GR Study Guide: Lessons 1-19

Review topics are broken down into the three divisions of the course: classical theory, officership, and the just war tradition. Certain topics will overlap, for example, Stoicism applies to all three divisions.

Recap - Lesson 10

After the quiz, we looked at the philosophical underpinnings of cynicism. What makes us cynical? In general, the answer has to do with having higher expectations for something than what reality entails or delivers. That's in line with Anisthenes' school - the Cynics - who believed virtue was the only good, its essence lying in self-control and independence. Following Anisthenes' disposition, the doctrine developed into a coarse opposition to social customs and opinions. Eventually, he drove away his followers, and the terms cynic and cynicism have had negative connotations ever since. Today, the cynic is characterized by a belief that human conduct is wholly motivated by self-interest, and the cynic always seems to expect the worst from his fellow humans, the baser manifestations of human conduct and motivation.

In class, we focused on cadet cynicism. For the sake of balance, here's an editorial written by a faculty member at another service academy whose experience has obviously fallen short of his expectations.

Applying JWT to Cyberspace

NPR aired a story this morning (part 1 of 2) discussing whether and how just war criteria may be applied to a cyber attack. Policy makers fear the anonymity of the cyber world may make it difficult or impossibel to catch those who vilate the laws of cyber war.

"It is a near certainty that the United States will scrupulously obey whatever is written down, and it is almost as certain that no one else will," says Stewart Baker, a former NSA general counsel and an assistant secretary of homeland security under President George W. Bush.

Recap – Lessons 7-9

Socrates’ turn to ethical questions on how one should live a good life was characterized by (1) the subjects of his inquiry, for example, in The Republic, the question what is justice?; and (2) the technique he employed – dialectic – which provided an example of how one should authentically seek knowledge. Compared to the technique employed by the sophists, which was to “win” an argument without particular regard for the truth, dialectic was both more collaborative and more open-ended. It could also be more frustrating, as the discussions rendered by Plato didn’t always yield a definitive conclusion, and we’re often left to develop our own answers.

That was the case after our first reading from The Republic. Your answers to the question, what is justice?, clustered around the notions of it being external and based on punishment and reward. As we read, Socrates dealt with similar formulations from Cephalus, Polemarchus, Thrasymachus, and Glaucon. Each fell short of providing a satisfactory conception. Glaucon proposed perhaps the greatest challenge to any conception of justice by retelling the story of Gyges Ring: what would you do if you could get away with anything?

To answer, Socrates and his companions undertake an elaborate thought experiment where they build a city from scratch, the goal being to first identify where justice resides in the city, then to find analogues in the individual. Our second reading from The Republic described the virtues – wisdom, courage, and moderation – as they appear in both the city and the soul. Justice, it’s finally agreed, is harmony among these virtues, with each performing its function to sustain that balance.

Since justice is internal and not purely motivated by reward and punishment, Socrates and Plato have to take up the final task of answering why one should be just. By way of explaining, Socrates relates the allegory of the cave, which you skillfully rendered for your third assignment. As a metaphor for Plato’s theory of knowledge (the divided line), the story relays the struggle entailed for humans to break free from the comforts of illusion. There’s also a caution: sharing newly acquired wisdom may be hazardous to your health. The allegory also contains a mystery, which some of you identified: who freed the prisoner, and what was his/her status?

Recap – Lessons 5-6

We looked at the arguments made to justify the invasion of Iraq with an eye toward whether or not they were good, i.e., persuasive. That led to a discussion about what happens when a military officer disagrees with the stated policy of our civilian leadership and the decisions of our Commander-in-Chief. Pretty clear consensus that once those decisions are enacted in the form of directives from senior military leadership, we either follow orders or resign. Then we took it a step further: what about those officers who stay and obey yet still disagree? Do they get to state their opinion – privately – to family, friends, or subordinates? Mixed feelings on this, with many of you thinking we should suppress our opinions and toe the line, period-dot. Others observed we can’t help but form opinions, and suppressing them when someone asks would be tantamount to BS. In both cases, the effect on the morale of our subordinates was the primary motivator: toe the line so as not to discourage our Airmen, vs. be honest, because our Airmen will recognize BS.

Following Martin Cook’s comparison of two superpowers – the United States after the Cold War and ancient Athens after the Persian Wars – we explored some analogues between the Peloponnesian War and OIF. We looked at the difference between preemptive and preventive justifications for going to war (jus ad bellum), at the types of coalitions each conflict spawned, and at the harsh realism of the Athenians vs. the false dilemma embedded in our own policy, both of which resulted in a “with us or against us” stance toward other nations.

We also talked about the effects of war. For Athens, the Peloponnesian War ushered in the end of her domination of the Greeks, the “brief, shining moment” that marked the beginning of Western culture. The effect of OIF on the U.S. is still unwritten. As Secretary Gates recently told reporters, “the problem with this war for, I think, many Americans is that the premise on which we justified going to war proved not to be valid — that is, Saddam having weapons of mass destruction.” He added, candidly: “It will always be clouded by how it began.”

History will clarify what good comes out of OIF. From the Peloponnesian War, one positive outcome we identified was the re-focusing of philosophy into ethical realms of inquiry. Philosophy had already existed in an early form prior to the war. Its path out of the ancient Greek religion, what we now call mythology, appears when the earliest philosophers, the pre-Socratics, sought naturalistic explanations for life’s everyday challenges. They formed explanations based on their observations of nature, as opposed to relying on the presence of gods and the gods’ interaction with humanity to explain how and why the world worked. Even then, the pre-Socratics couldn’t wholly escape the religious context of their time, and many of their explanations retained mythic qualities. It wasn’t until Socrates developed his style of street philosophy that the ancient, mythopoeic ethic (based on punishment and reward) would begin to be challenged.

Quotes from The Republic

The safest general characterization of the European philosophical tradition is that it consists of a series of footnotes to Plato. - Alfred North Whitehead

Before we leave Socrates and Plato, if we ever really do, I thought I’d share some of my favorite quotes from The Republic...

[352d] …the argument is not about just any question, but about the way one should live.

[334b] “No, by Zeus,” (Polemarchus) said. “But I no longer know what I did mean.”

[363d] …the finest wage of virtue is an eternal drunk.

[350e] “…if you want to keep on questioning, go ahead and question, and, just as with old wives who tell tales, I shall say to you, ‘All right,’ and I shall nod and shake my head.”

[387d] …the decent man will believe that for the decent man—who happens to be his comrade—being dead is not a terrible thing.

[403a] “It’s ridiculous,” (Glaucon) said, “if the Guardian needs a Guardian.”

[457a] The women guardians must strip, since they’ll clothe themselves in virtue instead of robes, and they must take common part in war …

[459d.] There is a need for the best men to have intercourse as often as possible with the best women.

[338d] “You are disgusting, Socrates.”

[474a] “Socrates, what a phrase and argument you have let burst out. Now that it’s said, you can believe that very many men, and not ordinary ones, will on the spot throw off their clothes, and stripped for action, taking hold of whatever weapon falls under the hand of each, run full speed at you and do wonderful deeds.”