Benjamin doesn’t mention Hobbes in his “Critique of Violence” and Gregory doesn’t mention Hobbes in his account of the “everywhere war”—but are the post-war and post-9/11 worlds they describe in some way even more Hobbesian than the world described in Leviathan? How is this borne out by a deeper into the role of Hobbesian thought in the history fascism and then its revival in the post-911 eras?
The student responses quoted below were informed by the following readings:
- Walter Benjamin, “The Critique of Violence” (1921)
- Derek Gregory, “The Everywhere War” (2011)
… Benjamin seems to parallel Rousseau and Kant in particular, since he, just like them, appears to recognize Hobbesian state of nature as real but continues to point out flaws in holding it to be the only model shaping political or philosophical decisions (as we see in “Critique of Violence,” Benjamin forfeits natural law and uses positive law to guide his establishment of a criteria for violence).
Benjamin differs Hobbes and other thinkers surrounding Hobbes, though, in this establishment of criteria. By making it clear that violence is criticized in whether it is justified in its use and not in whether it leads to just ends, that, as a result, some violence is permissible (or sanctioned, legitimate) and some violence is not (un-sanctioned, illegitimate), that whether violence is sanctioned or not depends on what the state sees as a threat to itself, and that sanctioned violence is often the basis of law, being both law-making and law-preserving (though the latter weakens the former)… We can see some of this symbiosis between the law-making violence and law-preserving violence in the borderlands outlined by Derek Gregory in “The everywhere war.” For instance, with his described borderland of “Amexica,” Gregory shows how America justified increased militarization of the US-Mexico border and US-backed violence in Mexico by arguing that insurgency and cartel violence in Mexico is a threat to national security and peace in the US.… I think these relationships that can be drawn using the ideas from both “Critique of Violence” and “The everywhere war” is a mark of true potential in terms of political and philosophical exploration of our history of international violence.
– Aryan Ashraf
I think there’s a tension between the “indivisible political unity” of the Leviathan-like state that Schmitt valorizes and the absolutely dispersed form of warfare that the US engages in. On the one hand, it seems that the US is only able to engage in this sort of discontinuous warfare because of its extreme unity… yet, on the other, this method of targeting enemies seemingly runs contrary to the foundations of international law.…
Recalling Tuck’s claim that Hobbes espoused the humanist conception of war repackaged into a rights framework, I think we do see the same preemptive self-defense logic at play in the US’s drone strikes. If international law developed from the claim that “potential must be overcome before they could develop,” then I can see a way in which the drone strikes fit in the broader landscape of int’l law: the US does call them individual instances of self-defense.
… It seems that Benjamin is trying to escape the cycle of law-making and law-preserving violence and does so through an appeal to divine violence. His essay, therefore, attempts to prove the possibility of such a divine violence… against the sphere of law hitherto that simply played out this dialectic historically (this is what I understand by the need to criticize the sphere of its application vis-a-vis its value). I’m shaky on the exact relation between mythic and law-making/preserving violence, but both are transcended (is this the right word? perhaps annulled or deposed would be better) by divine violence. From the brief excerpts from Schmitt, I think he represents the apogee of the tradition Tuck/the quotes describe, and he’ll probably want to try and ground divine violence within this tradition—I’m not sure how he’s going to do that, though.
– J. Doe
… Benjamin highlights, where the various forms of Hobbesian thought does not, the inherent violence in the resolution of conflict through legal contract. He writes that no contract to resolve conflict through the legal system may be nonviolent because there is inherent violence in the power of the legal institution (243-244). The inherent violence in power itself is evident here, as violence “alone can guarantee law” because it guarantees power (249). Benjamin provides the beginning of a view of law and justice without depending on the foundation of natural law, positive law, or otherwise Hobbesian thought to explain real world acts of violence, politics, and international relations. He portrays the only (or at least one of the only) methods of nonviolent resolution to be through language itself rather than the legal system, allowing for compromise without depending on the inherent violence of one’s government institution (245).
I found Gregory’s piece, “The Everywhere War,” quite revealing of the nature of 21st century warfare. Gregory argues that modern warfare, whether through shooting or through cyberspace, is full of “blurred boundaries” (239). He highlights the secrecy kept by nations like the United States in their violent involvement across the globe, making unclear the geographical borders of battlespace, who is accountable for violence, the temporal borders of battlespace, and “whether it is a war or not” (248). Such confusion and blurred lines surrounding war has made it easier for those not directly confronted with such violence to unconsciously justify it, and thereby unconsciously justify its law-making and law-preserving implications for the countries in which it occurs.
– Emily Lathers
The Everywhere War describes how the different types of conflict, whether physical or ideological, have begun spreading out in the modern world. The primary examples given were militarily with the advent of drone warfare and the ease of travel, and technologically with the advent of increased reliance on computing. While this article was written before the Russian involvement in the election, that proves the original point. I would also add that the war of ideology has spread and deepened in recent years especially politically, with the left/right divide only growing deeper and the electoral college system polarizing candidates.
The Critique of Violence is about the escalation of violence in the world and the justice system. It describes the escalation both in the private sector, with protests and police, and with foreign affairs such as the drug problem at the Mexico and US border.
– Kip Rodes
… Hobbes’s ethics are easily applicable to “The Everywhere War” through the Benjamin-esque lens of modern day fascism. It’s tough to deduce where Walter Benjamin finally rests his ethical standpoint on violence as a just means to an end (without considering his pieces’s historical context and its likely influence on his view of state-sponsored violence) but his qualification of ethical violence based on its need to either preserve or establish a power hierarchy reminds me of Hobbes, who condoned violence in an effort to preserve the sovereign state and escape the state of nature—as long as the ruler (and their cause) were just. However, “The Everywhere War” applies Benjamin’s concept of law-preserving violence to a case study alien to anything Benjamin or Hobbes could have imagined, and brings the ethical qualifications of state-sponsored violence to the stage of international relations. Can a state justly maintain its sovereignty over the citizens of other states? Can law-preserving violence be justified when the judicial process is so hackneyed that enemies of the state are sentenced to death without a trial, or even meeting their executioners? I find it difficult to imagine what Walter Benjamin would say to the Bush Administration—the ends of drone warfare may be considered just by some, but the means are getting increasingly alien to the parameters of just violence we can extrapolate from Hobbes and Benjamin. However, I believe that bringing Walter Benjamin’s distinction between power-rearing and power-preserving violence can help us delve into the ethical dilemmas that plague our increasingly globalized conflicts, in a way that Hobbes-inspired trains of thought cannot, by shining a new light on the distinctions between types of state-sponsored violence in a way Hobbes and his students fail to do.
– Walter Ben Rosin
Benjamins discussion on the police and their transcendence of the distinction between law making and law preserving was very reminiscent of the mechanisms behind the manifestations of power described by Gregory in “The Everywhere War”. In the same way the polices’ pervasive nature is supported by this lack of distinction, so is the militaristic power and US agency power exerted globally. Benjamin describes the laws needs to maintain a monopoly on violence because violence outside of the law is a threat. We might take the law here to be the hegemonic nature of the US government over the globe. This then goes in hand with the US role as law making in the world, establishing democracies and peaceful societies and legal systems. Each function cannot be explained without the other.
Many ideas in “Critique of Violence” felt very Hobbesian in origin or with him in mind but particularly the discussion of strikes. In Benjamins discussion on strikes he distinguishes between a political strike and the proletarian general strike. His description of their rights to strike and their relationships with violence feel very rooted in Hobbes’ contract theory. Benjamin pivots from Hobbes understanding of this relationship between the people and the state by removing violence from the general striker as “The first form of interruption of work (political strike) is violent, since it causes only an external modification of labor conditions, the second, as a pure means is nonviolent. For it takes place not in readiness to resume work following external concessions and this or that modification to working conditions, but in the determination to resume only a wholly transformed word, no longer enforced by the state, an upheaval that this kind of strike not much causes as consummates.” It feels Hobbesian in the sense that Hobbes clearly outlines instances where people have a right to overthrow their sovereign but it’s understanding of this as a pure means seems to leave Hobbes understanding of this act and its function.
– Kestrel Valdez
Walter Benjamin’s “Critque of Violence” establishes law-making as an act of power because it dictates the means by which violence can be justified and, as a result, legal.…Violence cannot exist for its own sake, only as a means to achieve a given end. Power, in this context, is dependent upon violence… Hobbesian power is built upon the exercise of controlled violence for the sake of greater peace with the assumption that war is universally undesirable. In “Critique of Violence,” power is assumed through the process of lawmaking rather than the process by which the authority to make laws is acquired… In other words, violence is not a means by which a person can gain power but means by which power is exercised. Thus, “lawmaking violence” and “law-preserving violence” in the post 9/11 world serves only to further the self interest of those who have the power to enact violence with little to no regard for those directly affected by the violence. The Everywhere War, for example, exists in the scope that it does because the United States, as a powerhouse of international military power, has decided to extend violence beyond its traditional borders
– Nina Zhuo