The word 'on' in Greek means being, or what really exists. Thus, the word Ontology is about being. What truly is? Some things exist. Some things will exist. Some things are imaginary. There may be something called God- though to conceive God in his full glory may be beyond the powers of mere mortals.
Similarly, the word deon, in Greek means 'That which is binding, needful, right, proper' and is taken to mean duty. That's the subject of Deontology. I suppose one can say that 'deon' differs from 'on' because there is an added connotation of necessity or compulsion. If God exists and He created us there may be some things we must necessarily do lest we provoke his wrath.
The big difference between ontology and deontology is that whereas the latter, dealing as it does with what is or can be, may plausibly be restricted to things which are 'compossible'- i.e. they can all exist at the same time and Physics explains when this can happen and when it can't- Duties are not constrained in this manner. There can be impossible, incompossible and conflicting duties. Indeed, the Bhagvad Gita features such a conflict of duties for the warrior Prince Arjuna. There is no resolution to this conflict. Arjuna decides to fulfil God's plan. He does what God tells him to do. There is no Kantian 'autonomy' here.
In concurrency problems- i.e. deciding in what sequence things should be done- it turns out there is no 'natural' solution. Any rule which is followed is arbitrary and sub-optimal from some point of view. In other words, deontic logic can be nothing like modal logic. It does have an algorithmic element and all bureaucrats and lawyers are aware of this. But what everybody is aware of is that 'the law is an ass' and the 'Circumlocution office' that is the bureaucracy impose Kafkaesque torments on those obliged to deal with it.
For this reason, the common sense view is that what exists is a subject for the natural sciences which can follow very strict, very narrow, wholly protocol bound methods no matter where this leads, while duties are a matter for 'buck stopped' (i.e. there is a final authority who makes a sensible enough decision) religious or juristic or legislative bodies whose leaders can ensure that discretionary economia trumps narrow, rule bound, akriebia.
This is not to say that for everyday purposes we may not rely upon our own experiences and the testimony of others regarding what exists or what we should do. It is merely that if there is a dispute between us about this, or if public opinion is divided, then we can agree to let the Scientists or the Lawyers & Legislators , as the case may be, settle the matter. The big difference between Phusis (Physics) and Nomos (norms) is that believing stupid shit in the former field may cause us to fall behind more scientific communities whereas in the latter field there may be an advantage in strategically affirming stupid shit so as to get to do something beneficial to us.
Of course, it God is really real, this distinction is misleading or mischievous. God creates all that is and God prescribes all duties. Only those who know God's mind can guide us in any way.
At one time it was claimed that philosophers could use reason to arrive at valid conclusions which were literally beyond the power of Physicists. This was metaphysics. Sadly, experimental science showed metaphysics was mere speculation. Then logic developed to a point where even its claim to involve exact reasoning was exploded. Suddenly ontology was downgraded to mere mysticism or poetic ravings.
Where religious or other sources of traditional moral authority had been undermined, some philosophers sought to make themselves useful by providing a deontology which did not depend on received wisdom or the claims of revealed wisdom. Sadly, their judgments were either based on logically fallacious arguments or else involved an infinite regress such that nothing could be concluded. Thankfully, the Courts had a protocol bound, buck stopped (i.e. a final decision was reached albeit in an arbitrary manner) method of resolving disputes. Thus the law remained a well paid profession, while Philosophy continued to decline in public esteem.
To see why this was inevitable consider the question 'is there a duty to exist?' One might say- we have a duty to stay alive or a duty to procreate because God requires it. But the moment you mention God, it is the priest and the theologian who have salience. If you say, 'the law requires it' then it is lawyers and legislators who are the proper authorities to consult. One solution is to say 'the question is meaningless or can mean anything to anybody'. This is because 'duty' is undefined. Any attempt to define it involves an infinite regress. The same is true of the word 'exists'. Both are 'Tarskian primitives'. They are intensions without an extension- i.e. names for things whose exact nature or composition is unknown, perhaps unknowable. Still, for some particular purpose- e.g. deciding if a hypothetical anti-particle exists- there is a protocol bound Scientific procedure which, sooner or later, can decide the issue. Similarly, a law court, again for a merely utilitarian, not philosophic, purpose can decide that a particular person has a particular duty. The problem is that Physics must be the same for all beings- even those on other planets- whereas laws may vary even within a Country- e.g. a Scottish judge may reach a different conclusion than an English judge though both are British.
One might say that a particular set of people- professional philosophers of the analytical school- have a common purpose and thus can provide themselves with determinations regarding what exists and what is a duty. The problem here is that the same thing can be done by a bunch of maniacs.
Nevertheless, we might say there is some value in a type of argumentation which does not refer to God because history shows that very prolonged wars and civil strife can arise because people have different ideas about God. The Eighteenth Century Enlightenment certainly sought for 'natural' laws which all men of good will would agree on. Sadly, Category theory, in Mathematics, suggests that naturality (non arbitrariness) is far to seek. Even where there is an objective function to be maximized, what is being maximized is arbitrary. Moreover, solutions may be non unique. Equally, in linguistics, it now appears there is no perfect i-language (ideal or 'inner' or intensional) and all there can be is e-language (external, empirical or extensional) and that grammar and syntax are merely suggestions or ad hoc heuristics more honoured in the breach.
In other words, the two ways we can represent the world- math and language- lack any non-arbitrary method of judgement. Either they are useful and 'pay for themselves' or they have no higher standing than burps or farts.
It may be that the great philosopher, Kant, who was seeking a bridge from metaphysics to physics at the time of his death, went mad because he came to this humiliating realization. If existence is a predicate then, as Kant had earlier pointed out, the ontological argument for the existence of God goes through. But if God exists because a God who exists is more perfect than a God who doesn't and God is defined as the most perfect being conceivable, then, quite suddenly, 'deontology'- i.e. the path of duty- might not be 'categorical' at all. Why? Well, as Socrates pointed out, categorical thinking is like using the oars of your boat because there is no wind to belly out the sails. Yet, if that which is more perfect more truly exists then what it is merely good to conceive, a good will would consider only 'thy will be done' to be a perfect duty or moral law. In other words, there is always some superior intuition, some inspiration or breath of wind from God, which is more truly our extant duty than anything we can conceive.
In natural language,
A philosopher might say unicorns are 'Meinongian objects' which don't belong in being. Representations of unicorns do exist and you can buy them. A judge, applying a 'reasonable man' test, may observe, if I try to sue the shop for selling me a dead baby unicorn rather than one which could prance about in a manner my niece would find delightful, that unless the shop-keeper misrepresented the toy in question as being a live baby unicorn, no fraud or deception took place. Since baby unicorns don't exist, and this is known to all reasonable people, what is sold is a representation of an imaginary creature.
Suppose we are designing an expert-system or AI capable of algorithmically deciding legal cases, how might we go about it? Firstly, we might want a deontic logic to capture 'the science of law'. Here, we would find that using 'existence' as a predicate makes it appear to be a property or characteristic. If it is a property what sort of property is it? Is it a necessary property- i.e. one without which it could not exist? In that case there is at least one thing which can be taken from it causing it to cease to exist. Is it a sufficient property- i.e. one which ensures its existence? If so there is something that can be added to it such that it must exist. Suppose we know what these sufficient and necessary properties are. Then we are as Gods who can create of annihilate the thing in question. This leads us to wonder whether there is some other property of the thing which is bad and causes harm. In that case, we may be inclined to destroy it. Before doing so, perhaps we'd better check it does not have some good property which more than compensates for the bad.
Sadly, logic does not have the power to create or annihilate anything. It has no means of knowing what causes a thing to exist or cease to exist. This means the usual approach it takes is to say that propositions relate to a given set of 'existing objects'. In other words, it outsources ontology- i.e leaves it to others to say what exists. Thus all it can do is 'quantification' not 'predication'. No property arises, at least in first order logic, through existential quantification. Now it is certainly possible to have a 'free logic' (i.e. a logic free of existence assumptions with respect to both its general terms (predicates) and its singular terms). In this type of logic 'universal specification' disappears. This means we can't conclude that if everything does x, then y does x. We have to say- if everything does x, then y does x only if y exists. This is awkward but what is more awkward yet is having to say 'if everything does x and doing involves an act which actually exists, then y does x only if that doing is an act which actually exists, and also y exists. Next we would have to take up the word 'actually' and specify that actuality must exist as must must and so on. At the end of the day, we have no usable logical calculus or, indeed, finite propositions.
One workaround is to speak of existence as a property of properties or property of the properties of properties- i.e. we are invoking second or higher order logics. The problem here is that there could be some meta-property which represents genuine as opposed to merely apparent existence. This way lies mysticism or fatalism. For all we know we are groping in the dark for something that isn't there because we are that.
What if we go back to thinking of existence as a first order property? Will that enable us to plumb deeper depths in Moral Science or the Science of law?
Aeon has an essay titled 'A right to exist?' which does precisely this. As we will see, it is utterly foolish. Rights are linked to remedies under a bond of law. But no bond of law is required if you supply the remedy yourself such that your existence is assured whereas those who seek to end it are themselves exterminated or chased away. True, in the language of rights, 'obligation holder' is a different predicate from 'right holder'. But they can apply to the same actor. Alternatively, we could say that there is an 'immunity' to do something rather than a right to do it.
One may argue that existence, of a composite type, is a first order property of an object. Unicorns exist thought their existence is almost wholly imaginary, albeit less so than dragons. We may say, if genetic experimentation results in animals which look more and more like representations of unicorns, that the composite property of existence which unicorns have is becoming more real and less imaginary or mythological. This suggests that a thing we can name changes when the composition of that property by which it exists is changed or changes by itself. The problem here is that the 'extension' of the intension which names the object changes as our epistemic understanding or account of the composites of the property changes. This means we commit the 'intensional fallacy'- i.e. we assume Liebniz's law of identity in our argumentation. The genetically engineered unicorn really isn't the unicorn of mythology. If we treat the two as identical in a logical calculus, there will be an 'ex falso quodlibet' explosion of nonsense. We will be raving like maniacs while believing ourselves to be engaged in logical argumentation. This is why protocol bound, juristic or deontic discourse can only have a representation in first order logic if existence is not a property but merely a quantification. Since a 'necessary' or 'sufficient' condition can always be considered as properties, it follows that only a higher order deontic logic would feature them. But this means for any first order existent, they aren't essential features.
Since states are founded on violence and expulsion, their existence is always bound up in thorny questions about justice
Some states may meet that criteria in the opinion of particular people but others don't do so. Moving away from opinion to what can be logically deduced from premises regarding which there is 'overlapping consensus', we find ourselves having to rely only on what can have a representation as a first order logic- be it classical, free, intuitionist or what have you. In all of them there is something like an 'intensional fallacy' which militates for denying existence is a property. But if it isn't a property it can't be 'bound up' with anything else save sufficient or necessary conditions for its existence. But those conditions may be provided by itself. This is what occurs when a State exists because it can defend itself. Its existence isn't bound up with justice but its military capacity. On the other hand, if we know how to endow the necessary and sufficient properties for a State to exist, we could create any type of State in any territory we choose. The West's recent experiences in Iraq and Afghanistan suggests that even if such knowledge exists, we have no access to it.
A person who believes otherwise is Andrew F Marchis- a professor of political science at the University of Massachusetts, Amherst, US.
Demands to recognise the ‘right of a state to exist’
are meaningless unless directed at States. The citizens of a State are obliged to accept that States recognized by their country are States. They may be punished if they fail to do so and seek to wage war against such a State
ring from op-ed pages to US Congressional committee rooms.
But they bore the shit out of everybody. This works to the advantage of the Donald. If everybody else talks nonsense about a place, why not say you are thinking of turning it into a beach resort or a car park or a sanctuary for Lesbian leprechauns?
This demand is most frequently encountered in the context of Israel and the framing of its wars with Palestinians and other regional forces.
Only because shouting 'I hope the Yids and the Mozzers kill each other!' tends to cause raised eyebrows at the Garrick.
The rhetorical force of the question is obvious. If Israel is facing a challenge to its very ‘right to exist’ from its enemies,
it is. The good news is that they don't just want to kill all the Jews in the world. They also want to kill kaffirs and the wrong sort of Muslims.
then criticism of Israel’s military actions must remain muted and qualified.
More particularly if those actions are causing you to die. On the other hand, even muted and qualified criticism can be supplemented by unmuted and unqualified farts.
This framing also implies a premise that existing states have a presumptive right to exist,
Which they themselves enforce. But we are not obliged to approve their doing so or failing to do so. I think the premise involved in discussions of Israel has to do with Jews being resolved 'never again' to face extermination. In other words, what we are being primed to accept is that their retaliation will be highly asymmetric- though not perhaps on a par with our War on Terror because Israel is small while NATO is big and mighty. Still, what is at the back of our minds is the notion that Israel may nuke a goodly portion of its neighbourhood if it faces defeat in war. Moreover, Jewish terrorist groups around the world will be taking vengeance and extorting money on a scale exponentially greater than anything low IQ Islamists can inflict.
or that to deny the right of state X or Y to exist is morally repugnant because it implies not the juridical dissolution of a state but the destruction of the people living within it.
This ignores the fact that there was a scheme to exterminate Jews wherever they could be found. This had nothing to do with the right of any particular state, as opposed to people, to exist. I suppose, if Israel is defeated, Jewish people there may be exterminated. It must be said, Israel is somewhat exceptional in that regard. What more frequently happens is one State claims the territory of another without mentioning its plan to kill the majority community there.
Consider Taiwan. Does it have the right to exist as a sovereign state? I suppose the answer is- sure, if it has nukes. If it doesn't, it is likely to be absorbed by China. Unlike Israel, whose Jewish citizens can expect short shrift if it is conquered, Taiwan's citizens face no existential threat. Thus, Taiwan, but not Israel, is unlikely to use nukes, even it has them. Why commit suicide if the alternative is prosperity without as much political freedom? The fact is, elections are overrated. Not dying horribly of radiation sickness can't be rated highly enough.
This framing can feel like pure political rhetoric not meant to entertain a serious response or debate.
The only smart response is 'are you seriously suggesting that some shitty Professors debating stupid shit aint a fucking waste of time?'
The plain fact is, Israel was expected to pulverize Gaza. I suppose it will do so sooner or later. Perhaps the Palestinians in the West Bank and East Jerusalem too are doomed. There's little anyone can do about it without resorting to nuclear war.
It is meant to preempt any actual public debate over the past and present of Israel/ Palestine.
Trump's election pre-empts yet more Libtard debate damaging only to the Dems.
However, the demand to recognise a state’s right to exist raises a real but overlooked philosophical question: what exactly does it mean to say that a state has a right to exist?
This is a diplomatic or legal question. If it has a right to de jure existence that is one thing- it means that it can have specific Hohfeldian immunities pertaining to a sovereign state even in exile. If it as de facto but not de jure existence then, for some but not other purposes, it may be treated as sovereign.
There could be a philosophical question as to whether the Republic of Irish Leprechauns is compossible with the Republic of Eire. It is my claim, based on Kripe-Barcan necessity of identity, that Leo Varadkar is a fucking Leprechaun illegally rejecting the right of return of Iyers to their original homeland. At the least, he could send me a case of Jamesons.
Note that the statement ‘state X has a right to exist’ is
like the statement 'X, as a state, would be viable- i.e. able to defend itself.' Palestine, as a state, is not and has never been viable. Its right to exist is vitiated by the murderous stupidity of its own deeply divided people- not to mention the various foreign donors who finance 'pay for slay'.
not synonymous with the statement ‘the citizens of state X have the following rights’ – to life, to civil and human rights, to cultural flourishing.
The two statements are wholly unrelated.
The assertion locates the possession of a right in the state itself
non-existent things don't have possessions. Things which exist may claim or actually possess justiciable rights and certainly do enjoy immunities of a type conferred by such rights provided they can, with impunity, destroy any threat to their continued existence.
and, moreover, it stresses the right not to derivative authority (to tax, to enforce laws, to control borders) but to the prior right to exist per se.
Nothing prevents what exists from granting itself, or being deemed to grant itself, a retroactive right to exist. But any and every right could always be said to derive authority from God or the fart of the Giant Spaghetti monster which set off the Big Bang.
Is this a coherent claim to be pressed on behalf of any state?
Sure. You can say 'Tibet is sovereign. It is illegally occupied by the Chinese.' You can then recognise the Dalai Lama as a head of state and extend diplomatic immunity to the Ambassador he sends you.
if ‘state X has a right to exist’ means that ‘if state X existed and then no longer existed, there has been some wrong done to state X’
it doesn't. The daughter I have with Beyonce has a right to exist. No wrong has been done because Beyonce refuses to sleep with me so as to give birth the little girl in question.
then it follows that there is some wrong or injustice done to those states in question in that they no longer exist.
One could always argue that, or, indeed, anything else.
I suspect few today would hold that the dissolution of Czechoslovakia,
which did adversely affect some people at the time.
the Soviet Union,
ditto
Yugoslavia
ditto
or the United Arab Republic
many feel this was the greatest disaster to befall Arab Socialism.
entailed a violation of the right of those states per se to exist.
Only because few today don't think that existence has anything to do with rights. This is why nobody is suing the Government for not permitting unicorns to prance around the place.
The idea that states are entities or persons with rights to exist separate from the rights of persons living within those states seems untenable.
It isn't. All sorts of non-human things have legal personality and justiciable rights to existence. In India recently a particular temple idol was able to get enforced by the Supreme Court his right to have a big temple constructed for his worship. Similarly, there can be de jure states with Governments in exile which enjoy sovereign immunity.
States often come in and out of existence with no wrong being done to the people in question per se. It thus follows that to question the right of state X qua state X to exist is not necessarily morally repugnant.
to people who hate X but not to those who like it. But then having their tits shat upon may not be morally repugnant to some people.
The demand to recognise the right of a state to exist
is only made of States or International Bodies. Ordinary people, like cats, are not called upon to do so.
is not the same as the claim ‘All persons have a right to live under a state.’
Nor is the demand to recognize a right the same as any claim whatsoever including the demand to recognize a right. Why? The thing is an intension and is epistemic or subjective. This means its extension keeps changing. It isn't even the same as itself let alone anything else. That's philosophy for you.
The claim is that a specific state, with a specific identity, has a right to exist.
only by arbitrary stipulation. I could just as easily stipulate that the claim is a substitute for a fart which currently eludes the anus of the claimant. Others may stipulate that it is a recognition that the claimant owes them a thousand dollars.
No doubt, if the matter is justiciable, the Courts can give a 'buck stopped' interpretation. But, even if protocol bound, that interpretation has an arbitrary element.
When does such a state exist? And how can we differentiate between the claims: (a) ‘persons have a right to live under a state’
there is no such claim. We envy the Bedouin roaming the vast spaces of the Sahara where bureaucracies and law courts don't exist.
and (b) ‘a specific state with a specific identity has a right to exist’?
In this case, something practical follows- e.g. granting diplomatic recognition, supplying military aid, etc.
A state is a sovereign administrative apparatus that governs a given territory, controlling entry to and exit from that territory, and possessing supreme power within that territory.
No. Some states may actually meet all those criteria. Others may claim to. Some may not. Look at the Sovereign Military Order of Malta. Like the PLO, it has permanent observer status at the UN even though it doesn't murder people.
What is, however, meant by a state having a specific identity such that the same people and territory could be ruled by different states at different times?
This is the judicial notion of sovereignty and the manner in which courts decide it passes from one entity to another. Thus Western Courts decided that the liability for Tzarist debt passed to the Soviet Union and, from about 1986 onward, the Soviets, and later the Russian Federation, made some token payments so as to be readmitted to Western capital markets.
States have markers of unique identity, such as names and flags. But states are also defined through their constitutions
not necessarily. UK and Israel don't have a written constitution.
– not just technical matters of the organisation and division of powers, but the way in which states represent certain populations while expressing certain identities, values and goals, and distribute membership, rights and representation.
sadly, the thing is often just wishful thinking.
I submit that, in many cases of profound-enough revolution,
Societal dissolution or demographic replacement- maybe
it is implausible to say that the same state governs the territory and population before and after the transformation.
Yet, the Soviets accepted that they were the sovereign successor of the Tzarist state and paid a few kopeks in the Rouble for Tzarist debt.
Consider some of the most obvious cases: England in 1649,
There was a sovereign King succeeded by a sovereign 'Long Parliament' succeeded by a sovereign 'Lord Protector' before the restoration of the monarchy.
France in 1789,
England and France had plenty of lawyers. There was a legal change in regime and then another and a another.
China in 1911 and again in 1949, Russia in 1917, and Iran in 1979. In all of these revolutions, the land and people more or less remained the same,
as did the State. The local magistrate or police inspector or school teacher or postal worker did not change.
What could be more profound than India passing from Mughal to British rule? Yet there was never any break in the law or administration.
as well as the common, vernacular name of the country, at least at the time of the revolution itself. But the regime-change in these paradigmatic cases was almost total at the level of ideology, legitimation, administration, legality and organisation of power.
Trump's presidency isn't like Biden's. So what?
It seems absurd to assert that the Bourbon Monarchy and the French Republic were the same state.
Lawyers ensured it was for almost all practical purposes. There was a question as to how the Bourbon Restoration would affect title in land gained under the Republic or the Empire. But the lawyers and notaries of France ensured there was no big hiatus.
Certainly, if a Royalist had demanded reformers or revolutionaries between 1789-92 recognise the right of the state to exist,
he would have been considered mad or very very stupid. It is a different matter that he was welcome to report a case of treason or lese majeste to the authorities. Failure to adequately fuck up reformers is what leads to revolutions.
what they would have meant was not some state over the territory of France but specifically the monarchy.
There were plenty of Royalists in the Third Republic. What they were demanding was the recognition of the legitimacy of either Bourbon or Orleanist claims to head the State.
Now consider two other cases: Zimbabwe circa 1980
it was previously known as South Rhodesia but became just Rhodesia after North Rhodesia became Zambia
and South Africa between 1993-97. From 1965-79, Rhodesia existed (albeit not internationally recognised) on the same territory with the same population as Zimbabwe since 1980. With the end of colonialism and the emergence of a postcolonial order, there was continuity in territory and population, but a change in name as well as its fundamental constitution and moral foundation.
The situation was exactly analogous to the transition from White ruled Kenya to Black ruled Kenya in 1963. The State endured. The rulers changed. Sometimes the name changed as well, sometimes it didn't.
Given the depth of this transformation, I regard it as most plausible to claim that Rhodesia ceased to exist as a state, and that Rhodesia and Zimbabwe are not the same state.
Did Zimbabwe repudiate Rhodesia's debts or Rhodesian passports? No. There was a legal hand over of power just as Biden handed over power to Trump. It is correct to say there was a transition to majority rule in Zimbabwe and South Africa just as there was a transition from the Biden to the Trump administration. It is foolish to assert that a State is not the same State when its name or its ruler changes. Why not suggest that Mummy ceases to be Mummy when her friends call her by her given name?
I think it is wrong to say that the (South Africa) that existed between 1961-93 and 1993-present are the same state.
In law and diplomacy they are. I may say South Africa used to be a cat but turned into a leprechaun. But if I do so, I am as stupid as this Professor of worthless shite.
Certainly, if the apartheid regime had offered to release Nelson Mandela from prison on the condition that he and the ANC ‘recognise South Africa’s right to exist’, what they would have meant was not some state over the territory of South Africa but the existing regime.
If the ANC agreed that only whites had a right of citizenship and domicile in vast swathes of the country while blacks (even if working and living in 'White' areas) were citizens of and were domiciled in Bantustans, then, sure, there would have been no need for a transition to majority rule. Fortunately, once the Cubans left Angola and Gorby and Reagan got kissy cuddly with each other, the US was able to get rid of apartheid so that kleptocratic Black politicians could rule the roost.
In other words, the identity of a particular state is to a large extent constituted by its regime.
No. The identity remains the same. Public policies and personnel change. Suppose, like me, this guy loses his job because he sexually harasses himself, his identity will remain the same. It's just that his job may be to deliver pizzas rather than bromides.
A state changes its existence through a deep-enough change in its essence (its regime).
Which is why the US now aint the shithole Biden ruled. Many American men now have dicks. Biden had confiscated all dicks. Kamala would often ask her boss whether she could borrow the key to the dick cabinet because she thought maybe she had left her biro pen in there. Biden would tell her to get lost. Sad.
states can disappear in processes of reconstitution without harm or wrong being done.
No. States don't disappear. There is either a purely legal hand over of power or transition from one regime or another. But even if the new state denies it has any link to the previous sovereign, sooner or later, the law reads in such a transition such that one sovereign was succeeded by another sovereign without any gap or hiatus. This is true even if there is a 'grundnorm' in the new constitution explicitly repudiating any such continuity. One may think of this in terms of 'autochthony' such that a previous regime, however illegitimate, did not displace autochthonous sovereignty but merely exercised it for a period.
Let’s call this ‘wrongless state destruction’.
That would be the case if no creditor or bondholder was left high and dry or nobody was rendered stateless and no third party was adversely affected. However, in International Law, destroying a State just because you can and you think no wrong would be done, is still wrong. This is because sovereign states have rights recognised by the comity of nations. On the other hand, when a particular State changes its status, even if some third party does not like it, no justiciable wong is done. I was miffed when Czechoslovakia split up because I firmly believed there was another country called Cashoslovakia and had gotten into a lot of arguments with my students on this issue. Nevertheless, no justiciable wrong was done to me.
But obviously not every transformation, destruction, dissolution or recombination of a state is harmless or wrongless.
There is a considerable body of law seeking to ameliorate the lot of those who suffer by such events.
It may be the case that, all things considered, the continued existence of a particular state is the morally best state of affairs.
No one can be sure that is the case.
If so, can we specify the conditions in which a state has a right to exist?
No. We lack the relevant information. Also if we are smart enough to do so, there are better things we could be doing with our time.
In order to answer that question, we first have to clarify what we mean by a ‘right’.
Hohfeld clarified it well enough a long time ago.
One of the dominant theories of what a right is, the interest theory of rights, was elaborated by the philosopher Joseph Raz. Raz gives us the following definition of a right: ‘“X has a right” if and only if X can have rights, and, other things being equal, an aspect of X’s wellbeing (his interest) is a sufficient reason for holding some other person(s) to be under a duty.’
This is clearly false. I have a right to scratch my bum in the privacy of my own home. I can and do have rights- e.g. voting rights. It is in my interest to scratch my bum. But this isn't a sufficient reason for holding anybody else to be under a duty to me.
In law, a right is something for which there is a remedy under a bond of law. That remedy may be self-provided- e.g. scratching your own bum or killing a guy who is trying to kill you. In both these cases you have a Hohfeldian immunity.
This gives us the conceptual components of rights-talk:
stupid shite which ignorant psilosophers cooked up because they didn't have the grades to get into Law Skool.
to talk about a right, we need to
have studied law- or at least googled 'rights'
clarify: (a) which agent we are concerned with,
Travel agents? I need to find a cheap flight to Disneyland Florida.
(b) what interest of that agent is at stake and why it is so vital or weighty, (c) which other agents may be in a position to impact that interest positively or negatively, and (d) what kinds of duties those other agents may thus be under.
Why stop there? Why not say we need to clarify everything about everything?
But these all generate questions and problems, rather than easily establishing what rights exist.
Courts do that. Philosophers don't. They are too stupid.
The very notion of a state having a right to exist raises two obvious dilemmas.
Not if it exists. The onus is on those who say it ought not to exist to prove that they themselves aren't homosexual leprechauns who must be actively prevented from shoving the horns of unicorns up their bum holes.
First, is a state such a thing that can have rights
Yes. The US has rights which it has tended to enforce with a heavy hand.
and is the state’s interest or wellbeing the morally relevant factor in its existence?
No. What is morally relevant is that homosexual leprechauns are causing the horns of leprechauns to be covered in shit. NATO should take action.
Second, and more importantly, which specific other agents are thought to be under a duty to recognise its existence and what does that duty require of them?
Kids in geography class. Teacher beat me when I refused to recognize the existence of China. I called it 'yellow shape which looks like a duck'.
For anyone but anarchists, states can clearly have rights derived from the interests of their citizens.
The rights of states are wholly independent of the interests of their citizens. Suppose you are being extradited to the US for a financial crime. It is no defence in law to say that nobody in America is interested in the case. Frankly the thing is a big snooze. Kindly don't extradite me. 12 American jurors will be bored shitless if they have to sit through my trial.'
If states can have derivative rights
they don't. They are sovereign. Derivative rights arise from a superior legal instrument. Now, a Colony or Protectorate or Mandated territory may be a State in all but name and its rights may be derivative from the de jure point of view but, in that case, they are not referred to as States or the qualification 'de facto' is made.
(to impose security, tax, enforce laws, enter treaties), it is plausible that they can have rights to exist derived from their citizens’ interests in such an administrative apparatus existing.
Only in the sense that, salva veritate, we can say if states can be the chew-toys of my puppy dog then it is plausible that they can have a right to exist derived from the fact that my puppy chews the fuck out of them.
Consider the following argument.
Don't. It is stupid.
Persons have rights to such goods as security, economic stability, rule of law, and human and political rights.
No they don't. Persons have been around for tens of thousands of years. They never had security economic stability or the right to sue their College for teaching them worthless shite under the rubric of 'Political Philosophy'.
These rights can be secured only through a sovereign agency with the power to secure those goods.
No. Legal rights give you immunity from prosecution for securing them for yourself provided you act in a reasonable manner and show due care etc.
Therefore, persons have a right to live under a state
There is no such right. What the UN declaration of Human Rights says is that there is a right to free movement within a State's borders. It was not upheld by many countries. People living in a wilderness without any State apparatus were not magically provided with a State.
and thus a state has a right to exist derived from the interests of the persons subject to it.
No. A 'terra nullis'- e.g. a desert atoll populated by a couple of ship-wrecked mariners- does not have the right to declare itself a State and demand membership of the UN.
Consider a further argument. Persons have a right to live under a state
they don't but if they did they would have an equal right to live under a state which is the chew-toy of my puppy dog.
and thus a state has a right to exist derived from the interests of the persons subject to it.
Thanks to ex falso quodlibet (from something false anything at all can be proved) we can go on to derive the right to existence of a puppy dog which uses all states as chew-toys.
Other agents wrong the persons living under a state by trying to destroy the sovereign agency that guarantees them important moral goods.
Only in the sense that they also wrong them by refusing to let my puppy dog use those states as a chew-toy
Therefore, other agents are under a moral duty to not destroy this state.
but, rather, to ensure my puppy dog uses them as its chew-toy. If you arbitrarily assert that states are nice and everybody has a right to live under them, I can arbitrarily assert that states which are my puppy's chew toys are even nicer. Also, since my puppy dog is imaginary, what harm could it do?
I find these two arguments quite plausible. However, what these arguments do not establish yet is which other agents are under which duties to recognise the right of a state justified on these grounds to exist. Who is under an obligation, and in which conditions, to recognise a specific state’s right to exist?
Are we under an obligation to recognize the Taliban regime in Afghanistan? No. We weren't under an obligation to recognize ISIS either. Something which looked smart at one time- viz. recognising Palestine- now looks stupid.
There are two agents clearly under such a duty. First is the state itself, specifically its rulers or officials.
They have a duty to recognize themselves. If they look in a mirror and say 'that's Beyonce!' they should be prosecuted for failing to recognize themselves and be sent to jail. Studying Political Philosophy makes you super-smart.
If a state is legitimate only if it guarantees the people under it the above-mentioned goods and rights,
thus the State of Iyerland is legitimate because I guarantee all sorts of shit to everybody and anybody. Iyerland should be admitted to the UN. King Charles should treat me as a head of State. I'm not saying he has to come to my birthday party but he could drop off a case or two of Champers.
then the rulers and officials of a state are under an obligation to not violate said goods and rights of that people.
Easily done, if like me, they are as lazy as shit.
Second are other states or powers who are bound to not undermine or harm those fundamental interests of the people ruled by a state.
Also slut shaming those states or saying their bum looks fat is totes out of bounds.
The deceptive simplicity of the question of a state’s right to exist is a function of the fact that states are frequently threatened by other states for those other states’ interests.
All rights may be threatened. The question is whether a sufficient remedy can be self-supplied or supplied by a coalition of the willing. Even when a court affirms your right, you may still have to pay to enforce that judgment. If you can't, your right is ineffective. The law clarifies what philosophy has muddled.
Leaving aside, for example, deep questions of (say) Ukraine’s relations with all of its citizens, it seems obvious that Ukraine has a right vis-Ã -vis Russia to exist.
Can it enforce it? Currently, yes- across a wide swathe of territory. In the future, who knows?
Even if some abstract entity called the ‘Ukrainian state’
it is a legal, sovereign, entity.
is not the ultimate rights-holder over the people and territory ruled by that state until 2014 (when Crimea was annexed), a fortiori the Russian state is not the rights-holder over the people and territory of Ukraine.
Russia, along with the US and UK guaranteed Ukraine's territorial integrity in return for which it was foolish enough to give up nukes. It is claiming 'Russian speaking' parts of Ukraine on the basis that they are discriminated against by evil Nazis like the Jewish, Russian speaking, Zelenskyy.
However, other states are not the only other agents against whom states claim rights to exist.
The Olympics Committee? Why have they not recognized Iyerland? I would win the gold medal for competitive farting. On the other hand, Iyerland turned down the opportunity to participate in Eurovision. We do have certain standards to uphold, you know.
They claim these rights against persons and populations.
No. A State would have to be totally shit to go around begging all and sundry to be recognized as something which exists.
In some of these cases, it is far less obvious that these other agents (other persons) lack the interests or standing to seek the dissolution or radical transformation of a state, or that they are under a moral duty to recognise that state’s right to exist.
It is obvious that this is nonsense. Perhaps Taiwan has diplomats who will pay good money to a country in return for diplomatic recognition. But money, not morality, is what matters in such cases.
The two arguments I introduced above explaining the interests that can justify the existence of a state assume without argument the existence of a population on a given territory that has a shared set of interests and a possible shared will in desiring sovereign agency.
Indians under the Raj had that. Then Muslims decided they were a separate Nation and the country was partitioned with the result that there was a big exchange of population. The same thing happened in the British mandated territory of Palestine.
Those arguments overlooked three important elements. First, they establish a population’s right to a state, but not to a particular state with a particular cultural or ethnic identity.
Nonsense! Populations have particular cultural and ethnic identities. What they may not have is a majority in any particular patch of contiguous territory. This is what happened to the Sikhs who did not get Khalistan at the time when Muslims got Pakistan.
Second, they did not address how specific populations come to live in particular territories in the first place.
e.g. the illegal American occupation of 'Turtle Island'
Finally, they did not address how specific territories come to be juridically demarcated from other territories.
Because these arguments were made by stupid and ignorant Professors of shit subjects.
Populations (demoi) are frequently formed as a result of profound, often extremely violent, demographic changes within a territory.
No. They are formed because Daddies put their pee pee in Mummies' chee chee place. Migration may help more Daddies put their pee pees in Mummies' chee chee places with the result that particular lineages, ceteris paribus, expand rapidly, by reason of higher general purpose productivity, than others. Violence matters less than fertility and migration rates.
States are almost always formed by the arbitrary and violent demarcation of a territory without the democratic consent of all populations who might have legitimate interests in this decision.
No. Kingdoms and Empires were formed in that way. Nation States weren't.
Political theorists often refer to this as the ‘boundary problem’ or ‘demos problem’.
whereas their real problem is that they keep eating their own shit.
Democrats want the legitimacy of a constitutional order to derive from the actual, tacit or hypothetical consent of the people to be governed in a certain way.
Nope. They just want the Government to be less shitty. Also, what would be nice is if I am appointed Ambassador to the Court of St. James.
But the delineation of the people itself is not something that can usually be decided democratically.
Unless it can. That's what happened when elections were held in India in 1946.
The examples here are too numerous to count. How did a ‘democratic people’ emerge in the settler colonial states of the Americas and Australasia but through various forms of violence, land theft, genocide, expulsion, exclusion or confinement?
The violence was irrelevant. What mattered was the higher general purpose productivity of the migrant community.
How were ethnic majorities established in the successor states of multiethnic empires except through frequent ethnic cleansing, population exchanges or forcible assimilation?
Ethnic majorities already existed. Moreover, the Emperor was often also the Monarch of Kingdoms denominated by ethnicity. Thus the Hapsburg Emperor was also the King of Hungary and Bohemia, the Archduke of Austria, the Margrave of Moravia, the Lord of Trieste and the Grand Voivode of less grand, not to mention some totes shitty, Voivodes. When the Hapsburgs fell, sovereignty reverted to the Parliaments or other legitimate organs of Government in those ancient territories.
Even in contexts where extreme violence or ethnic cleansing was not the immediate cause or consequence of state formation, the drawing of boundaries when territories are partitioned or delineated invariably involves arbitrary decisions to include or exclude that cannot be democratic all the way down.
No democratic decision is not arbitrary or 'democratic all the way down'. This is because we have a majoritarian type of representative, not direct, democracy.
One might respond that if almost no states are founded in moments of perfect, non-violent consent by a population that includes no deep exclusions or forced inclusions over a clear territory not disputed by any other group of people (let’s call this the ‘Iceland Standard’), then almost no state is perfectly legitimate and therefore almost no state is uniquely illegitimate.
Why mention Iceland? Norway and Sweden parted company amicably enough 120 years ago.
But that would be implausible and dismissive of the inherent rights of persons to justice.
Courts may assert this 'inherent right' and may even claim universal jurisdiction. But it is merely a claim. Anyone can claim anything at all. What matters is whether a claim is enforced.
It is much more plausible to say that all states are ongoing projects of establishing legitimacy and approaching something like justice and consent-worthiness.
It is a useless observation. Either legitimacy obtains or it doesn't. I am the legitimate son of my father. I don't have to go on proving I am a good and worthy son for this to remain the case.
If almost all states are formed through historical injustice, a state’s ‘right to exist’ is relative to the outstanding claims of justice against it.
No. It is relative to what force it can bring to bear against any party or parties who seeks to extinguish its existence. Claims of justice or claims of cuteness or cuddliness are wholly irrelevant.
There is no single answer to how historical injustice should be remedied.
No. There is one single answer to how any grievance whatsoever can be remedied to the satisfaction of the aggrieved party. It is that their demands are immediately and fully conceded.
Sometimes partition, secession or the formation of new borders is the most democratically plausible and least harmful answer.
Ethnic cleansing may be democratic and the least costly or otherwise harmful option for the majority. Indeed, the thing may give pleasure in itself.
Sometimes, it is restoration or transfer of sovereignty over land and its resources. Sometimes, it is the right of displaced populations to return to their former homes. Sometimes, it is democratisation or regime-change within a given state.
Sometimes it is genocide accompanied by medical experimentation or just torture for the fun of it.
Some of these answers will require ending existing states or reconfiguring them, and some will require justice-based reforms within the territorial and constitutional confines of the existing state.
And some will require gas chambers.
It must be noted that there are some complex philosophical questions at stake that cannot be fully resolved here.
If this were true, there would be philosophers on the General Staff.
I will acknowledge one in particular: the ubiquitous problem of vagueness.
Sadly, it is stupidity, not vagueness that is this fellow's problem.
Vagueness usually points to the problem of identifying when one thing (not a heap of sand) passes into another thing (a heap of sand) when no single change (the addition of a single grain) clearly marks this transformation.
There is no 'sorites' problem here because existence is not a property. It is a previously stipulated fact. Only if it were composite- like a heap- could we say there is a problem of vagueness.
It is simply not the case that 'rights to exist' for any existing entity are affected by anything done in the past or any marginal change. This is because, firstly, anyone can claim anything, and, secondly, the enforcement of rights can only be done here and now, not by going back in time.
Just as a murder victim can't be resurrected on the basis that his killing was unjust, States or other entities which had legal personality don't exist by virtue of a right, but by virtue of actually existing. This is so even if their continuing to exist involves the active extinction or the rights of other extant entities.
I may say 'it was unjust to extinguish the religion of the Druids'. Such a religion has a right to exist. But, because the thing doesn't exist, its right to exist can't be protected in any way.' True, you could create a new thing and pretend it is an old thing. But you could equally pretend that a new born baby is the deceased person who has been brought back to life by the Court.
Vagueness afflicts two problems within the present discussion.
First, we might say that some historical injustices are alive and salient
they can't be. If there is an extant injustice it is contemporary, not historical. You may point to a genealogical relationship between it and things that went before. But, in the same way that King Charles isn't Henry VIII, the two things aren't identical. One ceased to exist. The other has not done so.
but some are so far in the past that seeking to reverse them seems to be only to call for new and greater injustices. But what exactly the statute of limitations on historical justice is seems impossibly vague and indeterminate.
Nonsense! The law is clear enough on this point.
The legacy of North American slavery is certainly still salient,
only in so far as the legacy of the Africans who sold Africans to European or Arab slave-traders is still salient. Why the fuck should the descendants of Whites who got rid of slavery long ago have to pay reparations to those who thought it a swell idea to sell their own kith and kin?
but what about the conquest of Constantinople or the expulsion of Muslims and Jews from Andalusia?
or talk of expelling Muslims from a Germany in which the AfD has emerged as the second largest party? The problem with pointing at a historical injustice is that might remind the descendants of those who perpetrated it, of a method by which their ancestors had gained power and wealth.
Second, there is also a certain vagueness in identifying when a state’s internal regime-change constitutes the definitive end of one state and the emergence of another.
Not for lawyers and diplomats. What solves the problem of vagueness is 'buck stopped' judicial or justiciable decisions.
Some constitutional changes are profound enough to do this, but not all, and it might not be possible to say exactly what changes result in this ontological transformation from one state to another.
The law is a 'buck stopped' protocol bound system which solves 'sorites' or other problems of vagueness in a once and for all Res Judicata manner. Contracts may be vague. Courts read things into them so that they cease to be so. True, this may involve 'legal fictions' but the thing works well enough.
What this stupid cunt is doing is showing that because philosophy has no 'buck stopping' mechanism it can only say vague and woolly things about vague and woolly subjects. The law has the opposite purpose which is why Law Courts get to sentence philosophers, like Socrates, to death, whereas the reverse isn't the case.
But this does not affect the claim that states never have fully resolved and permanent rights to exist in their present form that create duties of acquiescence or recognition in all populations affected by them.
States may not bother at some times and some places to impose such duties on pain of punishment, but this is a matter for the State. One may run around saying 'The State sucks cock! I defy that cocksucker to jail me for seditious libel!' and enjoy complete impunity. But even if the State sleeps on its rights, it does not lose them. We might say 'the nuisance was not so great that the public interest required it to be curbed'. The law does not concern itself with trifles.
Since most states are founded in some form of violence, exclusion, expulsion or injustice, it is morally incoherent to say that persons or populations are thus under a duty to recognise that historical event as legitimate.
Moral incoherence does not matter when it comes to the law. This is because the law is not morality. The State is a legal, not a moral, concept. However, there may be moral clauses in a contract and there is a legal doctrine of unconscionability under which rubric moral arguments may be admissible. But, whereas the ratio in a judgment must be coherent, not all evidence submitted must meet this high standard. Indeed, considerable latitude may be shown to a defendant who, by reason of having studied stupid shit, babbles incoherent nonsense.
At a minimum, defenders of the state would have to show that restitution for that historical injustice has been made or that preserving the present status quo is least likely to produce further injustices or atrocities.
Nonsense! The minimum required of defenders of the State is that they kill the enemy if the Commander in Chief orders them to do so. The maximum may involve figuring out ways to completely depopulate enemy territory.
The rhetorical force of the demand to recognise the right of a state to exist is
equal to the rhetorical force of the demand that dicks be banned due to dicks cause RAPE!
that states cease to exist only when their populations are destroyed in large part or in whole.
Nonsense! States cease to exist when their army surrenders and they are occupied and their territory is annexed.
But that is false. States can cease to exist by
ceasing to exist. The Government is disbanded. There is no Army, no Police, no Judiciary.
being incorporated into another state,
they may still exist by virtue of dual Sovereignty
being partitioned into smaller states,
but one of those states may retain the style and title of the whole.
or by significant-enough regime-change that transforms the essence of a state.
No. That does not matter at all. At one time, the Soviets asserted that it did. But it didn't as the Soviets conceded even before the Soviet Union disappeared. But the Russian Federation paid Soviet debts and thus acknowledged that they were the successor state.
All of these processes can happen with greater or lesser degrees of violence.
Or fail to occur despite lots of violence. The two things simply aren't related save in the case of invasion and annexation.
It doesn’t follow that if a state ceases to exist with no significant loss of life on the part of the host population that, therefore, no wrong has been done.
Nor does it follow that no right has been done.
States can be conquered rapidly by foreign states with relatively little loss of life, but with great harm to the conquered people’s civil, political and human rights.
Or great benefit to them. I suppose there are Afghans who preferred life under America's puppet President.
Regimes that lack legitimacy can be toppled by revolutions that subsequently go on to harm and wrong the people they govern to a greater extent than even the previous illegitimate regime.
So can regimes which had legitimacy and popular support.
People(s) can be harmed and wronged by the loss of their state per se and by harm to other interests.
Or they can be benefited by it.
But people can be harmed without being wronged.
You are welcome to harm the fuck out of an assailant thanks to your right of self-defence.
And people can be harmed and wronged with those harms and wrongs being justified, all things considered. Enslavers and other elites of the Confederacy were harmed by Reconstruction, but they were not wronged.
They disagreed and, by 1890, their view prevailed. Griffith's 'Birth of a Nation' or the film 'Gone with the Wind' captured this shift in sentiment.
Germans expelled from Czechoslovakia after the Second World War may have been harmed and (individually) wronged but perhaps this wrong was justified, all things considered, given the legacy of the Nazi occupation.
Or perhaps it wasn't. Our opinion doesn't really matter very much. What is certain is that the Czechs would have preferred to be liberated by the Americans.
The crucial point is to maintain the emphasis on the fact that profound-enough changes in a state’s governing system and ideology can constitute the end of one state and the beginning of another.
No. Just as you don't cease to be you even if you give up your job as an actuarial scientist to dance around naked with a radish up your bum, so too a State remains the same State till it is annexed or dissolved or merged into some other State. On the other hand, even if you never quit your job as an actuarial scientist you lose your right to exist the moment you die.
In the case of states that govern significant populations without giving them equal civil and political rights, or that enjoy demographic majorities because of ethnic cleansing or partition, redressing those historical injustices may result in the creation of what must be called new states.
No. South Africa remained South Africa after the transition to majority rule. The name of Rhodesia was changed but it was the same State.
Yet this need not involve any atrocities against existing populations. Again, the paradigmatic case is South Africa, which underwent a profound regime change without mass atrocities. It is thus coherent, and often morally correct, to deny that a state has a right to exist without implying the destruction of the people living within that state.
But South Africa continued to exist de jure, de facto, and in every other possible way even if a Black rather than White man had become its President.
On the other hand, it is true that when Rishi Sunak became Prime Minister of Britain, this green and pleasant land was annexed by Punjab. It was a time of terrible suffering for British people like me. I was required to dance bhangra just to get my driving license renewed.
Rectifying historical wrongs or political injustices
can only be done by people with power, not stupid professors of shite subjects
must be balanced against their humanitarian costs and a responsibility for the future being created.
No. Rectifying stuff must not be balanced with anything otherwise there will be no fucking rectifying. It is a different manner that you may choose to stop rectifying stuff if the sound of people screaming starts to wear you down.
This, I submit, is a more honest way of speaking about the right of states to exist.
The honest way is my way. I say States which kill invaders or insurrectionists have asserted their right to exist. If they haven't they may cease to exist.
That is, to say something like: ‘The humanitarian risks of correcting historical injustice and restoring the rights of those whose control over their land was illegitimately taken away are simply too great.
Which is like saying 'The risk of my causing the brains of the adult female population to explode by my having sex with each and every one of them and causing them to have super-intense orgasms is simply too great. That's why I settle for a crafty wank every so often. It isn't the case that I'm a sad loser who never had a girl friend.'
Justice cannot be served except at a great humanitarian cost, most likely to both populations.’ That statement has as much wisdom or validity as
my reason for settling for a wank
any moral compromise in conditions of asymmetric power, domination and uncertainty, but at least reflects the moral honesty and decency of holding in view that particular states exist today as a result of very specific and very recent historical injustices and atrocities.
Where is there any 'honesty and decency' in virtue signalling? Why pretend White and Black Americans will evacuate 'Turtle Island' so that its indigenous people get back territory their ancestors lost?
Yet this view is never the final word.
of a verbose cretin.
It never extinguishes the possibility of another world where oppression and dispossession give way to justice, dignity and equality.
and pigs fly around shitting on the heads of pigeons.
After all, we take for granted today many social and political realities that seemed beyond anyone’s imagination barely a generation ago.
Maybe some did till SCOTUS reversed Roe v Wade. Let us see if DOGE and legal challenges to affirmative action kills off Wokeness. The day may come when a White Professor who isn't saying 'African Americans must be re-enslaved' will be subjected to anal probes by Extra Terrestrials from Elon Musk's home planet.
