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

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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/pre-

modern 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 stability1, 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,

1 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

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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

that the moral vocabulary required by Walzer can only be founded by faith in a 4 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.

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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

this testimony seriously, Kelvin rejects it declaring himself to be a man of science

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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

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 6 Andrei Tarkovsky, Solaris (London: Artificial Eye, 1972).7 Emmanuel Levinas, Totality and Infinity: An Essay on Exteriority, trans. Alphonso Lingis (Pittsburgh: Duquesne University Press, 1999), 33.

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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

account of the actually existing morality.”13 Mirroring the study of Solaris in our

8 Emmanuel Levinas, Otherwise than Being: Or Beyond Essence, trans. Alphonso Lingis (Pittsburgh: Duquesne University Press, 1999), 7-11.9 Derrida, Of Grammatology, 1310 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., 11-12.13 Michael Walzer, Interpretation and Social Criticism (Cambridge MA, Harvard University Press, 1987a), 21.

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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

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

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.

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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

analysis of Rousseau’s Essay on the Origin of Languages23, in which Derrida argues

17 Walzer, Thick and Thin, 1.18 Ibid., 4.19 Walzer, Just and Unjust Wars, 54.20 Walzer, Thick and Thin, 9.21 Levinas, Otherwise than Being, 5.22 Ibid., 6-7.23 A similarity that is particularly interesting when considering Walzer’s declared affinity with Rousseau’s writings.

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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

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

24 Derrida, Of Grammatology, 195-196.25 Ibid., 202.26 Walzer, Interpretation and Social Criticism, 4.27 Ibid., 12.28 Ibid., 19-21.

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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

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 29 Walzer, Spheres of Justice, 304.30 Walzer, Interpretation and Social Criticism, 47.31 Walzer, Thick and Thin, 12-13.

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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

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

32 Jacques Derrida, Dissemination, trans. Barbara Johnson (London: The Athlone Press, 1981), ix.33 Derrida, Of Grammatology, 159.34 Ibid., 247.35 Derrida, Dissemination, 93.36 Derrida, Of Grammatology, 154.

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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

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

37 Ibid., 249.38 Walzer, Just and Unjust Wars, 90.39 Michael Walzer, ‘Notes on Self-Criticism’, Social Research, 54, no.1 (1987b): 33-43.40 Walzer, Thick and Thin, 85 &96.

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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:

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

41 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), 107.45 Jacques Derrida, The Gift of Death and Literature in Secret, trans. David Wills (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2008), 108, original italics.

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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.

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

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), 46.48 Brian Orend, Walzer on War and Justice (Cardiff: University of Wales Press), 31.

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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;

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

49 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), 7-11.51 Ibid., 24.52 Ibid., 46.

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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

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,

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., 79.57 Ibid., 71.

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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

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

58 Walzer, Just and Unjust Wars, 47.59 Ibid., 135, italics mine.60 Ibid., 136.61 Ibid., 138.

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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

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 “non-

62 Ibid., 136.63 Ibid., 145.64 Ibid., 138.65 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.

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arbitrary 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

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.

66 Ibid., 78.67 Ibid., 78.68 Ibid., 81, original italics.69 Ibid., 140.

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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

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

70 Ibid., 27.71 Ibid., 28.72 Ibid., 30, italics mine.

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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 self-

defence.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

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

73 Ibid., 127-128.74 Derrida, The Gift of Death, 42-43.75 Ibid., 48, original italics.76 Ibid., 12.

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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,

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

77 Michael Walzer, ‘The Moral Standing of States: A Response to Four Critics’, Philosophy and Public Affairs, 9, no. 3 (1980), 213.78 Walzer, Just and Unjust Wars, 200.79 Walzer, Arguing About War, 61.

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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

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.

80 Ibid., 51.81 Derrida, The Gift of Death, 86-87.

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