would usher in a more peaceful era released from the war-mongering ambitions of the past.  While Hegel’s verdict may have applied to the state-centered Westphalian system, it would no longer hold true for the emerging global scenario.  But how plausible is this assumption?  The expectation clearly is predicated on two factors:  first, the retreat of powerful state actors; and secondly, the upsurge of a viable global civil society.  As it happens, neither of these factors is presently in place.         

Regarding the role of state, it is true that many of the older nation-states have been reduced to the role of satellites or (quasi-colonial) client states.  Their military capabilities are restricted to performance in so-called “proxy wars.”  However, the shrinking of older states to subsidiary status does not eliminate the role of state sovereignty.  On the contrary, what has happened is the rise of super-states, of hegemonic super-Leviathans endowed with sheer limitless war-making capacities.  To this extent, Westphalia has given rise to a new super-Westphalian order.  The so-called “clash of civilizations” is to a large extent a clash of super-Leviathans clustering around themselves an aura or penumbra of client civilizations.          

What is still more disturbing is the fact that the practically unlimited war-powers of super-Leviathans is accompanied by the absence or decay of civil society, especially of what is sometimes called “global civil society.”  This decay is due to the erosion of ethical civic bonds and the growing “atomization” of society—an atomization which has been spearheaded by Western countries but is now being globalized around the world.  What is happening as a result is not the upsurge of a robust global civil society—functioning as a possible antidote to super-Leviathans—but the decay of social life into a Hobbesian “state of nature”—now a globalized state of nature.  According to Thomas Hobbes, the state of nature was (and is) characterized by the lack of binding ethical rules and the claim by every member to an unlimited right to do as he/she pleases for the sake of security.  Hobbes called this right or freedom the “right to everything” (ius ad omnia), the right to do anything perceived as required for security, including the unlimited right to kill opponents.  The exercise of this absolute right by everybody inevitably leads to an absolute condition of terror or fear of death, a condition which renders life “nasty, brutish, and short.”  It is this condition of universal terror which increasingly is gripping both domestic and global civil society.        

On the global level, this condition of terror is illustrated by the pretense of a global right to kill anybody anywhere—and this quite outside the bounds of traditional warfare.  This pretended right to kill is evident in the use of drones anywhere in the world, resulting often in mayhem among civilians.  It is also evident in the use of para-military mercenary forces in many parts of the world, forces which—though wielding lethal power—are not accountable to any legal authority.[ii]  This war obviously has its heroes; in a new Hollywood movie, the new super-hero of Western civilization is called “American Sniper.”         

The prevalence of a global state of nature is demonstrated not only by military or para-military operations, but also by violent or harmful conduct stopping just short of physical killing.  The demeaning and slandering of opponents in the global arena testifies to a total lack of global civility and elementary standards of conduct.  Too often, “freedom of expression” is used not to criticize the powers that be but to abuse the powerless and the stranger.  Basically, anybody who claims an “absolute” right or freedom outside any social bonds thereby commits an act of violence (what Gandhi called himsa).  Any assertion of a Hobbesian “ius ad omnia” inevitably constitutes the mainspring and basic source of terror and fear.  But for Hobbes there was also a possible exit from terror—namely, through a social covenant where people relinquish absolute freedom in favor of relational civility.  As Henry Giroux rightly observes:  “As the bonds of sociality and social obligations dissolve,” the state of nature lurks.  “Older discourses that provided a vision” have been cast aside; and “as Hannah Arendt once argued, the very nature of the political in the modern period has been dethroned” (or else been replaced by a brutal friend-enemy formula).[iv] 

In his conduct, Gandhi exemplified what it means to cultivate a social covenant through non-harming (ahimsa) and justice-seeking (satyagraha).  Inspired by his example, the World Public Forum-“Dialogue of Civilizations” is committed to the cultivation and steady renewal of the global social covenant.  In the face of the ongoing global mayhem, this commitment is an urgent and categorical demand.