Another form of realism

"Of men we know and of the gods we believe that by a law of their nature the strong do as they can and the weak do as they must."

  - The Athenian representative, the Melian Debate, The Peloponnesian War, Thucydides.

In another post I said that by “political realism” some understand the doctrine that nations, institutions, groups, and even individual political agents seek power and only power for its own sake.

A different understanding is that in the selection and pursuit of their ends humans are overwhelmingly indifferent to others of their kind and neither morals nor religion are significant independent constraints on individual or collective human action.

Or, anyway, not very significant.

Sometimes this is expressed by saying political agents are concerned to protect and advance only their own interests, due allowance - if any - made for personal relations, exceptions, and loyalties - if any.

That is to say, those who count on religion or morals to deter crime in a pinch are reckoning without the strength of incredulity, the flimsiness of faith, and the ability of all but the most unfortunate and hoodwinked to shape their beliefs of either kind – and sometimes those of others – to suit themselves.

Hence, given inequalities of power, the strong ride roughshod over the weak or “the strong do as they can and the weak do as they must.”

Hence the destruction of Blanche DuBois (in Tennessee Williams’ A Streetcar Named Desire), whose rule of life she expressed thus: “I have always relied on the kindness of strangers.”

Hence the importance to all religions marked by lasting popular success of myths of rewards and punishments in an afterlife, by no means coincidentally including severe punishments for disbelief.

And hence the dose of truth in Thrasymachus’ sophist maxim (in Plato, The Republic), “Justice is the interest of the stronger.”

All the same, the strengths of this sort of view can be over-stated.

Those who dispute how far the Crusaders were fighting for God and how far for personal, worldly gain are disputing the same, or anyway a similar, question that could be and has been raised as well with regard to the Jihaders who in successive waves spread Islam across so much of the world.

And on the other hand it is also possible to grossly underestimate human credulity and the power of superstitious fear.