{"id":472,"date":"2016-03-07T20:40:04","date_gmt":"2016-03-07T20:40:04","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/nonewwars.co.uk\/blog\/?p=472"},"modified":"2016-08-20T22:56:12","modified_gmt":"2016-08-20T21:56:12","slug":"is-western-philosophy-inherently-violent","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/nonewwars.co.uk\/blog\/2016\/03\/is-western-philosophy-inherently-violent\/","title":{"rendered":"Is western philosophy inherently violent?"},"content":{"rendered":"

I’m studying philosophy<\/a> (“should war criminals should be punished for crimes committed half a century or more ago?<\/em>”\u00a0 “what we ought or ought not to do<\/em>”\u00a0 “what brings about the greatest possible amount of happiness in the world?<\/em>”\u00a0 “ought we<\/em><\/b> fight for our country if it is under threat?<\/em>” “political obligations: can I just opt out? When did I opt in?<\/em>“)<\/small> as part of my custom Peace Studies degree.\u00a0 But sometimes the best material comes not from text books but from unexpected sources.<\/p>\n

A favourite web cartoon strip is Dead Philosophers in Heaven<\/a>.\u00a0 In the comments below the strip about Machiavelli: immoral sociopath or satirist?<\/a>, is this:<\/p>\n

Machiavelli’s The Prince<\/em>\u00a0just describes the fact that there is no state or nation in history that hasn\u2019t been founded on\u00a0massive\u00a0violence.\u00a0 Arguably\u00a0creating the biggest, fattest, ugliest paradox of western\u00a0political philosophy.\u00a0 He also\u00a0lets us know that any state at least partially dependant on consent, if it\u2019s going\u00a0to last,\u00a0is going to have to\u00a0learn\u00a0how to deceive its citizenry.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Ouch!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I’m studying philosophy (“should war criminals should be punished for crimes committed half a century or more ago?”\u00a0 “what we ought or ought not to do”\u00a0 “what brings about the greatest possible amount of happiness in the world?”\u00a0 “ought we … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[152,92,196,70],"tags":[158,95,198,74],"class_list":["post-472","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-absolute-power","category-empires","category-jus-in-bello","category-politicians","tag-absolute-power","tag-empires","tag-jus-in-bello","tag-politicians"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/nonewwars.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/472","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/nonewwars.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/nonewwars.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nonewwars.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nonewwars.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=472"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/nonewwars.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/472\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":475,"href":"https:\/\/nonewwars.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/472\/revisions\/475"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/nonewwars.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=472"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nonewwars.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=472"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nonewwars.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=472"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}