Cicero – “The Defense of Injustice”
Cicero exhibits great subtlety of mind in having Philus make the case for injustice. As perhaps history’s greatest rhetorician, Cicero understood how to motivate his audience in such a way that they did not realize they were being manipulated. This is the logic that underpins his decision to place an intrinsically unpopular argument in the hands of a master rhetorician and logician like Philus. Philus does not disappoint: he tells us that he will argue in the words of Cameades, a skeptical philosopher, a decision that serves to strengthen his argument while, at the same time, ensuring that the listener will be reminded of the value of justice. This is Cicero’s intent. It is a timeless (and timely) argument, one that resonates in the present, where the widening gap between rich and poor threatens to undermine the cherished phrase “justice for all.” In this sense, the implications of Philus’ argument are as universal today as they were in the Roman world of the first century B.C.
Justice has always been a concept, or notion, an ideal that societies strive to attain and maintain. As Philus points out, it is a quality established by those who govern, not a thing of nature endemic to all men. “Inconsistency, between laws, ought to be impermissible, since it is contrary to what nature demands” (Jacobus, 142). But since justice does not arise from a state of nature, it follows that it is a human creation inspired by fear, the fear of being penalized for
behaving unjustly. Philus puts it best when he argues that “weakness, not nature or good intention, is the mother of justice” (Jacobus, 150). Seen in that light, the poor and powerless are in greater need of justice because they require protection from those with the means of exerting their influence in a world where justice does not arise from the natural order. The relative attitudes of rich and poor, weak and strong toward justice reflect their respective positions in our own society and in the world in which Cicero and Philus lived. If human beings are not just by nature, then the weak are in a profoundly vulnerable position.
Conversely, the strong need justice in order to maintain the fabric of society, within which they thrive and which allows them to go about the business of maintaining their wealth and prestige. A breakdown of justice would lead to an arbitrary state of affairs in which the social conservatism upon which the wealthy thrive would be suborned. If a state of nature were to exist in which “might equals right,” then the interests of neither weak nor strong could be served. The nature of life is such that the strong prey on the weak; it is for this reason that justice is so important to the coherence of society and why the under-privileged must be protected. This phenomenon is everywhere in evidence. In recent years, the wealthy and powerful of Wall Street and the corporate world have, by virtue of their wealth and power, brought the U.S. and global economies to the brink of disaster. I agree that the desire for justice proceeds from a fear of vulnerability, a fear that has a basis in reality. Governments use their power to prey on their own citizens because they are strong and are willing to use their strength to perpetrate injustice without fear of retribution. It is the desire not only to mitigate the predatory inclinations of the powerful and protect the weak but to preserve social order that acts as the catalyst for justice and the desire for social order.
Thoreau – Civil Disobedience
On July 23, 1846, Henry David Thoreau walked into Concord, Mass., refused to pay his poll tax for reasons of conscience and ended up spending a night in jail. His experience, which was first chronicled in an essay entitled “Resistance to Civil Government,” explains Thoreau’s actions that day and named a form of public protest subsequently made famous by the likes of Mahatma Gandhi and Martin Luther King, Jr. Thoreau argued that while he considered that his government was within its right to tax its citizens, such a tax should only be applied to morally justifiable purposes. Given the prevalence of state-sanctioned slavery and the United States’ war of aggression against Mexico, Thoreau decided that as a citizen of a free Democracy it was his duty to refuse to comply with such activities by refusing to support the government with his taxes. As such, he makes a powerful statement about personal autonomy and the moral authority of the individual conscience.
Thoreau makes a philosophical argument that offers a compelling counterpoint to the credo “My country right or wrong.” In Civil Disobedience, Thoreau seeks to convince the reader that moral action has an uplifting effect on the individual. “Action from principle, the perception and the performance of rightdivides the individual, separating the diabolicalfrom the divine” (Jacobus, 183). The United States, he contends, is a nation founded upon the doctrine of universal equality as spelled out in the Constitution, the document that should serve as the country’s moral compass. Thoreau decried a government that would not live up to its own foundational ethos, which the U.S. government had clearly failed to do, Thoreau argued. The federal government failed in its duty to ensure civil rights for all of its citizens, and to protect the intrinsic right of everyone to live in freedom and dignity. In such a situation, the innate moral
conscience of the individual citizen must take precedence. Thoreau goes still farther in his argument when he says that since the government exists based on the consent of its citizenry, the government has no authority over “my person and property but what I concede to it” (Jacobus, 184). Since the United States had, through its actions, violated the sacred democratic compact that exists between it and its citizens, it had thus abrogated authority. In the 160 years since its publication, this message has continued to resonate with people around the world. Its arguments, which are grounded in the same basic philosophy that produced the U.S. Constitution and Bill of Rights, are as applicable today as they were in 1949, when Thoreau’s book was first published. The relationship between government and governed is an important but tenuous bond, one which is constantly stretched and tested. In the 20th century, the Vietnam War, the Watergate break-ins, Iran-Contra scandal and many other transgressions have been perpetrated by the U.S. government in the name of its people. As citizens of a Democracy, Thoreau argued that it is the bounden duty of a democratic citizenry to manifest its disapproval of morally bankrupt policy by taking what Thoreau called principled action. Thoreau writes that “injustice is part of the necessary friction ofgovernment” (184).
While Thoreau notes the remedy for such injustice is sometimes worse than the injustice itself, it is sometimes necessary for the individual to perpetrate an injustice in order to set things right (184). I agree that this is sometimes necessary to avert governmental abuse of power. The more complex and powerful a government becomes, the more important it is for the individual citizen to assert his rights of conscience and the inalienable right of personal autonomy, and take a principled stand against injustice.
King – “Letter from Birmingham Jail”
Martin Luther King, Jr.’s “Letter from Birmingham Jail” was intended for clergymen, whom King considered dilatory in what he considered their moral duty to support the civil rights movement. As Jacobus notes in his foreword, King was drawing on a biblical tradition of letters, such as those written by the Apostle Paul, which were aimed at convincing specific audiences to adhere to the teachings of Christianity (Jacobus, 210). And like Paul, King is systematic and patient in addressing the criticism and shortcomings of others; he uses rhetoric without resorting to polemics, in so doing addressing his audience from a position of moral authority rather than of blame, employing logic to unite rather than divide. Most importantly, King lays out the rationale for his actions in Birmingham and elsewhere in the South, actions that were designed to confront and provoke extreme reactions, thus bringing the issue of civil rights fully to the forefront, placing it so squarely in the public eye that ignoring the issue would be impossible.
King is similar to Thoreau in his contention that employing illegal means to achieve a moral end is justified in the defense of a greater moral good. Thus, King argues that “the moral means of nonviolence to maintain the immoral end of racial injustice” is fully defensible (Jacobus, 216). This argument stems from King’s answer to the charge that he did not give the new mayoral administration in Birmingham sufficient time to respond to his demands. King’s reply is that there is no difference between segregationists and that what motivates one must be used to elicit a response from another. “I have hoped that Mr. Boutwell (the new mayor) will be reasonable enough to see the futility of massive resistance to desegregation. But he will not see this without pressure from devotees of civil rights. My friends, I must say to you that we have not made a single gain in civil rights without determined legal and nonviolent pressure”
(Jacobus, 216). Like Thoreau, King makes use of irony to make a point about the moral ascendancy of his group’s nonviolent resistance to segregation. King assures the clergy that those who had fought and suffered on behalf of the civil rights movement were impatient with the notion of working within the system. To do so would be counter-productive in that “the system” was specifically set up to frustrate the aims of the movement. This is at the heart of King’s response to the clergy’s concern over his willingness to break the law, the civil rights movement’s modus operandi and a tactic that King argues is actually, in a convoluted way, within the parameters of the law. “Since we so diligently urge people to obey the Supreme Court’s decision of 1954 outlawing segregation in the public schools, at first glance it may seem rather paradoxical for us consciously to break laws” (217). And as Thoreau argued, King reminds us that there are unjust laws, as well as those that are just (217).
Philosophically, King is like Thoreau in that he is committed to the idea that the nation is built to serve the needs of the individual, and it is from the individual that the authority of the state originates. His commitment to this democratic notion was such that he was willing to go to extremes in asserting and protecting the rights of the individual vis-a-vis the government. Not only was King an extremist in his willingness to challenge the law, but in his willingness to manipulate public opinion to achieve his ends. While the proposition that the ends justify the means often has negative connotations, I agree with King’s approach that when the ends equate to the abolishment of an intrinsically illegal law, overt and ostensibly illegal behavior is not only called for but amounts to nothing less than requisite behavior. Thus, I concur with the position that King was a morally justified extremist.
Machiavelli – “The Qualities of the Prince”
That the ends justify the means is an apt way of describing the philosophy of Niccolo Machiavelli, whose “The Qualities of the Prince” is about the use of power to accomplish a political goal. Machiavelli’s philosophy is not uplifting or morally redeeming in the sense that Thoreau or King use personal or political leverage to protest a social ill. In his own words, the prince “must not worry about the reproach of cruelty when it is a matter of keeping his subjects loyal” (Jacobus, 43). Machiavelli’s concern is not with the rights of man; his ethos does not proceed from Enlightenment thinking. He sought instead the consolidation of power in the hands of a leader capable of protecting the nation’s security against more powerful neighbors, the achievement of which certifies all manner of political control, including methods that are considered tyrannical, even inhuman by modern standards. Machiavelli argues that “might makes right,” that the man of power is powerful because he possesses weapons and is willing to use them. His is a Renaissance version of realpolitik, the philosophical boundaries of which are limited to strength and the refutation of those things that could weaken the resolve or physical power of the prince.
It is to be remembered that Machiavelli is writing at a time when democratic ideals were non-existent, when the divine right of kings defined the state of political affairs in Europe. In such a world, individual rights were not only an alien idea, they were superfluous. It was generally considered that that which aided the cause of the sovereign was in the best interests of the general population. War was the primary means of statecraft, a status quo that Machiavelli advised should always be born in mind. The prince must “never raise his thought from (the) exercise of war, and in peacetime he must train himself more than in time of war” (Jacobus,
6). Machiavelli is talking as much about a state of mind as he is about being in a physical state of readiness. Ruthlessness is an indispensable mindset for a prince, who, Machiavelli assures us, will come to ruin among princes who are “not good” if he is not able to forego being moral himself (7). In such a world, if a prince does not concern himself with the trappings of power, with looking like he is a formidable figure, he can expect to be despised by both enemies and allies alike.
Thus, Machiavelli’s philosophy has more in common with that of Sun Tzu, who advocated constant preparation and the opportunistic use of power, than with Thoreau or King. Each writes about morality and the manipulation of circumstances to achieve goals they perceive as being good and necessary within their particular environmental and political contexts. It is an interesting irony that as morally reprehensible as Machiavelli may seem to us, much of what he says about the exercise of power is applicable to the modern political environment. Indeed, there is truth in the statement that a politician must be willing to act with ruthlessness not only to achieve his goals but simply to remain in power. While I acknowledge the practical usefulness of Machiavelli’s creed in the political arena, I disagree with it as a standard of behavior. In its purest form, it is an invitation to abuse power, the prevention of which does not concern Machiavelli. Power is an important tool in government and the world of international diplomacy but in a world increasingly influenced by democratic principles Machiavelli’s philosophy is contrary to the march of progress. To take it at face value is to accept the maxim that power is its own justification.
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Works Cited
Jacobus, Lee A. A World of Ideas: Essential Writings for College Writers. Boston, MA:
Bedford/St. Martin’s, 2010.
