This week a review of my book "Love as Guide to Morals" was published in a philosophy journal. The reviewer said some very kind things abut the style, thoroughness, clarity, and accessibility of the book. But he did not like the argument. His conclusion was that love is not a sufficient basis for making moral decisions. In the face of oppression, he suggested, what is needed is hard talk and action. Such hard talk may well cause a further breakdown in relationships and may be unloving toward the oppressor. But in the end the tough action is necessary.
My reviewer's critique was not new to me. It is just a very different way of looking at life. I don't want to embrace a philosophy or practice that finds the "appeal on the basis of love" irrelevant to the important and often difficult issues of life.
But the critique is a serious one. This week the most pressing issue facing the world community is the apparent use of chemical weapons in Syria—killing 1,429 people including 426 children, according to US Secretary of State Kerry—and the response of the United States.
How does love respond to atrocities? How do you appeal to love when something very bad has taken place?
Love is a movement from the self toward the Other for the good of the Other. Love is, in other words, beneficent (it does good) and non-maleficient (it does not cause harm). The Other is all who are involved parties. The Other is the 1,429 who were killed, the unnumbered others who have also been killed in the war in Syria, their grieving families, the Assad government, the soldiers who pressed the buttons or fired the rockets, the liberal revolutionaries, the radical revolutionaries, the watching world, the natural environment that is decimated in every war.
An appeal to love is to seek the good and not to cause harm to the Other who is all of that and more beside.
The argument for a military response to the use of chemical weapons—"military response" is code for the killing, maiming and dismembering of human bodies and massive destruction of property—is that to do nothing in the face of such atrocities is: a) to open the door for further atrocities, and b) to appear weak and hence to invite aggression. On the other hand, to strike Syria will: a) demonstrate that using chemical weapons to kill others is unacceptable, b) send out a message to others who might be thinking about it, that they too will face bombing, and c) make those who do the bombing feel better about themselves because they have done something rather than nothing. Apparently, in the face of evil one has to do something, however ineffective.
In a nutshell bombing Syria will send a message to the world and prevent further uses of chemical weapons.
No doubt a message will be sent. But the way messages are received is not always in the way the messages are sent. How people receive a message is not in the gift of the message sender to know. Doubtless the message of bombing in response to a grievance will be taken in myriad differing ways. Can you bomb someone into submission? Is the unleashing of vast military strength the way to prevent further atrocities? September 11 must surely have taught us that a small disaffected band of fanatics can cause untold damage. Does bombing prevent that?
Such questions challenge the wisdom of military action even on its own terms. Bombing Syria is unlikely to accomplish what it is intended to do.
Yet, that is not what I want to say. I appeal on the basis of love. How to do good? How to do no harm?
A loving response is not the response of a moment. A commitment to love is a long term practice that requires a shift in the way we look at life. Even in the face of an atrocity love's appeal is to do good and to do no harm. A harm has taken place. Love refuses to escalate the situation by doing further harm. You kill some of mine. I'll kill some of yours. That will teach you a lesson. Probably as soon as you can regroup you'll kill some more of mine. And I'll teach you another lesson by killing some more of yours.
According to Michael Nagler, though violence something "works" it never works. I take him to mean that in the short term by using violence you might sometimes achieve a goal, but in the long term you fail. Violence ultimately doesn't work because it tells us all the wrong things about life, about conflict, about relationships, and about how to solve problems. To bomb Syria might look like a response to teach villains a lesson and prevent further villainy. It is more likely to teach that might makes right, that you solve problems not by working them out but by violence, that you can avenge deaths by further deaths.
Instead I appeal to love. In the aftermath of September 11, I gave a public lecture suggesting that the best response would be to accept the sympathy of the world, to do no further harm, and to work on ways of doing good in the world. What kind of world would we be looking at today if the USA had taken that route? Instead, bombing and war became the answer. My hope is that the same mistake does not happen again.
+Ab. Andy