THEORY VS. REALITY

The fading of a moral vision for the world (MARTHA NUSSBAUM, APRIL 28, 2003, LA Times)

[Hugo] Grotius was a great believer in choice and human freedom, and in the freedom of each state to make its own laws. For these beliefs, he was convicted of heresy and sent to prison in a gloomy castle. But he was permitted to receive books, which his wife would deliver and cart away in a large trunk.

One day, the outgoing trunk had an extra occupant: Grotius himself. He managed to get on a boat to France, where he spent the next five years in exile and wrote his great work, On The Law Of War And Peace.

The book has been hugely influential for many reasons: for its insistence that war is just only if it responds to a conspicuous and serious act of aggression; for its insistence that even then, the party in the wrong must be treated in accordance with strict moral laws; for its insistence that killing of innocent civilians is morally wrong, even though the formal international law of that time did permit it; for its insistence that a stable and moral peace should be the long-term goal of international relations.

But the work's greatest contribution lies in its conception of relations among states. For Grotius, each state has sovereignty: the right to give itself laws and control its destiny. This is not just a fact, but a moral norm that expresses something deep about human freedom, something for which Grotius was prepared to risk imprisonment and worse.

Second, however, the world contains interactions between nations, which are mediated not just by concerns for expediency and safety but by moral considerations. Moral laws bind all nations in their dealings with one another, whether these laws have been turned into enforceable international law or not.

Why should this be? Because, third, the world contains, most fundamentally, individual human beings, who are needy and trying to flourish. The moral duties to support human well-being bind us all into what Grotius calls 'international society'.

The norms of this society begin with the idea of humans as creatures who are both rational and social, and who need to find a way to live together. Certain ways of behaving support that conception (for example, abiding by treaties that one has made), and others do not (killing civilians in wartime).

According to Grotius, then, when international law limits America in some of its plans, Americans are not wrong to feel constrained. But Grotius would insist that the more fundamental identity we have is as members of a moral world of human beings.

National sovereignty also is limited internally by morality. If a nation commits certain very bad acts against its own population, such as torture and mass murder, another nation may intervene - what we now call 'humanitarian intervention' - to help the people. National sovereignty's importance derives from its value to people and their freedom; it cannot be invoked to justify genocide and torture.

Grotius was also a radical in his thought about material need. He saw that a lasting peace among nations requires thinking about how all citizens of the world can get the things they need to live.

He held that when any person anywhere is in extreme need, that person has a right to food and other necessities of life (he explicitly mentions medical care). He even says that the needy person owns the surplus that the rich are squandering, if he needs it and they don't.

Grotius' vision was not the way the world was seen in his own day. But by insisting on the power of this vision, he created a climate of opinion in which that vision increasingly became real. [...]

Grotius had seen a side of human conduct that he called 'bestial'. He argued that in such a world, it is all the more important to proclaim and abide by principles of which a decent society can be proud and to work tirelessly to produce a world in which such principles increasingly hold sway. He warned people in power that if they imitate wild beasts, they may forget to be human.

Grotius' own life also takes its stand against the course of despairing detachment, a great temptation in this time as in his own. He conspicuously does not say: 'These times are bestial, so we right-thinking people had better check out.'

Instead, living in exile, he created a norm of cooperation and moral order that continues to inspire, and to determine the course of some world events, even if not all.

Those who feel a deep moral sadness about the current conduct of the US, as its leadership shows contempt for this vision of a multilateral world, could do worse than to follow Grotius' example.

Moral norms do not cease to exist because current leaders do not believe in them. We may refine them and further develop them, in the hope that once again, sooner or later, their day will dawn.

Ms Nussbaum seems to have missed the entire point of Grotius' life: he didn't take a stand for behaving according to these norms even when those around you don't; he fled into exile. His example suggests that his ideas, though noble, can not be lived by. Posted by Orrin Judd at June 1, 2003 9:32 AM