Philosophy of Law and State: Giovanni Damele Ifilnova Giovanni - Damele@fcsh - Unl.pt

PHILOSOPHY OF LAW AND STATE
Giovanni Damele
IFILNOVA
giovanni.damele@fcsh.unl.pt
Edmund Burke. Further Reflections on the Revolution in France.

Indianapolis: Liberty Fund, 1992.
Thomas Hobbes. Behemoth; or, The Long Parliament. Oxford:
Clarendon Press, 2010.
Lenin. State and Revolution. Chicago: Haymarket Books, 2014.
John Locke. Second Treatise of Government. Hoboken, NJ: Wiley-
Blackwell, 2012.
Carl Schmitt. Theory of the Partisan. New York: Telos Press, 2007.
David Armitage. Civil Wars. A History in Ideas. New York: Alfred A.
Knoppf, 2017
Carl von Clausewitz. Clausewitz on Small War (ed. by C. Daase and
J.W. Davis). Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2015.
Carl Schmitt. The Leviathan in the State Theory of Thomas Hobbes,
Greenwood Press, 1996
Enzo Traverso. Fire and Blood. The European Civil War 1914-1945.
London: Verso Books, 2016.
Giovanni'Damele', giovanni.damele@fcsh.unl.pt'
! Civil War vs State / Law

! State of Nature ! permanent civil war
! State failure ! transition to civil war
! “Civil war has something atrocious about it […] It is

fraternal war, because it is conducted within a
common political unit […] and because both
warring sides at the same time absolutely affirm
and absolutely deny this common unit” [Carl
Schmitt]
! “Around the world, democratic politics now looks
ever more like civil war by other means.” [David
Armitage]
! Politics is civil war by other means

! Contemporary politics in the age of populism is
getting closer to a civil war
1) polarization as endogenous strategy . Hence getting

closer from civil war because high incompatibility of
preferences
2) temporal acceleration of political expectations.
Democracy needs time and patience. Both absent in
civil wars. Social media technology amplifies this
issues
! “Civil war is an example of what philosophers term

an essentially contested concept […]. This occurs
because there is so much to be gained—and so much
can be lost—from the application of the concept to
particular cases and because, as with other
contested concepts—art, democracy, and justice, for
instance—the use implies a value judgment” [David
Armitage]
! “civil war”: bellum civile ! cives / hostis

! guerre civile, guerra civile, guerra civil,
Bürgerkrieg
! Stasis (στάσις)
! “The word is the root of “static,” and one of its literal

meanings was the absence of movement; however,
another meaning was “position” or “standing,” and
hence by implication “taking a stand” in a political
dispute […]. As a hostile and divisive political stance,
one defying the polis’s unity and common purpose,
stasis also became synonymous with faction,
partisanship” [David Armitage]
! Stasis ! conflict among “the friendly and the

kindred” (Plato)
! Polemos ! conflict with the alien and the foreign
(barbarians)
! Stasis
! Plato’s Laws (the Athenian: “Would he not much rather pay
regard to the internal warfare which arises, from time to time,
within the city, and is called, as you know, stasis—a kind of war
any man would desire never to see in his own city?”
! “the most dangerous kind of war…[and] the other, and much
milder form…[which] is that waged when we are at variance with
external aliens.”
! Thucydides’s History of the Peloponnesian War

! “This is the episode of the seditions in Corcyra (the Ionian island
known as Corfu) in 427 B.C.E. invoked by countless modern
commentators as the primal image of civil war itself. As
Thucydides relates, in the course of the war between Sparta and
Athens, Corcyra had changed sides to support the Athenians;
four years into the struggle, a group of Corcyrean captives were
sent back to their home city to stir up revolt and to persuade the
city to restore its earlier alliance with Corinth. The diplomatic
division between Sparta and Athens followed the political split
within Corcyra between the pro-Athenian democrats, who
supported the rule of the common people, and the oligarchs, who
supported the alliance with Corinth.” [David Armitage]
! Thucydides’s History of the Peloponnesian War

! (Hobbes’ translation - 1629,)“All formes of death were then
seene…For the Father slew his Sonne; men were dragged out of
the Temples, and then slaine hard by; and some immured in the
Temple of Bacchus, dyed within it. So cruell was this Sedition.”
! “By definition, anything that took place within the

bounds of the commonwealth was “civil” because it
took place among citizens.” [David Armitage]
! “The term bellum civile might even have been

patterned after the term ius civile, or “civil law,” which
governed relations between members of the same
political community or commonwealth, a set of norms
different from the “law of peoples” (ius gentium)
governing relations among foreigners or between
Romans and outsiders. Romans had pursued their
wars only against these literally hostile enemies—
hostes—who populated the world beyond the Roman
republic.” [David Armitage]

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PHILOSOPHY OF LAW AND STATE

Edmund Burke. Further Reflections on the Revolution in France.

! Civil War vs State / Law

! “Civil war has something atrocious about it […] It is

! Politics is civil war by other means

1) polarization as endogenous strategy . Hence getting

! “Civil war is an example of what philosophers term

! “civil war”: bellum civile ! cives / hostis

! “The word is the root of “static,” and one of its literal

! Stasis ! conflict among “the friendly and the

! Thucydides’s History of the Peloponnesian War

! Thucydides’s History of the Peloponnesian War

! “By definition, anything that took place within the

! “The term bellum civile might even have been

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