Justice Among Nations in Platonic and Aristotelian Political Philosophy Thomas L. Pangle American Journal of Political Science, Vol. 42, No. 2. (Apr., 1998), pp. 377-397. Stable URL http: flinks.jstor-org/sici sici=0092-5893% 28 199804%2942%3A2%3C377%3ATANIPA% 3E2.0.CO% 3B2. American Journal of Potitical Science is eurrently published by Midwest Political Science Association, Your use of the ISTOR archive indicates your acceptance of JSTOR's Terms and Conditions of Use, available at hup:/www,jstororglabout/terms.hml. ISTOR’s Terms and Conditions of Use provides, in part, that unless you have obtained prior permission, you may not download an entire issue of a journal or multiple copies of articles, and you may use content in the JSTOR archive only for your personal, non-commercial use. Please contact the publisher regarding any further use of this work. Publisher contact information may be obtained at hutp:/wwwjstor.org/joumals/mpsa. html ch copy of any part of'a JSTOR transmission must contain the same copyright notice that appears on the sereen or printed page of such transmission, ISTOR is an independent not-for-profit organization dedicated to creating and preserving a digital archive of scholarly journals. For more information regarding JSTOR, please contact support @ jstor.org. hupulwww jstor.org/ Mon Mar 6 22:44:46 2006Justice Among Nations in Platonic and Aristotelian Political Philosophy" ‘Thomas L. Pangle, University of Toronto ‘A crucial but largely neglected dimension ofthe political thought of Plato and Aristotle is examined here. The aim is, frst, to clarify their theories of justice by considering how those theories deal with the moral challenges posed in the international arena; and, se ‘ond, to indieate the outlines of a Platonic Aristotelian normative framework for interna- ‘ional politics, that might offer a crucial supplement to more familiar contemporary lib- eral approaches. The analysis begins from an account ofthe primary implications for foreign policy of the Platonic and Aristotelian conception of heathy domestic republican life. The problems for justice implicit inthe character of republican civic virtue are then ‘explored. The philosophers’ uncovering of the precise limitations of civic virtue leads, it is argued, toa qualified cosmopolitanism asthe culmination of their politcal thought. ‘Two major considerations prompt us to a study of what Plato and Aristotle (and their greatest followers) have to teach regarding justice ‘among nations. First and foremost, such an inquiry is an essential require- ment of any adequate grasp of Platonic and Aristotelian political philosophy. For we are well aware that it is in international relations that the concern and ‘quest for justice meets some of its sternest challenges; itis therefore deeply revealing of any political theory to examine whether and how it comes to terms with those challenges. Secondly, we are in need—and today, amid the uncharted waters of the post-Cold War era, urgently in need—of an open- ‘minded consideration of alternative frameworks for conceiving and clarify- ing the moral character of international relations. Sophisticated contemporary thought about the status of morality in in- ternational relations remains largely defined, and in some measure stymied, T would suggest, by the standoff between two opposing perspectives: on the fone hand, the Kantian or Wilsonian liberal internationalism that rose up in reaction to the statist pragmatism of the tradition of international public law rooted in Hobbes and Locke and elaborated by Vattel; and, on the other hhand, the “realism” that came to prominence in the wake of the World Wars and in reaction to the Cold War—a “realism” that defined itself in explicit ‘contradiction to Wilsonian as well as other forms of “idealism.” The “real- ists” have compelled us to recognize the terrible potential for intensification ‘of war that is implicit in the idealist longing for “one world” expressing *T wish to thank the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada and the Con ‘naught Fund ofthe University of Toronto for supporting me diring the time when I worked on his ace, American Journal of Pottieal Science, Vol 82, No.2, Apil 1998, Pp. 377-397 © 1998 bythe Boatd of Regents ofthe University of Wisconsin Systm378 Thomas L. Pangle some sort of cosmopolitan moral vision—whether that vision be defined by religion or by secular ideology of left or right. But the “realists” have gone well beyond this intrinsically sober teaching. Inthe single-mindedness with which they have made their case, the “realists” have often tended, as Ray- ‘mond Aron observed (1967, 585-96), to make out of amoralism a new mor- alism, or at any rate a new and narrow dogmatism. Hans Mongenthau’s out- Took was by no means simply amoral; his writing is in fact infused with a powerful moralism:; but he sometimes went so far as to proclaim as his leit- motif the proposition that “a foreign policy founded upon moral principles rather than national interest issues, by its inner logic, into the tribalism of religious wars and nationalistic crusades” (1949, 212). Kenneth Waltz was only somewhat less extreme when he contended that “wars undertaken on a narrow calculation of state interest are almost certain to be less damaging than wars inspired by a supposedly selfless idealism” (1959, 113-4). The so- called “realists” have unrealistically failed to explain, to articulate, or to sat- isfy the deep and omnipresent human desire for justification and hence jus- tice—especially when armed conflict, with its demand for grim sacrifices and its call to horrendous infliction of damage, is at issue. It is no wonder then that recurrence to some version of recognizably Wilsonian inspiration has never ceased to mark, not only post-war Presidential leadership (with its rhetoric of defending “the Free World,” or “Human Rights”), but also intel- lectual debate, among neo- and paleo-conservatives as well as among liber- als closer in ideological spirit to Wilson himself (e.g., Moynihan 1974) Most recently, a cosmopolitan idealism with older roots has enjoyed a resur- gence in the 1995 Commission on Global Governance, and in scholarly dis- cussion of the emerging “global civil society” that is said to demand a new “spirit of global citizenship” (Falk 1993; cf. Nussbaum 1994). But, as the leading communitarian critic has cogently protested, even or precisely these newest versions of cosmopolitanism, while they bespeak and respond to @ legitimate universalistic dimension of our moral experience, obscure or ne- lect the most important sphere in which we can and must actualize our con- cer for justice—the civic republican sphere, where “identity” or solidarity is not so abstract, and where participation in self-government can be mean- ingful (Sandel 1996, 338-46).! While Sandel concedes that we must of course beware of the “sometimes murderous chauvinism into which ethnic and national identities can descend,” he insists that we need at the same time to reckon with the possibility that “the growing aspiration for the public ex- "andl protests in particular against Nussbaum’ (1994, 3 cal for a new civic edocaton in ‘which national identity would be regarded a “moray elvan,” and by which stents would be {aught that thir “primary allegiance is othe community of human beings i the entire wold” (my ities).