Just Institutions after Genocide

Ricoeurs little ethics and the case of Armenia

Dr. Michael Funk Deckard Lenoir-Rhyne University (North Carolina) Nation, State, Motherland, Ideology of State Tsaghkadzor, Republic of Armenia Peace then is a snare; war is a snare; change is a snare; permanence a snare. When our day is come for the victory of death, death closes in; there is nothing we can do, except be crucifiedand resurrected; dismembered totally, and then reborn Joseph Campbell, The Hero with a Thousand Faces The state is the real expression of the will to live together in institutions Paul Ricoeur, Oneself as Another Young post-communist democraciesi are facing many barriers to thriving. One such barrier concerns the development of just institutions. In order for a democracy to thrive, the notion of nation-stateii should be replaced by the notion of polis, in other words, to define justice by means of moral and political notions that mirror the state/soul relationship in Platos Republic. The power of such institutions are primarily concerned about the future, that is, of maintaining republics (i.e. Roman Empire) for the long term.iii Yet political polities have a difficult time thriving without the human beings inside of them also thriving. Since Plato, formative political thinkers such as Hobbes, Kant and Rawls have defined just institutions in terms of autonomy and individualism as well as national sovereignty (i.e. 19th century nationhood) instead of international cooperation. Inasmuch as these philosophers have examined justice, they have left many questions

unanswered such as how best to achieve just institutions. How might the history of political philosophy apply to the case of Armenia, a young democracy still suffering the trauma of genocide?iv What keeps Armenia from thriving? How might Armenia model a post-conflict process of democracy building? This paper attempts to do three things. First, I will describe what I mean by just institutions, in which both terms are equally valid and equally problematic. There is no justice without institutions and there are no institutions without justice. Yet it is scarcely realistic to claim that all institutions are just. However, the goal and aim of justice is necessary. Second, I will give a brief outline of the history of political philosophy central to the argument I am making here, namely, that for a democracy to thrive it must aim at the Good Life with and for Others in Just Institutions (see Ricoeur: 169-296). Just as it is necessary to examine the development and history of the polis, republic, and nation-state to comprehend where a country is now, so it is necessary to look briefly at the history of the concept of justice, especially with regards to intentions and motivations. Third, I will speculatively try to apply this account to the case of Armenia. I say speculative because I am aware how difficult, complicated and messy it is to apply theories to particular cases. Hence, it is in this third part that I am most likely to blunder. However, following Socrates clich of know thyself, and as acting and suffering subjects, we should undertake the challenge of moral and political self-reflection and questioning necessary for a thriving eudaimoniac democracy. The main inspiration for this paper comes from the 20th century French philosopher Paul Ricoeur, who throughout his life strove to comprehend but also attempt to heal the traumas of 20th century politics. One of the 2

central points of his work concerns the faille, a fault line or fracture within human nature. As Bernard Dauenhauer has written in Paul Ricoeur: The Promise and Risk of Politics, Throughout his corpus, Ricoeur has consistently emphasized the fallibility and the fragility of everything human. This fallibility and fragility is not merely, or mainly, a fundamental flaw. It is also and primarily what makes people capable of worthwhile activity, or genuinely valuable accomplishments. Politics is a prime domain in which human fragility has found and continues to find expression (Dauenhauer 2). I also believe that much inspiration can be found in the fallibility and fragility of political institutions, in particular how the fragility can become a means of reconciliation after genocide. By examining what has gone wrong in personal or national decisionmaking, one can learn to correct oneself and ones country. This paper simply attempts to primarily take a section of one work by Ricoeur, Oneself as Another, what has been called his little ethics, and apply it to the case of Armenia. I. By institution, we are to understand here the structure of living together as this belongs to a historical communitypeople, nation, region, and so fortha structure irreducible to interpersonal relations and yet bound up with these in a remarkable sense (Ricoeur: 194; cf. Ishkanian: 6).v Here, Ricoeur sums up Max Webers sociological understanding of the Greek conception of ethos, where on the one hand, the state can be defined as a relation of domination (Herrschaft) of man over man on the basis of the means of legitimate violence or the state can be defined, on the other hand, as power-in-common (Weber: 2) (which includes the Arendtian notions of plurality and action in concert see Ricoeur: 195). This distinction is the stepping off point for understanding, on this 20th anniversary of Armenias statehood, an 3

analysis of just institutions. To immediately take an example from the Arab Spring as well as the American occupy movement, we see how domination can quickly arise in a country. Each country, Tunisia, Libya, Egypt, Syria, Bahrain, etc. has reacted to their protesters differently. And yet all countries perform a kind of domination with violence at the basis of their statehood. How much force does a country use against its own people? The use of batons, pepper-spray, bullets, or tanks all touch upon this delicate balance between keeping order and allowing freedom. One of the powers of institutions is how they bridge the interpersonal and the public through action in concert.vi Insofar as law, distribution of resources, and equality fully tie to the term just, so we might claim that institutions, which claim themselves to be just, require proportionate equality. This idea of equality is central to any just institution. But equality must also apply to all of humanity, not just any specific nation. The danger of keeping institutions from thriving is based on violence, or the coercion a country exerts to prove itself right. The occasion of violence, not to mention the turn toward violence, resides in the power exerted over one will by another will (Ricoeur: 220). Here, the distinction between two notions of power mentioned above with regards to institutions is that of power-to-do, or power to act, over against power-in-common, the capacity of the members of a historical community to exercise in an indivisible manner their desire to live together (ibid.). The violence occurs when power over diminishes or destroys the power-to-do of others. Justice arises in such a case where the question of what is mine and what is yours becomes blurred and punishment must be exacted. In the case of Armenia (or Bosnia), trust is abused twice over. First, in the violence of the genocide itself; second, in the lack of acknowledgment of wrongs done. Herein lies a stubborn 4

persistence on the part of the perpetrator to keep just institutions from thriving. The best response to such evils or violence is through morality: to all the figures of evil responds the no of morality (ibid., 221). The most ethicists or historians can do is affirm the indignity of the acts of genocide and ask for the perpetrator, as governmental institutions that have outlived those who committed the acts themselves, to acknowledge, ask forgiveness for their actions and try to make amends.vii This making amends is at the very center of justice, which should be interpreted in terms of distributive justice (at the center of Aristotles Nichomachean Ethics V). However, there are two senses of equality at work here: equality versus equity. Should each person (or state) receive the same amount or what is proportionate to what they deserve?viii How this question is answered cuts to the very core of how just institutions, whether at the national or international level, cope with the messiness of reality.ix The conflict with Turkey over the Armenian genocide provides a good case for what requires an analysis of motivations and institutions. While it is impossible perfectly to apply the theory of just institutions to this case without guesswork, it may fit the claim of designat[ing] one of the places in which practical wisdom is exercised, namely the hierarchy of institutional mediation through which practical wisdom must pass if justice is truly to deserve the name of fairness [quit] (Ricoeur: 250). According to Ricoeur, it is necessary to move from theory to practice, or from text to action, and this occurs best in a particular conflict, whether internal or external, and yet there is as much danger to action as there is promise. The French Revolution proves that political action can be a 5

promise and a risk, a joy and a terror. The possibility of conflict seemed to us to be already inscribed in the equivocal structure of just distribution, Ricoeur writes. While asking this fundamentally Aristotelian question regarding properly fair distribution (of land, resources, etc.), the deeper question of cooperation among individuals within a society who cannot be entirely disinterested or autonomous, must be asked. This is what is at stake within even a discussion of sharing or looking at lands that were once part of Greater Armenia.x A Greek polis is not a Roman republic let alone a modern nation-state, however. Before scientifically (i.e. archaeologically) or historically analyzing these lands outside of modern-day Armenia, the philosopher of just institutions asks a question of motivation and intention. In order to further this analysis, then, we must look to the history of political philosophy for a possible answer. II. The history of political philosophy enables a deeper understanding of this conception of just institutions. This philosophy not only illuminates what it is about building a polis that is constructive, but it also reveals deep rifts in the Enlightenment optimism of achieving a better society through knowledge, history or philosophy. Beginning in Platos Republic, Socrates asks the question of fellow city-dwellers, what is justice? All of the answers he receives, such as paying what you owe (331e), benefitting friends and harming enemies (334a), or most famously Thrasymachus advantage of the stronger party (339a), Socrates is easily able to debunk or criticize. Justice cannot be reduced to a technique (techne) or easily-digestible formula. In fact, it is extremely complicated. By the end of the Republic, we see that the state of harmony in the soul mirrors the city, and that justice lies in the parts of the soul/city being in harmony with each other. Akin to a mathematician, 6

teacher, doctor, or musician, they must try out cures that do not work before finding what does work or is at harmony with the system (see 340a-342e). As early as Plato, all authority, government, and coercion is centered in a small city (the Republic) about the size of Athens in 4th century BCE. Platos system, which applies primarily to a polis, and while great in theory, is very difficult to apply to modern day nation-states (like Armenia). If we turn to Aristotles Nichomachean Ethics, there is a little more to go on in books VIII-IX, where he argues for the parallelism of friendship and justice. Whereas it was harmony that was key for Plato, for Aristotle he thinks in terms of equity (see 1158b30) or what he calls earlier distributive justice (see 1131a10ff.). Many examples abound, such as can friendships exist without utility or pleasure? The measure of all friendship for Aristotle is the mother, whom he holds up as being the most honorable: it seems to lie in loving rather than in being loved, as is indicated by the delight mothers take in loving; for some mothers hand over their children to be brought up, and so long as they know their fate they love them and do not seek to be loved in return, but seem to be satisfied if they see them prospering (1159a27ff.). Already, it appears that justice may be better modeled on friendshipxi than domination, coercion, or authority: the mother(land) rather than the father(land). Whereas Plato modeled the city on the parts of the soul (psychology), Aristotle models it on relations between people, like the family (sociology). The 17th century political philosopher Thomas Hobbes is well known to be one of the first to articulate a theory that starts from the state of nature. As one commentator writes, Humans, including both moderates 7

and dominators, because of their very nature, are condemned to violence in the state of nature because the behaviour that leads to such violence is frequently rationalgiven the circumstances of nature.xii This claim states that at the very essence of human nature is violent behaviour that is seemingly rational. In fact, to mention one of the most famous Hobbesian claims, in the state of nature, life is nasty, brutish, and short, and that the most primary passion of all humans is fear. Peter Balakian, in his Black Dog of Fate, describes this state of nature very well when he writes, For my grandparents and parents generation, perhaps the world was a place conspiring to kill you. After the genocide, the fear of death was different from the fear of mortality. In this atmosphere of deep anxiety, our family was far from the optimistic mood of suburbia. As my grandmother said to me as I lay on my bed recovering from the measles, Sleep with one eye open; know the evil eye. (94) If Hobbes is right, unlike Plato or Aristotle, every political or ethical endeavour is one guided by fear.xiii One cannot have peace (or conflict) without understanding human striving and desires. Unlike ancient or medieval theories of the state, Hobbes is particularly modern in centring his theory on the human being as such. It is because the human feels fear that he becomes violent. In other words, violence is born of selfpreservation or self-interest, a need or drive to preserve ones own state of being. Nevertheless, the flip side of this theory of human nature is that one should overcome this fear and leave the state of nature. This means that, [if] it is rational for humans to behave violently in the state of nature, it must be made rational for them to behave peacefully if any change is to be brought about.xiv

Hobbes lived at the precise time when the divine right of kings was beginning to be questioned and the historical circumstances of Hobbess time determined him to begin, instead of with a gods eye point of view, with human selfishness and egocentrism. His system could be described as one of psychological egoism, that is the theory that all of our actionsgood or bad, noble or viciousare motivated by our own self-interest, especially, in Hobbess view, the fear of violent death.xv If all that we are as humans are egocentric beings who only act kindly or ethically due to our fear of retribution or death, then there is not much room for the rational justification of just institutions or peace. On this Hobbesian basis, the only reason peace would exist in a society is due to the fear another has of being violently killed. My view challenges this Hobbesian fear by following the second of Max Webers definitions of the state, which tries to get beyond the state of nature (i.e. self-interest and sovereignty as domination). We are not entirely autonomous individuals fearing for our lives, but also part of a trusting community. What this means is that in place of the Hobbesian strong sovereign, the political choice and action is spread out through just institutions.xvi Or, put differently, there is a choice between the Platonist polis, the Ciceronian republic, and the Hobbesian state. Without going into the bitter detail of 19th century nationalism and realpolitik, we can now look back in retrospect to see that all of the 20th century atrocities, including the Armenian genocide, are products of Max Webers first definition of state as dominationinfluenced as it is by modern political theory starting with Hobbes. This could be summed up in the principle of sovereignty, which Grotius identified as the foundation of state security [and] which proved to be an impediment to the development of the structures of international law that he believed 9

were needed to enhance collective security (Cortright; 49). In other words, when each country has a self-interested me first attitude instead of a more collective we attitude, the results are disastrous. The clash between individual sovereignty and collective responsibility has been and remains a fundamental contradiction within the nation state system limiting the prospects for cooperative peace (ibid.). Looking at the period of 1915-1920 where tragedy reigned through massacres of at least one million Armenians plus many more deportations, where even the term genocide becomes controversial.xvii What is interesting for the concept of just institutions is how this genocide affects the identity of modern-day Armenians.xviii As questioned at the beginning of this paper, what it takes for a country like Armenia to thrive is to begin to understand how the genocide and 19th century developments in political philosophy as regarding nationalism and sovereignty has affected (in my view, negatively) contemporary identity. To put it philosophically, the history of political philosophy and the politics it has engendered has failed us because it has emptied the Other (the other person, the other country) of meaning, rendering it alien instead of infusing it with concern and care. In order to kill or murder the other, one must dehumanize it. This danger is very clear in the domain of law. In fact, as Ricoeur describes it, discussing Hegel, It is noteworthy, indeed, that all forms of fraud, perjury, violence, and crime are introduced under the negative title of injustice; in return, abstract right amounts to counterviolence, responding to violence (Zwang) in the domain in which freedom is externalized in the things possessed (Ricoeur: 254). This can clearly be seen by the French law against denial of the Armenian genocide. The French government is attempting to help recognize the violence against Armenia. And yet, as Ricoeur argues, this abstract right does not bind people togetherit only 10

separates them into what is mine and thine. For us, as Ricoeur writes, who have crossed through the monstrous events of the twentieth century tied to the phenomenon of totalitarianism, we have reasons to listen to the opposite verdict, devastating in another way, pronounced by history itself through the mouths of its victims (ibid., 256). This is the centre of Ricoeurs lesson to us regarding the fallibility and the fragility of human nature. Those in power suppress the voices of those who are silenced. Turkey, due to its fragility, is afraid of Armenia just as the governments in the Arab Spring countries are afraid of the power of the people. The central lesson from this is how Armenia can take the high road, even when the very existence of the genocide is denied. The distinction made between power and domination, mentioned in the first section of this paper under the definition of institutions, comes into play here. Not only does the history of political philosophy from Plato to Rawls influence the very thinking and spirit of a people, but following this Hegelian insight regarding the spirit of a people [being] perverted to the point of feeding a deadly Sittlichkeit, it is finally in the moral consciousness of a small number of individuals, inaccessible to fear and corruption, that the spirit takes refuge, once it has fled the now-criminal institutions (ibid., 256). That is to say, during WWII many just followed the crowd (i.e. Nazis), hence losing the true spirit of the people. It is this spirit, which Ricoeur says stays alive in a few people brave enough to create institutions that counter the state-led terror. There is a painful conflict between moral consciousness and the spirit of a people that will always be there. In aiming for the practical wisdom contained in just institutions, Armenia is capable of creating a spirit unlike the realpolitik of the 19th and early 20th centuries. 11

One way of applying this theory to Armenia can be found in Peter Balakians memoirs where he states, regarding his own family: werent the Balakians part of an intellectual tradition that was both Armenian and European? In Constantinople, Armenians had absorbed European culture into their own for centuries, since the time of the Enlightenment in particular, from which ideas about political and social freedom sustained Armenians seeking reform from an oppressive Ottoman society (Balakian: 92) Even if before 1914 internationalism (or, to put it in Kants terms, cosmopolitanism) was at its peak, but failed to prevent the horrors of WWI (Cortright: 52), that does not mean we cannot look to internationalism over nationalism as one way of solving the nation-state failure. There is a continual conflict, it seems to me, between primordialism, nationalism, and internationalism that cuts to the core of the distinction between power and domination. A similar conflict exists between the polis, the republic and the nation-state. The virtue of justice, in the sense of isotes in Pericles and in Aristotle, aims precisely at balancing this relation, that is, at placing domination under the control of power-in-common (Ricoeur: 257). This political bond is beyond the state and nationalistic ideology. It is the feeling or pathos of home, belonging, rootedness that is shared, not the name, for example of Armenian or Turkish, that is the real power of politics.

III. Allow me to present Peter Balakians case for a moment. He sees in his own family two aunts, Auntie Anna and Auntie Nona, at odds with each other. Both are Armenian, but one is Old world Armenians defending their particular province or city and one is cosmopolitan. In his words, country fierceness and cosmopolitan arrogance (90). Both are legitimate to a certain extent. Think of this as the nationalism vs. 12

internationalism tension within the same family. But instead of seeing these as fully opposed or fully synthesized (in an Hegelian sense), the best solution is to find within oneself what Balakian calls, Armenian and European, as the countries in the EU have been able to integrate nationalist interests with European interests. Self-interest can only be found in a greater whole. This is not mere utilitarianism or pragmatics, however. Max Webers second notion of state (i.e. power-in-common) is necessary here when the borders of ones own country (or self) are seen as porous. The treaty of Kars (from 1921)xix is an arbitrary and artificial boundary created by nationalist and self-interested parties who were unable to see the ramifications and complexity of history. Perhaps revisiting and recreating this border may be a step in the right direction toward creating the justice and equity necessary for peaceful relations. This debate between Anna and Nona is what I call a loving struggle.xx What is a loving struggle? Ricoeur writes, Thus the terror of history and the terror of the psyche mutually precipitate each other, so the condition, the tragedy, that is mankind is described. The same thing could be said in terms of the city and the soul: for Platos Republic, if history (or the polis or the nation-states) is not at peace, how can the soul be at peace? In his article, Non-violent Man and his Presence to History,xxi Ricoeur attempts to relate history and nonviolence, not in a passive or negative way as in Hobbess definition of peace as absence of war, but in an altogether constructive and positive formulation. There is a conviction here behind Ricoeurs theory that believes, like Jesus, Gandhi, and Martin Luther King et al., in the conviction of nonviolence. The loving struggle resists any kind of passive reading of nonviolence, however. For the loving struggle to work, it must 1) acquire an awareness of violence; 2) reveal the efficacy of nonviolence; and 3) ask what is nonviolent resistance over against progressivist violence. Behind 13

Ricoeurs article is a presupposition, however: that Jesus Sermon on the Mount has to do with our history and the whole of history, with its political and social structures, and does not deal merely with private acts without historical significance. This sermon demands something difficult, Ricoeur says, and introduces a vertical dimension into history which does not easily assimilate itself: the Sermon on the Mount, with its non-violence, wishes to enter history, that its intention is practical, that it calls for incarnation and not evasion. History thus spells out the complete meaning of what we have willed through action and not intention. For the case of Armenia, the loving struggle consists in knowing that justice cannot be served until the Turkish government admits and names genocide. France and presumably Germany are trying to aid this admission. Until then, the struggle part of the equation will be emphasised. Until then, just institutions will falter. Plato, Hobbes, Kant, Rawls and the rest of political philosophy will not help. However, there is hope. As in the case of Bosnia-Herzegovina, in which I attended the commemoration for the genocide in Srebenica, Serbian president Boris Tadi attended this commemoration in 2010, despite the fact that many citizens of Serbia held signs that said, Tadi is no Serb. This kind of political courage is what is needed on behalf of the Turkish government. If the Serbian president can do that in Bosnia, so might the Turkish president if and when there is a president with enough courage to do so in Armenia.xxii To conclude, I believe that the notion of nation-state, as it has been handed down to us by the 19th-century conceptions of nationalism and sovereignty, needs to be re-imagined. One way of doing so is to think of the state as a motherland, a polis or a republic in place of a nation14

state. A mother must allow for growth, healing, and separation but also bonding. Central to Aristotles conception of friendship in the Nichomachean Ethics, as quoted earlier, this ancient Greek philosopher understood the goal of the good life in loving. But this loving cannot occur without justice and equity. It also faces the challenge of enemyship. Thus, to begin to answer the question of thriving posed at the beginning of this paper, it is necessary to analyse the concept of just institutions as I have described them here in a sociological sense, following the second of Webers notions of the state, in which we must live together peacefully. To use a theological example tied to the history of the Armenian church, and its challenge from Byzantine regarding the belief of Christ having two natures, divine and human this belief ties to the loving struggle for just institutions.xxiii How does a country of humans attempt to become divine like Christ? Not without struggle.xxiv

Works Cited ADALIAN, R. P., The Armenian Genocide, in Century of Genocide: Eyewitness accounts and critical views (New York, 1997), 41-77. ALEXANDER, Gerard, Institutions, Path Dependence, and Democratic Consolidation, Journal of Theoretical Politics 13 (2001), 249-270. BALAKIAN, Peter, The Black Dog of Fate: a memoir (New York, 1997) BRANDON, Eric, The Coherence of Hobbess Leviathan (London, 2007) COADY, C.A.J., Messy Morality: The Challenge of Politics (Oxford, 2008) CORTRIGHT, David, Peace: A History of Movements and Ideas (Cambridge, 2008) DADRIAN, Vahakn N., The History of the Armenian Genocide: Ethnic Conflict from the Balkans to Anatolia to the Caucasus (Oxford: Bergahn Books, 1995) DE WAAL, Thomas, The Caucasus: An Introduction (Oxford, 2010) DERRIDA, Jacques, The Politics of Friendship, trans. George Collins (New York, 1997) GERT, Bernard, Hobbes: Prince of Peace (London, 2010) 15

HALL, Peter, and Rosemary C.R. Taylor, Political Science and the Three New Institutionalisms, Political Studies XLIV (1996), 936-957. HOBBES, Thomas, Leviathan (London, 1651) HOVANNISIAN, Richard G., ed., The Armenian Genocide in Perspective (New Brunswick: Transaction Publishers, 1986) ISHKANIAN, Armine, Democracy building and civil society in post-Soviet Armenia (London, 2008) KALAYJIAN, Ani, 'Coping with Ottoman-Turkish genocide', Journal of Traumatic Stress 9 (1996), 87-97. , Generational Impact of mass trauma: The Ottoman Turkish genocide of the Armenians, in Jihad and Sacred Vengeance (New York, 2002), 254-279. , Forgiveness in spite of Denial, Revisionism, and Injustice, in Forgiveness and Reconciliation (Springer, 2009), 237-249. KANT, Immanuel, On Cosmopolitanism & 'Toward Perpetual Peace' MARCH, James G., & Johan P. Olsen,, The logic of appropriateness (Oslo, 2009) MILLER, D. E., & Miller, L. T., 'An oral history perspective on responses to the Armenian Genocide', in The Armenian Genocide in Perspective (Transaction, 1986), 187-203. , Survivors: An Oral History of the Armenian Genocide (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1993) PLATO, Republic RAWLS, John, Theory of Justice (Harvard, 1971) RICOEUR, Paul, Oneself as Another (Chicago, 1992)

SARAJLIC, Eldar, State or Nation? The Challenges of Political Transition in Bosnia and Herzegovina (Sarajevo, 2011) SMITH, R. W., Genocide and denial: The Armenian case and its Implications, Armenian Review 42 (1989), 1-38 SOLOMON , Robert C. and Clancy W. Martin, Morality and the Good Life: An Introduction to Ethics through Classical Sources, 4th ed. (New York, 2004) TRUMPENER, U. Germany and the Ottoman Empire, 1914-1918 (Princeton, 1968) WEBER, Max, Politics as a Vocation, trans. H.H. Gerth & C. Wright Mills (Philadelphia, 1966 [originally published 1919]) YACOUBIAN, Viken, Forgiveness in the Context of the Armenian 16

Experience, in Forgiveness and Reconciliation (Dordrecht: Springer, 2009), 223-235.

17

I will not discuss the post-communist factor in any detail, since there has already been much written on this. See Ishkanian, especially chapter 5, for a discussion of this literature.
ii

Referring specifically to Bosnia-Herzegovina, Eldar Sarajlic writes, Although huge progress was made after the war in terms of rebuilding the basic institutional infrastructure of the country, most of the country still lingers in the state of inefficiency, deadlock and ineptitude (10). Sarajlic believes one of the primary reasons for this ineptitude is the conceptual tension between the notions of nation and state, which underlies most of the transformation efforts and political conflicts present in the country (11). In order to further understand the concepts of nation and state, one must look to the history of political philosophy and its uses in contemporary political discourse as I attempt to do in this paper. The way the Enlightenment and 19-20th centuries theorized the nation-state should no longer be applied to Bosnia-Herzegovina or to Armenia. Rather, we should look Max Webers Politics as a Vocation as well as the work of Plato and Aristotle through Rawls and Ricoeur on justice.
iii

There is a noted ambiguity throughout this paper between the notions of polis, Republic, and nation-state. I am blatantly defending the first two over the latter one, but for each, see Plato, Cicero and Weber.
iv

For some account of the genocide, see Adalian 1997; Dadrian 1995; Honannisian 1986; Miller 1993; Smith 1989. For a historical perspective set within the context of WWI, see Trumpener 1968 . However, there are two sides to the debate. As one website, Tall Armenian Tale: The Other Side of the Falsified Genocide, writes, THE PURPOSE OF TALL ARMENIAN TALE (TAT)...Is to expose the mythological Armenian genocide, from the years 1915-16. A wartime tragedy involving the losses of so many has been turned into a politicized story of exclusive victimhood, and because of the prevailing prejudice against Turks, along with Turkish indifference, those in the world, particularly in the West, have been quick to accept these terribly defamatory claims involving the worst crime against humanity. Few stop to investigate below the surface that those regarded as the innocent victims, the Armenians, while seeking to establish an independent state, have been the ones to commit systematic ethnic cleansing against those who did not fit into their racial/religious ideal: Muslims, Jews, and even fellow Armenians who had converted to Islam. Criminals as Dro, Antranik, Keri, Armen Garo and Soghoman Tehlirian (the assassin of Talat Pasha, one of the three Young Turk leaders, along with Enver and Jemal) contributed toward the deaths (via massacres, atrocities, and forced deportation) of countless innocents, numbering over half a million. What determines genocide is not the number of casualties or the cruelty of the persecutions, but the intent to destroy a group, the members of which are guilty of nothing beyond being members of that group. The Armenians suffered their fate of resettlement not for their ethnicity, having co-existed and prospered in the Ottoman Empire for centuries, but because they rebelled against their dying Ottoman nation during WWI (World War I); a rebellion that even their leaders of the period, such as Boghos Nubar and Hovhannes Katchaznouni, have admitted. Yet the hypocritical world rarely bothers to look beneath the surface, not only because of anti-Turkish prejudice, but because of Armenian wealth and intimidation tactics. As a result, these libelous lies, sometimes belonging in the category of genocide studies, have become part of the school curricula of many regions. Armenian scholars such as Vahakn Dadrian, Peter Balakian, Richard Hovannisian, Dennis Papazian and Levon Marashlian have been known to dishonestly present only one side of their story, as long as their genocide becomes affirmed. They have enlisted the help of "genocide scholars," such as Roger Smith, Robert Melson, Samantha Power, and Israel Charny and particularly those of Turkish extraction, such as Taner Akcam and Fatma Muge Gocek, who justify their alliance with those who actively work to harm the interests of their native country, with the claim that such efforts will help make Turkey more" democratic." On the other side of this coin are genuine scholars who consider all the relevant data, as true scholars have a duty to do, such as Justin McCarthy, Bernard Lewis, Heath Lowry, Erich Feigl and Guenter Lewy. The unscrupulous genocide industry, not having the facts on its side, makes a practice of attacking the messenger instead of the message, vilifying these professors as deniers and "agents of the Turkish government." The truth means so little to the progenocide believers, some even resort to the forgeries of the Naim-Andonian telegrams or sources based on false evidence, as Franz Werfels The Forty Days of Musa Dagh. Naturally, there is no end to the hearsay "evidence" of the prejudiced pro-Christian people from the period, including missionaries and Near East Relief representatives, Arnold Toynbee, Lord Bryce, Lloyd George,

Woodrow Wilson, Theodore Roosevelt, and so many others. When the rare Westerner opted to look at the issues objectively, such as Admirals Mark Bristol and Colby Chester, they were quick to be branded as Turcophiles by the propagandists. The sad thing is, even those who dont consider themselves as bigots are quick to accept the deceptive claims of Armenian propaganda, because deep down people feel the Turks are natural killers and during times when Turks were victims, they do not rate as equal and deserving human beings. This is the main reason why the myth of this genocide has become the common wisdom. [http://www.tallarmeniantale.com/terror-casestudy.htm]
v

For additional literature on the sociological notion of institution, see Alexander 2001; Hall and Taylor 1996; March and Olsen 2009.
vi vii

This is also important for Yacoubian 2009: 224.

Cf. Yacoubian 2009: 223, where he writes, Recent research on peace psychology has suggested there is an inseparable link between peace building and social justice movements, implying that acts of forgiveness and reconciliation must emanate from equitable and cooperative interpersonal and social arrangements. See also Kalayjian 1996; 2002; 2009;
viii

The case of Armenia is compelling. There was much discussion of Western Armenia (i.e. the lands in present-day Turkey that were once part of Greater Armenia, for example where Mount Ararat is situated). As with Nagorno-Karabakh, this is a very heated issue and thus bound to raise ire on either side of the debate.
ix x xi xii xiii

For the notion of messy morality, see Coady 2008. See the discussion in Panossian 2006; De Waal 2010. And yet friendship entails enemyship (hostis). See Derrida. Brandon: 28.

It is worth pointing out that Hobbes is constructing a philosophy as much as he is constructing an anthropology, psychology, sociology, theory of language and theory of the state. See Daniela Coli, Hobbess Revolution, in Politics and the Passions, 1500-1850 (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2006), 75-92, 76.
xiv xv xvi

Brandon: 28. Solomon and Martin: 180. However, Gert disagrees with this view in his Hobbes: Prince of Peace.

Whereas Hobbes believed that in a state of nature there is a war of all against all and that the three principal causes of quarrel are competition, diffidence and glory (Leviathan, ch. xiii), Kant proposes articles for how to attain perpetual peace between states. He radically disagrees with the social contract tradition. See Kants On Perpetual Peace.
xvii

See Martin Shaw, What is Genocide? (Cambridge: Polity Press, 2007). The discussion of the case of Armenian genocide is discussed throughout this book. See also Larry May, Genocide: a Normative Account (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2010), where Armenia is not discussed, which does not necessarily mean he does not think it is a genocide.
xviii xix xx

For some discussion, see Panossian 2006: 228ff.

See De Waal 2010, 9; Coene, 3.

Paul Ricoeur writes, In the sense in which the question is identified with the philosopher himself, it becomes a kind of living process. The question is not only thought out; it is actually thinking. Is not

the attempt to identify oneself with this question by a sort of loving struggle quite akin to the efforts we make to communicate with our friends? (Husserl and the Sense of History, 170). See also Michael Funk Deckard and Paul Custer, From Crisis to Loving Struggle: History and Nonviolence in the Early Ricoeur (forthcoming).
xxi

Paul Ricoeur, History and Truth, trans. Charles A. Kelbley (Evanston, IL: Northwestern University Press, 1965) 10.
xxii

Even the greatest living Turkish writer, Orhan Pamuk, has discussed publically the Armenian Genocide, which is a crime in Turkey. See his article, On Trial, The New Yorker, December 19, 2005.
xxiii

I want to emphasize, however, that struggle is not to be thought of in terms of Christian vs. Muslim, Muslim vs. Christian, or Nation vs. Nation, but like Balakians aunts, of human vs. human.
xxiv

This paper would not have been written if it were not for the gracious work of Armen Hareyan, who initiated my interest in Armenia and communicated with the organizers for me to be able to visit Armenia. I cannot thank him as well as Edgar Hovhannisyan, Ursula Schicks and Sona Grigorian enough. Their hospitality and friendliness were overwhelming and they continue to inspire me. I also wish to thank Paul Custer and John Cheek for advice and comments concerning this paper and Armenia in general, and to Julianne Funk Deckard and Sarah Wallace who kept me from some egregious errors.