The (?) Roman (?) Empire (?)
- DISCLAIMER: The content presented here could have been categorized as "General Philosophy", however, due to the great load of more pertinent subjects to history, I finally decided to put it in the "humanities". -
The Roman Empire was the post-Republican period of ancient Rome. From the accession of Caesar Augustus to the military anarchy of the third century, it was a principate with Italy as metropole of the provinces and the city of Rome as sole capital - 27 BC – 286 AD -. Although fragmented briefly during the military crisis, the empire was forcibly reassembled, then ruled by multiple emperors who shared rule over the Western Roman Empire and over the Eastern Roman Empire.
After the death of Theodosius I - emperor from AD 379 - AD 395 - his sons would each inherit a half of the Empire. Honorius - emperor of the Western Roman Empire from AD 395 - AD 423 - would inherit the West, and his brother Arcadius - emperor of the Eastern Roman Empire from AD 395 - AD 408 -, the East, thus making the Roman State remain united as a single polity, yet administered separately by two independent courts. It is at this moment - on the death of Theodosius I in AD 395 - that the vast majority of historians agree that it is the end of a single Roman state, and the beginning of two independent governments of one single civilization.
Rome remained the nominal capital of both parts until 476 AD, when the imperial insignia were sent to Constantinople, following the capture of Ravenna by the barbarians of Odoacer and the subsequent deposition of Romulus Augustulus - last - de facto - emperor of Rome -, when, conventionally historians mark the end of Ancient Rome.
The Byzantine Empire, also referred to as the Eastern Roman Empire, or Byzantium, was the continuation of the Roman Empire in its eastern provinces during Late Antiquity and the Middle Ages, when its capital city was Constantinople. It survived the fragmentation and fall of the Western Roman Empire in the 5th century AD and continued to exist for an additional thousand years until it fell to the Ottoman Empire in 1453.
The Western Roman Empire comprises the western provinces of the Roman Empire at any time during which they were administered by a separate independent Imperial court; The Western Roman Empire collapsed in 476 AD.
Then, at the year of 800 AD, Charles I - commonly known as Charlemagne - was crowned by Pope Leo III as "Imperator Augustus Romanum gubernans Imperium" - August Emperor, governing the Roman Empire - recreating the ancient Western Roman Empire, as being the unique continuation of the Roman Empire -. After the coronation of Charlemagne, his successors maintained the title until the death of Berengar I of Italy in 924.
With the coronation of Otto the Great in 962 AD, it is marked the transition from the Frankish Empire to the Holy Roman Empire. The Holy Roman Empire, later referred to as the Holy Roman Empire of the German Nation, was a multi-ethnic complex of territories in Western and Central Europe that developed during the Early Middle Ages and continued until its dissolution in 1806 during the Napoleonic Wars. It is widelly accepted that the Holy Roman Empire was the successor continuation of the ancient Roman Empire by the crowning of Otto I as "Imperator Romanum" in 962 AD.
The medievals who made all this claims, used the historiographical concept of "Translatio Imperii" - Transference of Rule -, in wich history is viewed as a linear succession of transfers of an imperium that invests supreme power in a singular ruler, an "emperor".
My main question would be about what makes a concept of state legitimate so that it has influence over territories that it does not control, and which moral arguments could claim this legitimacy. And last but not least: - What was, or rather, what is the Roman Empire?
The Roman Empire was the post-Republican period of ancient Rome. From the accession of Caesar Augustus to the military anarchy of the third century, it was a principate with Italy as metropole of the provinces and the city of Rome as sole capital - 27 BC – 286 AD -. Although fragmented briefly during the military crisis, the empire was forcibly reassembled, then ruled by multiple emperors who shared rule over the Western Roman Empire and over the Eastern Roman Empire.
After the death of Theodosius I - emperor from AD 379 - AD 395 - his sons would each inherit a half of the Empire. Honorius - emperor of the Western Roman Empire from AD 395 - AD 423 - would inherit the West, and his brother Arcadius - emperor of the Eastern Roman Empire from AD 395 - AD 408 -, the East, thus making the Roman State remain united as a single polity, yet administered separately by two independent courts. It is at this moment - on the death of Theodosius I in AD 395 - that the vast majority of historians agree that it is the end of a single Roman state, and the beginning of two independent governments of one single civilization.
Rome remained the nominal capital of both parts until 476 AD, when the imperial insignia were sent to Constantinople, following the capture of Ravenna by the barbarians of Odoacer and the subsequent deposition of Romulus Augustulus - last - de facto - emperor of Rome -, when, conventionally historians mark the end of Ancient Rome.
The Byzantine Empire, also referred to as the Eastern Roman Empire, or Byzantium, was the continuation of the Roman Empire in its eastern provinces during Late Antiquity and the Middle Ages, when its capital city was Constantinople. It survived the fragmentation and fall of the Western Roman Empire in the 5th century AD and continued to exist for an additional thousand years until it fell to the Ottoman Empire in 1453.
The Western Roman Empire comprises the western provinces of the Roman Empire at any time during which they were administered by a separate independent Imperial court; The Western Roman Empire collapsed in 476 AD.
Then, at the year of 800 AD, Charles I - commonly known as Charlemagne - was crowned by Pope Leo III as "Imperator Augustus Romanum gubernans Imperium" - August Emperor, governing the Roman Empire - recreating the ancient Western Roman Empire, as being the unique continuation of the Roman Empire -. After the coronation of Charlemagne, his successors maintained the title until the death of Berengar I of Italy in 924.
With the coronation of Otto the Great in 962 AD, it is marked the transition from the Frankish Empire to the Holy Roman Empire. The Holy Roman Empire, later referred to as the Holy Roman Empire of the German Nation, was a multi-ethnic complex of territories in Western and Central Europe that developed during the Early Middle Ages and continued until its dissolution in 1806 during the Napoleonic Wars. It is widelly accepted that the Holy Roman Empire was the successor continuation of the ancient Roman Empire by the crowning of Otto I as "Imperator Romanum" in 962 AD.
The medievals who made all this claims, used the historiographical concept of "Translatio Imperii" - Transference of Rule -, in wich history is viewed as a linear succession of transfers of an imperium that invests supreme power in a singular ruler, an "emperor".
My main question would be about what makes a concept of state legitimate so that it has influence over territories that it does not control, and which moral arguments could claim this legitimacy. And last but not least: - What was, or rather, what is the Roman Empire?
Comments (149)
No states are morally legitimate; all any state ever has is its effective control over a territory.
Quoting Gus Lamarch
I think the simplest answer would be the empire founded by and containing Rome. When the empire founded by Rome was no longer centered on Rome, it was still the same empire; but when that empire no longer contained Rome, it was no longer the Roman Empire, but something else. Any other empire centered on or founded by Rome later would not be that Roman Empire, but instead some other Roman Empire, requiring we number or otherwise distinguish Roman Empires from each other, none of them deserving the definite article.
I doubt we of the West will ever get over the Roman Empire. We've always looked back to it, and I think we always will. Perhaps if Alexander had lived longer, or his successors weren't so intent on fighting each other, that potential fusion of disparate nations, peoples, cultures and beliefs would have dominated West and East. As it is, Hellenistic culture was influential throughout the Mediterranean Sea and beyond.
Rome succeeded where Alexander and his successors failed. It conquered the lands assumed by his generals and more (to the West), but more importantly it lasted, for centuries in the West and more centuries in the East. The Eastern Empire was Greek in language and culture, but Roman in law, administration and militarily (the language of law remained Latin). It called itself Roman long after what is traditionally considered the fall of the Western Empire. So, for that matter, did the barbarian nations which took its place in the West, through Charlemagne to the rather absurdly named Holy Roman Empire. It survives still, in a sense, as a kind of ghost in the form of the One Holy Catholic and Apostolic Church.
Later empires, Spanish, French and British, imitated it; the British who ran their empire were raised on it. Even the short-lived empire of Napoleon, and Napoleon III, was influenced by it. Napoleon deserved the to be called "Emperor" (a military title, after all) more than most emperors of Rome.
Its success and lasting influence can be attributed to several things. Roads, an unmatched military for many years, tolerance for most beliefs, religions and cultures provided its imperium was acknowledged and respected and taxes paid, its law and administration, the prosperity which accompanied the Pax Romana, and finally, perhaps, and ultimately, its governments' association with and imposition of an exclusive, aggressive and intolerant religion and the ruthless suppression of all others.
Well, that certainly sums up the past few thousand years of the West (I joke).
Rome is still around, in a way. But I don't think the influence of a state beyond its borders is a question of legitimacy. Legitimacy maybe denied or disputed. Maybe the Latin word imperium best describes what creates it. Authority, or perceived authority, in the creation and imposition of standards governing various aspects of our lives.
Please, clarify your position,
One of the most striking features, which made Roman civilization so great and productive, was that it had emerged from a culture that had been evolving over time, without needing any cultural reference - diferent from the post-roman Europe -. One of the issues that most concerned medieval European monarchs was the concept of legitimacy. It was an unremitting struggle to decide who could really be considered the "successor" of the Roman Empire - therefore, of all the civilization they had until then inherited -, and for that very reason that European states were so unstable and techno-culturally backward - during the Early Middle Ages -. It was an eternal discussion of do-nothing-kings about who could be considered the heir to the throne of Rome, one who was already of iron and rust.
Quoting Ciceronianus the White
Perhaps this is the cause of the cyclical secularism and nihilism that afflicts the West from time to time? In the end, the thought that may arise in the mind is that we did not develop anything, nor did we build anything, we just destroyed a great civilization that was the world, and now we try to reconstruct it through the little pieces that remain...
Quoting Gus Lamarch
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Philosophical_anarchism
Quote from the page:
"Philosophical anarchism is an anarchist school of thought, which holds that the state lacks moral legitimacy whilst not supporting violence to eliminate it."
"philosophical anarchists do not believe thatthey have an obligation or duty to obey the state, or conversely that the state has a right to command"
What will you do when te state uses his force against you - let's suppose this happen -? Will you stop him to say that it doesn't have the right? Then what? Do you expect it to simply respect your individual property?
Philosophical anarchism is as useless as political anarchism.
Why then, in your view, the State is illegitimate? And why would you not support its overthrow?
It seems as a contradiction to me.
And that wikipedia article is a little unclear. Philosophical anarchism is a view just about the moral legitimacy of a state, without any specific commitments to any particular plan of action. Philosophical anarchists do not categorically oppose the overthrow of states, they just don't categorically push for it to happen right now. States should go away, somehow, eventually, because they are morally illegitimate; but philosophical anarchism has no specific commitments to when or how that should happen. Different individuals may hold different opinions about it.
(I personally think that the elimination of the state is the "limit", in a calculus sense, of increasing perfection of government: if we make existing governments do fewer bad things and more good things, we eventually, in principle, make them stop being states, and achieve stateless governance; or at least, that is the condition that continued improvement to the government approaches, even if we're not ever able to actually reach it).
Yes. It must have been galling for them to consider themselves compared to what had been, ruling over provinces or parts of provinces of an Empire which fell. And Latin of course survived and was considered the language of the educated and the elite, not to mention that of the ubiquitous Church. Rome's shadow covered them all. Then, from the 13th century on, they were compelled to marvel at the knowledge and wisdom of the ancients revealed to them from the "rediscovery" of Greek and Roman thinkers, thanks in no small part to the Arabs. Very galling.
When one thinks that we only began to rival Rome in such things as plumbing and hygiene in the 19th century, it's a bit humbling.
Quoting Gus Lamarch
Interesting. But I think we can claim to have surpassed the ancients in some ways, at least, since the development of the sciences. Technologically, certainly. But those achievements are secular.
I am pretty sure that the state's legitimacy has already been proven by it through the power it commands over the population of said state. You could say that morally it was legitimized from the moment that we - humanity - subjected ourselves to its mode of governance - it was this or endless chaos -.
Quoting Pfhorrest
In my view, the concept of "State" as understood today, is not the same as that of the medieval, nor of the ancients, nor of the prehistoric ones, therefore, could they consider our concept as a "post-state" mode of governance?
I do not believe that the root of the order that the abstraction of the State brings, will dissappear, but that it will change together with humanity; and thinking in this way, we enhance all possibilities of different governance modes. I, for example, believe that there is a way of government not yet discovered by humanity, where the individual wills of each person would be represented completely by the functions of the "State" - whatever term would be used to define this type of order - in an atomized structure and which would become the political community established without needing a means of force.
Can my concept of governance be considered "post-state" to? Anarchism is just a difference type of governance.
State means order;
Government means how will you establish this order.
Remember that day in February 27th, 380 AD, when East Roman Emperor Theodosius I with signed a decree in the presence of the Western Roman Emperor Valentinian II of being Christianity the state religion of the Roman Empire. And even if both the Eastern and the Western part of the empire have collapsed, the Churches lives on. And let's remember that before religion was extremely important to the state and it's legitimacy.
(They have still their job positions. The Pope, the bishop of Rome with Partiarch Bartholomew I, the archbishop of Constantinople. The primus inter pares of the Eastern Orthodox Church and the "Western" Catholic Church are the remnants of the divided Roman Empire in our times.)
So you're claiming that might makes right?
That's tantamount to saying "there's no such thing as 'right', only might". And I already said that the only thing a state has is its might; no states are right.
Quoting Gus Lamarch
No, a state is a monopoly on the use of violence. That's the textbook political science definition.
The question of the legitimacy of states is whether anyone morally deserves such a monopoly on the use of violence, rather than the legitimacy of violence being regardless of who commits it: if it's wrong for anyone in some context then it's wrong for everyone in that context.
But did you really want this thread to derail into one about anarchism? I thought you were asking about Rome. I gave the anarchist answer to one of your questions about Rome.
Reflect on that sentence for a moment. The common language of the ancient Roman civilization, which was standard until the end of the 2nd century, was eventually to be considered the scholarly and elite language, while the masses and even the barbarian elites who settled in the ancient Roman provinces, spoke a mixture of Germanic dialect, with the "vulgare" of Latin - which would eventually change and establish the languages ??currently known as "Romance" - Portuguese - My language here in Brazil, and in Portugal; Abraço à todos! -, Spanish, Italian, French, and Romenian - - which from the 4th century to the end of Rome, was just a pile of slangs and abbreviations of the ancient language. What level of individual and cultural degradation does a society have to be in for this to occur? And in that moment, I stop and think:
Young people in the West increasingly "cool" and diverse, speaking in slang terms and abbreviations for "practicality". How long until this contribute to the end of our civilization?
Quoting Ciceronianus the White
And then Luther was a thing.
Quoting Ciceronianus the White
True.
But they do not compare in any way to a concept of "State" that is the premise of the discussion - Good point nonetheless -.
But now, ask both of them who they consider the rightfully "Apostolic Roman Church" to see what happens.
Yep, discussing anarchism makes any sane mind go crazy for its meaninglessness.
Quoting Pfhorrest
And what brings discipline to the world when it has been totally forgotten?
The presence of a state is the absence of discipline, if by discipline you mean something like governance.
You've probably heard the adage "a government is a body of people, usually notably ungoverned". That describes a state very well: it's the ungoverned monopoly on violence sitting at the top of a power hierarchy. Stateless governance (anarchy) is when nobody gets to sit at the top ungoverned, where all govern and are governed equally.
Yet when you raise the question of legitimacy and especially the idea of a successor state, religion and religious positions are important as the secular state is a rather new concept. For example my country has a state church and religion is taught in schools and even the flag has cross in it, just like the other Nordic countries.
Quoting Gus Lamarch
Likely they will have a cordial diplomatic response to the question and will avoid being confrontational. Christianity has gone a long way from the wars of religion. Still, it's likely that their flock of followers, those ordinary church goers, who might have antipathies towards the other branch of Christianity. And now there's of course the Protestants and all kinds of other sects.
This is way all kinds of Anarchism will never work. There an utopian ideal, some kind of metaphysical purpose for the godless politics and philosophers of the post-modern era. If we see this as a political straight line, both Anarchism and Totalitarianism are the extremes. And we have already reached totalitarianism to see that it is evil. Anarchism is to be expected to be as bad as totalitarianism.
Quoting Pfhorrest
I mean order. State is how we project order unto the larger comunity.
True enough.
Quoting ssu
Yeah, "Suomi", or as the whole world knows, "Finland".
Quoting ssu
The point is that in the end, both will consider themselves as the rightfully representative of God on Earth - both will be the legitimate "Roman Church" -.
There is some truth there, but these churches are also what doomed the empire, what caused its fall. The Alaric sack of Rome is only some 40 years after a Christian emperor (Gratian) removed the victory statue and altar in the senate, and a mere 13 years after the cult of idols was forbidden. This is the thesis of Edward Gibbon, and I think he is right. Religious division and internecine hatreds between pagans and christians is what brought them down.
Not that the sack of Alaric was the end of it mind you: it took three sacks of Rome in the 5th century to bring this story to a close, and as the OP pointed out, they were still trying to imitate or replicate it centuries later.
The European Union can be understood as a reconstruction of the Charlemagne empire, which itself was a sort of revival of the Roman empire.
I would disagree.
The empire of Charlemagne needed Charlemagne, just as the Roman empire needed all the victorious Roman generals to create the Roman Empire, from Scipio Africanus to Ceasar and so on. The EU was created after a huge pile of millions of dead after WW1 and WW2, which created a collective thought of "well that didn't work, perhaps we should try something else". Last time similar unification of Europe through force was tried was during WW2.
(Postcard from Vichy-France. One kind of European integration back then...)
Peaceful integration like the EU is something quite rare in history. Perhaps the Kalmar Union in Northern Europe is a similar "accident" which came into existence due to luck and lack of opposition, just like Charles V evidently inheriting a vast number of separate countries thanks to inheriting various crowns. There are example of states forming a union of some sort peacefully, but usually it happens through wars and violence.
This was only one of the causes of the fall of Rome. Other causes would be:
The Crisis of the Third Century- 234–284 -, a period of political instability.
The reign of Emperor Diocletian - 284–305 -, who attempted substantial political and economic reforms, many of which would remain in force in the following centuries, and practically established the kind of rule that was to become the norm during the Middle Ages - Despotic Autrocracy -.
The reign of Constantine I - 306–337 -, who built the new eastern capital of Constantinople and converted to Christianity, legalizing and even favoring to some extent this religion. All Roman emperors after Constantine, except for Julian, would be Christians even if for the most part of the fall of the Empire, more than 50% of the population would still be pagan.
The first war with the Visigoths - 376–382 -, culminating in the Battle of Adrianople - August 9, 378 -, in which a large Roman army was defeated by the Visigoths, and Emperor Valens was killed. The Visigoths, fleeing a migration of the Huns, had been allowed to settle within the borders of the Empire by Valens, but were mistreated by the local Roman administrators, and rebelled.
The reign of Theodosius I - 379–395 -, last emperor to reunite under his authority the western and eastern halves of the Empire. Theodosius continued and intensified the policies against paganism of his predecessors, eventually outlawing it, and making Nicaean Christianity the state religion.
The Crossing of the Rhine: on December 31, 406 - or 405, according to some historians -, a mixed band of Vandals, Suebi and Alans crossed the frozen river Rhine at Moguntiacum - modern Mainz -, and began to ravage Gaul. Some moved on to the regions of Hispania and Africa. The Empire would never regain control over most of these lands.
The second war with the Visigoths, led by king Alaric, in which they raided Greece, and then invaded Italy, culminating in the sack of Rome - 410 -. The Visigoths eventually left Italy and founded the Visigothic Kingdom in southern Gaul and Hispania.
The rise of the Hunnic Empire under Attila and Bleda - 434–453 -, who raided the Balkans, Gaul, and Italy, threatening both Constantinople and Rome.
The second sack of Rome, this time by the Vandals - 455 -.
Failed counterstrikes against the Vandals - 461–468 -. The Western Emperor Majorian planned a naval campaign against the Vandals to reconquer northern Africa in 461, but word of the preparations got out to the Vandals, who took the Roman fleet by surprise and destroyed it. A second naval expedition against the Vandals, sent by Emperors Leo I and Anthemius, was defeated at Cape Bon in 468.
So yes, Christianity was a factor in the fall of the Empire, but you could already see the light of Rome beginning to fade out in the early 3rd century.
In comparisson to our own time. I could say that we are at the end period of the reign of Commodus - 192 AD - or at the beginning of the "Crisis of the Third Century". From my studies - if they're right - we have at least more or less a 100 to a 200 years of "Western civilization" as we know it.
In no way can they be compared. The Carolingian Empire had been forged from iron and blood, and from the ambition of a people - the Franks - led by a man of culture - Charlemage -. The European Union was forged by cowards concerned only with their economic power.
In a way, the only legacy that Charlemagne left was the freshest memory of the ancient light of Rome - something that his people - the Franks - helped to extinguish -.
Obviously, the people who made up the European population at the time when Charlemagne lived - 8th and 9th centuries - were already completely germanic and had no real connection with the ancient Roman population, and for that reason they would call him "Pater Europae" because, for them, he had built civilization - keeping in mind that the population of the time was 85% ignorant of history and even the most basic knowledges -.
Yaaa... it’s hard to draw a line, in a death through thousand wounds. And thanks for reminding us the general outline. My point is the empire could ill-afford to piss off all pagans within itself, often men of power, knowledge, prestige and leadership skills. Constantine knew it. He didn’t rock the boat, just helped the Church. He still would sacrifice to the gods when politically necessary. And it worked. For a while.
Then some fanatic Nicean tries to force their Holy Trinity onto the whole empire... even on to the Arian Christians, for Jesus’ sake... The destruction (or lack of onward copying) of thousands of books from the ancients ensued. That’s the original sin of the Church herself, when she became powerful and thus corrupt, almost mechanically. The rich, the ambitious, the profiteers started to have ‘faith’ and some of them became bishop in no time, just with some seed money...
The last great war emperor was Julian, a pagan, whom the rest of the Constantines called ‘the apostate’ after they forced him to baptize at a young age and he later renounced it. When he died on the battlefield, deep in Persia, his last words were reported to be: You’ve won, Gallilean! That’s supposedly because he knew he was the last pagan emperor (but it may be apocryphal).
Quoting Gus Lamarch
Insuspect we’re right there in 421, just a few months before the sack of Washington by hordes of MAGA hats.
You're welcome :smile:
Quoting Olivier5
Emperor Constantine had been a natural example of how to be a populist ruler. He supported the religious movement that would bring him power, and he was pragmatic with everything else when needed - as you said, doing pagan religious events every now and then - and even worshiping "Sol Invictus" on his coins the year before he died. I can't decide whether to judge him as sly or intelligent, maybe a little bit of both.
Quoting Olivier5
I compare all this widespread Christian hysteria with - perhaps - a future time when Communists, Socialists and Islamists will do the same.
Quoting Olivier5
I still think that all this current nihilism occurring in the USA is a noisy minority. Times are going to get a lot worse - that's why we have about 100 to 200 more years -. Eventually, the minority will become the majority, and then my friend, the new Rome - Washington - will fall.
responded with quite the same answer as I did.
The simple fact is that Charlemagne is simply so unknown and hence politically correct that the EU can name a prize after him. They wouldn't do that with a Napoleon prize and especially not with a Hitler prize.
Agreed completely.
That's not true. The Franks, Lombards and co dominated the existing population but did not exterminate it.
Quoting Gus Lamarch
Nope. The Salian Franks, of which Charlemagne was a descendent, fought on Rome's side against Atilla.
Charlemagne is not unknown. On the contrary, he is seen as a great king. Rightly so in my view. To compare him to Hitler is really unfair.
E.g. Charlemagne invited Jews in his kingdom, and this is how Ashkenaz came to be. Hitler killed them.
I am not talking about widespread extermination of the Roman population. What I say is that with the Roman population growth decreasing since the 2th century, and with the growth of the Germanic population, and soon after, with the barbarian invasions of the Roman Empire, the culture, values, morals, traditions, taboos, etc. of the Romans died and were supplanted by medieval Germanic European culture - Charlemagne lived in a period that even the ashes of the ancient flame of Rome had already been forgotten; the Byzantine Empire was already seen as a "Greek Empire" and not important at all for the events in Western Europe -. Independent Roman culture died at the end of the 4th century with its Empire.
Why do you think Charlemagne was recognized as "Pater Europae" and "Augustus Romanum gubernans Imperium" - "Father of Europe" and "August Emperor, governing the Roman Empire" respectively - Because he rekindle that lost memory that the whole land where they lived - the Germanic barbarians - had once been something incredibly glorious and splendor, something that had been completely forgotten by the masses of the barbarian population.
You know, the prevalent feeling when Rome fell was disbelief. Many couldn't accept the fact that it was over. They kept going on with the fiction that it would rebound...
We're exactly at this stage now, I think: the system is already dead but we can't see it yet.
I just hope the Easter empire (Europe) lingers on a bit longer than the Western one (US), like the first time around.
And then they invaded the province of Soissons of Syagrius - the last roman Dux of Gaul -.
@Olivier5
Oh is that why he went to Rome to be sacred emperor by the pope? You're being ridiculous.
The imperial Roman system died with the ascension of Diocletian in 284 AD. If this happened now in our era, we have at least 100 more years, but you never know. The Roman Empire did not collapse during its crisis, we can.
By the masses. Of course the aristocracy still had the knowledge.
Rome - in the times of the great emperors like Trajan and Marcus Aurelius - had a population of 1 million people. The population of the city had fallen from 800,000 - during the sack of the Visigoths in 410 AD - to 450–500,000 by the time the city was sacked in 455 by Genseric, king of the Vandals. Population declined to 100,000 by 500 AD. After the Gothic siege of 537, population dropped to 30,000. But yeah, the flame of Rome hasn't extinguished in 800 AD... Please man...
My point is that Charlemagne tried to be Western Emperor for a reason: it was politically useful, it was filling a void, as the memory of the Western Rome empire was still alive. The mark it left was just to big to vanish in 3 centuries...
In Arabic and Persian, a European is called a "rumi", literally a 'Roman'. The great Persian poet Rumi was called such because he was from Anatolia.
The Roman Empire was still in existence in 800 AD, in the East, and it rulled over Sicily and the South of the Italian peninsula. The division between a Western half and an Eastern one was little more than an administrative conveniance to better rule ONE huge empire. And sometimes the Eastern emperor(s) could not agree with the Western one(s) and they quarelled and fought battles, but it was still conceptually one empire, not two.
Still around in kicking in 800 AD. Including in Italy.
It may thus be that what Karl der Gross was trying to do when getting crowned Western emperor was to push back against Irene, empress in Constantinople, telling her: "I got this side of your old empire covered, thank you very much".
In that same swoop he got leverage on the pope and an influence on the Church's direction... That was a big move.
But the guy didn't stop there: he soon proposed Irene to marry her, which would have made him the Big Boss of the whole empire... She didn't take the offer.
An interesting question I had a while back was what are the major differences between the Germanic tribes of the Lombards, Vandals, Saxons, Franks, etc. versus the Medieval Europe of around 800 CE? What constituted tribal identity versus territorial/state/vassal identity? When did tribal (lifestyle?) identity slough off and identification with propertied Lords, kings, vassals, and general territory take its place?
I know the common answer is that Germanic tribal society had elements of this already in it (pledging a loyalty to a king, let's say), but that transition always seemed a bit "just-so" for my taste. To what extent was Medieval Europe a continuation of "barbarian" Germanic tribal culture? There just seems to be a sort of gap when discussions of "barbarians" during the Roman Empire turn into Feudalism after the Roman Empire.
@Gus Lamarch You might be interested as well.
So as a path to an answer, I would say we can start somewhere in the reign of Charlemagne and the beginning of the "Holy Roman Empire" as to how Germanic tribal identity and culture were eventually replaced with feudalism. It is obviously complex and hard to pin down, but here are three things I think should be considered:
1.) The Catholic Church had no interest in competing with tribal chieftains for power and conversion. Local chieftains often had the backing of tradition (including pagan religious practices) to keep them in power. Wherever a chieftain converted to Christianity, so went the tribe. Thus converting to Christianity, often stripped away tribal privileges and rites to Christian ones, taking away local identity and replacing it with a more universal one.
2.) Charlemagne's own policies unified Germanic tribal identities. His court was filled with key positions from leaders of different tribal affiliations. He can have Saxon, Gothic, Jutes, Burgundians, all in the same court. This intermixing led to slow dissipation over probably 100 years of keeping tribal affiliations intact in favor of hereditary identification only.
3.) Roman Law- With the integration of Germanic tribes into the Roman political and military system, these Germans became more Romanized. This in itself, could have diminished the identity with tribe for identity with a territory or legal entity. Thus various Germanic "dux" (dukes) within the Roman Empire were already in place along Spain and southern France (as were ancestors of Charlemagne). Being incorporated in a multi-ethnic Empire itself could diminish the fealty towards local affiliation with any one tribe. With the Church's help in keeping records in monasteries and libraries, these leaders retained Roman law far into the Holy Roman Empire's reign.
4.) Nobility transfer by kings- Since the unification of Charlemagne, there was a conference of land and title from top-down sources. As local tribal kings (chieftains?) were quashed during the wars of Charlemagne, he then doled out titles of land (dukes and counts) to those he favored, thus diminishing the local identity of leadership further.
Those who did unite large parts of Europe together, even if for their lifetime, are going to be compared to Napoleon and Hitler. Yet in the current climate having a prize named after a king who was responsible for example to the massacre of Verden and beloved by the Nazis wouldn't be and obvious pick, but times have changed. Basically the whole concept of "Great Kings" isn't so popular today, even if there obviously are able kings who were successful conquerors.
Hadrian's war against the Jews killed hundreds of thousands. Ceasar's conquest of Gaul led to an estimated 1 ml deaths. But Charlie is the bad guy because he killed 4500 Saxon warriors?
Thanks for pointing at the Franco-German connotation, evident in the Division Charlemagne. Note that the alliance between these two acts as an informal European leadership of sorts. Hence Charlemagne in EU symbolism also evoke Franco-German ties.
I see that you have already provided quite a few answers. Generally speaking, it was as you said a progressive cultural convergence between the German rulers and their Roman or Gallo-Roman subjects, helped and catalysed by the Church as one big melting pot or unifier (later divider) of European identity. The same thing happened in England after William's conquest: he removed the leaders only, and replaced them with French speaking kinghts who had fought for him. A progressive melting of two cultures into one then took place, ultimately creating modern English.
Many of these barbarian kings were already Romanized to a degree, eg Theodoric. His Roman subjects loved his rule.
It is a fact that the barbarian germanic tribes eventually assimilated to Roman culture. The point is that they simply made this culture theirs:
[i]"Over time, the Lombards gradually adopted Roman titles, names, and traditions. By the time Paul the Deacon was writing in the late 8th century, the Lombardic language, dress and hairstyles had all disappeared. Paul writes:
The Lombards live and dress as if all the land they currently inhabit - referring to Italy - was their native land: We are from Lombardy! Some would have the courage to shout - referring to the Lombards who called Italy as Lombardy -."[/i]
My point is that Charlemagne was the first European monarch, after the fall of Rome to really bring to public knowledge to the masses, that everything they had was the legacy of a fallen civilization - remembering here, that for the ordinary citizen of the 8th century from Western Europe, the Byzantine Empire was seen as the "nation of the Greeks" -.
The only real barbaric people who were completely assimilated and tried to maintain Roman order during the fall of the Roman Empire and afterwards, were the Visigoths. The Visigoths were romanized central Europeans who had moved west from the Danube Valley. They became foederati of Rome, and wanted to restore the Roman order against the hordes of Vandals, Alans and Suebi. The Western Roman Empire fell in 476 AD; therefore, the Visigoths believed they had the right to take the territories that Rome had promised in Hispania in exchange for restoring the Roman order - and they tried -.
Even Theodoric knew that only being romanized they could prevail:
"An able Goth wants to be like a Roman; only a poor Roman would want to be like a Goth."
Theodoric's quote.
Theodoric "Kingdom" - better named as an Empire - at its height.
And if he had the time, he probably would try to restore the Western Rome - he was raised on Constantinople, wrote and could read Greek and Latin, was well versed on Roman law and customs, so he was probably the last good chance of restoring Rome as it was known back then -.
In no way am I claiming that he is the villain of the story. I am claiming that he was the first post-roman monarch to try to remind the masses of the origin of their entire civilization - Rome -. He was not an innovator, a revolutionary; he simply knew how to use the fragments of the Roman heritage that still remained.
When it comes especially to EU symbolism, the EU has a genuine identity problem.
Case example is the bland stupidity in the appearance of the euro notes: there aren't any people in them, what is depicted are basically unknown bridges as a metaphor for connecting people. Usually countries would have put their leaders or historically important people into their cash notes, and surely there would be such worthy historical individuals in European history. But nobody did even try this as they understood what a useless bickering match would it all have ended up with countries demanding their famous persons to be put in euros. And this shows how these historical people are linked to a national heritage. Even if Charlemagne was the "father of Europe", he surely was a French king, especially for the French.
And for this trans-national pan-European ideology and symbolism the EU has a hard time to invent things. The real "founding fathers" of the EEC were ordinary politicians and bureaucrats, which can hardly be created into larger than life figures and put onto a pedestal. And so has the whole invention of EU symbolism been carried out: with the passion of a nine-to-five bureaucrat inventing Europe Day and taking a famous piece from Beethoven as the anthem of the union.
And of course, if we were talking about the Charlemagne prize, we also have to note the Jean Monnet prize, a person who himself got also the Charlemagne prize:
Win 1500 euros!
Quoting Gus Lamarch
Yes, this goes along with point 3 in my theory. However, I think this gets less tenuous as you went more North and East in away from the big Roman cities. In that case, I would gather it is more a case of 1, 2, and 4. Would you maybe agree there? Is there something else I have not mentioned that could be a factor in the de-tribalization into that of a more hierarchical feudalism?
Perhaps economics have to do with it as well. The agricultural practice of the three-crop rotation system spread from southern Europe to North, replacing the more pastoral into an agrarian, land-based one.
Yes, I fully agree with you. Roman culture, even though it was rooted in the north - like Gaul and Britain -, did not have enough time to take root completely - as in the cases of Iberia, and Italy -. Also, since contact with the Germanic tribes was much more aggressive and chaotic - Gaul and Britain were border provinces, while Iberia and Italy were not - it was to be expected that the borders would be those that would be most affected and culturally disrupted.
Quoting schopenhauer1
Quoting schopenhauer1
These are probably the most solid facts we have. Starting from here, I suppose we would enter the realm of psychological and environmental theories and hypotheses - like the Little Ice Age" between the 5th and 9th centuries that could have affected both the fall of Rome and the European social structure of the following centuries -.
Have to comment here. The biggest change from the Roman Empire and Antiquity is the collapse of the "globalization" of agriculture, which made large cities and advanced societies impossible. If Rome had been fed from Northern Africa, Constantinople had been from the Nile delta. Once these places were lost large cities as Rome and Constantinople simply couldn't be fed by the local regions and the city populations withered away. Might have some impact on Roman culture and the rise of feudalism.
So it is this weird in between time in Europe, between the Roman fall and the rise of feudalism, roughly about 400 CE- 900 CE, whereby the (often) migrating Germanic tribes transformed more-or-less into non-tribal, yet feudal entities. There are things to unpack here:
1.) The Germanic tribes prior to the post-Roman times, were largely pastoral. Cattle and livestock defined their economic lifestyle more than planting and farming.
2.) Post-Roman Empire the feudal system relied on farming to increase production for feudal lord in a more-or-less self-sufficient manner. This may have been an import from the manorial system in southern Europe (read Roman Empire's influence) whereby there was a Roman elite and his landholdings. However, due to the economic collapse, which you rightly point to, this manorial system went from commercial agriculture (to be sold in wide networks of trade), to local use (very short-distances, local, and often self-contained). Thus the slave systems of old gave way to peasants and surfs. However, these peasants and surfs must have slowly themselves turned away from their ancestral pastoral lifestyle as land was closed in by armies and such. Actually, I don't know the details of this transformation of Germanic pastoral to farming feudal, so that would be interesting to explore.
Completely. The later Roman Empire was in a sense a network of cities. Two diagnostic symptoms of decline are subdivision, particularly of expansive formal spaces in both the domus and the public basilica, and encroachment, in which artisans's shops invade the public thoroughfare, a transformation that was to result in the souk - marketplace -. Burials within the urban precincts mark another stage in dissolution of traditional urbanistic discipline, overpowered by the attraction of saintly shrines and relics.
The city of Rome went from a population of 800,000 in the beginning of the period to a population of 30,000 by the end of the period. As a whole, the period of late antiquity was accompanied by an overall population decline in almost all Europe, and a reversion to more of a subsistence economy. Long-distance markets disappeared, and there was a reversion to a greater degree of local production and consumption, rather than webs of commerce and specialized production. What was once a "globalized" world, became a isolated fragmented continent - people living in Italy didn't have any notion or information of how was life in Egypt from the 6th to the 9th century, contrary to the roman period, where distant information was easily accessed -. These long distances knowledge only became the norm again after the 10th century onwards.
"Historian Michael Rostovtzeff and economist Ludwig von Mises both argued that unsound economic policies played a key role in the impoverishment and decay of the Roman Empire. According to them, by the 2nd century AD, the Roman Empire had developed a complex market economy in which trade was relatively free. Tariffs were low and laws controlling the prices of foodstuffs and other commodities had little impact because they did not fix the prices significantly below their market levels. After the 3rd century, however, debasement of the currency - i.e., the minting of coins with diminishing content of gold, silver, and bronze - led to inflation. The price control laws then resulted in prices that were significantly below their free-market equilibrium levels."
Yet note that you are talking about 500 years.
From 2020 to 1520 is five hundred years also, and during that time there's been a lot of transformation too. The fact is, we can notice the transformation that has taken in our lifetime, in 50 years and perhaps understand that 100 years, and we typically can have some artifacts or old books that are a hundred years old. But once you are talking about 400-500 years, it is no wonder how distant the times are. There is a huge time gap between Charlemagne and Augustus and the height of the Roman empire.
Quoting Gus Lamarch
This is one of the most startling statistics in history ever, the population of the city of Rome:
That only well into the 20th Century the city, then having been the capital of unified Italy already from the 19th Century, the population exceeds the population at the height of the Roman Empire in Antiquity tells a fascinating story.
Quoting Gus Lamarch
A globalized economy creates market demand for specialization and specialized labour. I've allways thought that a society where poets can support their family by selling and reading poems (or for that matter artists can be rich and not just the wandering clown type or handyman) tells of wealth that hardly will happen in a secluded regional economy. Somewhere there has had to be created that wealth that can be put into art. And if it at first people like artist that are somewhat non-essential for people to survive, then come engineers and other professions that need an highly advance education system. Now the importance of these people are obvious to any ruler, but then when the true transformation happens in more than 100 years of time, even if the political changes can be as abrupt as the Roman Legions simply leaving England, it is hard to grasp the change.
De-globalization, the process of diminishing interdependence and integration, is the logical consequence when long term trade vanishes and when the state or states cannot secure peace and stability.
Quoting Gus Lamarch
Well, debasing money is likely more of a desperate response to a problem that you cannot solve otherwise. It's a good point, but I don't think it's the most important reason as it is more of a response. I think Nero had a ruinous debacle with inflation and even more opposed him when he made his own version of a death tax: meaning that Nero's henchmen would go around killing rich people and then collect the tax. (No wonder one of the biggest armies was formed against Nero, but once the emperor died this army broke up.)
I think the problem was that for rapid economic growth Rome needed to conquer new territories, plunder them and when Rome could not expand anymore, when it had no loot to bring back to Rome and new slaves to us, the whole huge standing army needed to defend the borders became a huge burden. Soldiers manning a wall in the middle of nowhere are an expense.
This represents very well the state of regression that Europe passed from the 5th to the 9th centuries. Only Constantinople would remain with a population that could be considered metropolitan with 800,000 inhabitants between the 9th and 11th centuries. It is not surprisingly that the most urbanized cities of the medieval period - Constantinople, Tessalonike, Athens, Adrianople, Syracuse, etc... - were still under the control of the Roman State - already known as "Basileía Rh?maí?n" or "Monarchy of the Romans" -.
Quoting ssu
This view strongly agrees with the theories of Arnold J. Toynbee and James Burke:
[i]"The Romans had no budgetary system and thus wasted whatever resources they had available. The economy of the Empire was a Raubwirtschaft or plunder economy based on looting existing resources rather than producing anything new. The Empire relied on riches from conquered territories (this source of revenue ending, of course, with the end of Roman territorial expansion) or on a pattern of tax collection that drove small-scale farmers into destitution (and onto a dole that required even more exactions upon those who could not escape taxation), or into dependency upon a landed elite exempt from taxation. With the cessation of tribute from conquered territories, the full cost of their military machine had to be borne by the citizenry.
An economy based upon slave labor precluded a middle class with buying power. The Roman Empire produced few exportable goods. Material innovation, whether through entrepreneurialism or technological advancement, all but ended long before the final dissolution of the Empire. Meanwhile, the costs of military defense and the pomp of Emperors continued. Financial needs continued to increase, but the means of meeting them steadily eroded. In the end, due to economic failure, even the armor and weaponry of soldiers became so obsolete that the enemies of the Empire had better armor and weapons as well as larger forces."[/i]
I do value those "old-school" views.
Perhaps the problems of the Roman Empire can be thought with alternative history: What would have it taken for the Roman Empire to survive, perhaps until this day?
Could we have avoided the De-globalization of the Middle Ages, but just continued from Antiquity to Renaissance? The love affair Renaissance had with Antiquity seems that this could have happened. Could entrepreneurialism have been restored, perhaps creating proto-capitalism? Or for the Roman Empire to survive, would it had needed a technological edge with the Romans replacing their ballistas with culverins and cannons? The East Romans had their nafta throwers that were potent against ships, so they did innovate a bit. Would the Romans have needed some innovation in ship building and then go on to conquer the World ruling the waves of not just the Mediterranean? At least they would have the drive and the correct attitude to do that, when thinking about the martial culture of Rome.
So we are two.
Quoting ssu
I - speaking my personal opinion now - find it inappropriate to talk about "alternative scenarios" because any change made to the scenario that has become history - fact - would completely change the whole story in the long run. It is as if you are creating a new timeline. The instant you created it, it appears to be as straight as the original, however, as it expands - into the future - it curves further and further away from reality. It's very improbable that the Roman Empire would stay static in its borders if it survived its fall. Maybe we would have a Christian Roman Africa? I don't know, and I think it doesn't matter because it didn't happen.
In my view, the study of Roman civilization, is to compare with ours and to repair errors so that they do not repeat themselves, and victories, so that they are redone. But anyone who's a person with an intellect slightly above average will see that the same mistakes are being made, the same decadence, the same nihilism, the same thinking.
The right way of thinking for me its this:
Rome fell right? Yes
Why did it fall? - Insert causes here -
Our society could fall as Rome did? Yes
So let's study it to prevent our society's collapse.
True, though I thin the "Dark Ages" in Europe had a slower progression of change than say the 500 years after the Renaissance. But I guess my question is, how is it between that time, that the Germanic peoples went from tribal to feudal? Specifically in my last post, it seems that Germanic tribes were more pastoral than they were farmers. Yet, feudalism was dominated by crops, farming, planting, etc. How and when did this take place in the years between lets say 500 and 900 CE?
I would like to make it public my favor for the use of the term "Dark Ages" to cover the period from 476 AD - deposition of Romulus Augustulus by Odoacer - until the year 1066 - victory of William the Conqueror for the throne of the Kingdom of England, and death of Harald Hardrada - bringing the end of the Viking Age - in the battle of Stanford Bridge - to contextualize the cultural, economic, moral, and religious retrocess that happened between that period. The argument that those opposed to the use of "Dark Ages" is that it was a period with some cultural and technological advancement, using the examples of Charlemagne's Empire and the Umayyad Caliphate of Cordoba, however, I argue. How could there be a technological and cultural "advance", since the period occurred on the ruins of a precursor civilization that was more advanced in all aspects?
I agree that the term shouldn't be applied to the Late Middle Ages - from 1067 to 1453 - because the Christian Germanic culture during that period really brought a new vision of culture and technological air different and independent from the old Roman heritage. However, I cannot see the period between 476 and 1066 as being anything more than a "Age of Darkness".
For egoism sake, even the medievals saw the time from 476 to 1066 a era of Dark. Petrach - medieval scholar that lived from 1304 to 1374 - said:
"Amidst the errors there shone forth men of genius; no less keen were their eyes, although they were surrounded by darkness and dense gloom".
Even the use of the term "Rennaissance" seems to imply that before it, there was something "Bleak" - and that was in the "Modern Age" -.
Yeah, I don't really have any qualm calling it a "Dark Age", one of many in human history. Dark Ages tend to be ages that occur after flourishings. They are sort of desolutions of empires, ideas, commerce, and technology. Many societies have had them for environmental, cultural, and economic reasons. Label it whatever you want, but Dark Ages fits fine with me. I also think the years you use are well enough. I've seen everything from 800s-1000s, so anywhere in there probably works, depending on how you demarcate the age.
I guess I pose the same question to you as SSU:
Quoting schopenhauer1
Quoting schopenhauer1
I think it is a problem located only here in Brazil; this discussion of the term "Dark Ages". Almost all "academics" favor ending the use of "Dark Ages" because "it makes young people have a bad impression of the past", when over 95% of them doesn't even worry about the past 20 years.
Quoting schopenhauer1
I think this has already been answered by our past discussion and your well-placed points.
[i]"1.) The Catholic Church had no interest in competing with tribal chieftains for power and conversion. Local chieftains often had the backing of tradition (including pagan religious practices) to keep them in power. Wherever a chieftain converted to Christianity, so went the tribe. Thus converting to Christianity, often stripped away tribal privileges and rites to Christian ones, taking away local identity and replacing it with a more universal one.
2.) Charlemagne's own policies unified Germanic tribal identities. His court was filled with key positions from leaders of different tribal affiliations. He can have Saxon, Gothic, Jutes, Burgundians, all in the same court. This intermixing led to slow dissipation over probably 100 years of keeping tribal affiliations intact in favor of hereditary identification only.
3.) Roman Law- With the integration of Germanic tribes into the Roman political and military system, these Germans became more Romanized. This in itself, could have diminished the identity with tribe for identity with a territory or legal entity. Thus various Germanic "dux" (dukes) within the Roman Empire were already in place along Spain and southern France (as were ancestors of Charlemagne). Being incorporated in a multi-ethnic Empire itself could diminish the fealty towards local affiliation with any one tribe. With the Church's help in keeping records in monasteries and libraries, these leaders retained Roman law far into the Holy Roman Empire's reign.
4.) Nobility transfer by kings- Since the unification of Charlemagne, there was a conference of land and title from top-down sources. As local tribal kings (chieftains?) were quashed during the wars of Charlemagne, he then doled out titles of land (dukes and counts) to those he favored, thus diminishing the local identity of leadership further.
It is a fact that the barbarian germanic tribes eventually assimilated to Roman culture. The point is that they simply made this culture theirs:
"Over time, the Lombards gradually adopted Roman titles, names, and traditions. By the time Paul the Deacon was writing in the late 8th century, the Lombardic language, dress and hairstyles had all disappeared. Paul writes:
The Lombards live and dress as if all the land they currently inhabit - referring to Italy - was their native land: We are from Lombardy! Some would have the courage to shout - referring to the Lombards who called Italy as Lombardy -."
My point is that Charlemagne was the first European monarch, after the fall of Rome to really bring to public knowledge to the masses, that everything they had was the legacy of a fallen civilization - remembering here, that for the ordinary citizen of the 8th century from Western Europe, the Byzantine Empire was seen as the "nation of the Greeks" -.
The only real barbaric people who were completely assimilated and tried to maintain Roman order during the fall of the Roman Empire and afterwards, were the Visigoths. The Visigoths were romanized central Europeans who had moved west from the Danube Valley. They became foederati of Rome, and wanted to restore the Roman order against the hordes of Vandals, Alans and Suebi. The Western Roman Empire fell in 476 AD; therefore, the Visigoths believed they had the right to take the territories that Rome had promised in Hispania in exchange for restoring the Roman order - and they tried -."[/i]
And so forth,
Granted, but I mean literally, how does it look for a pastoral people to turn farmer? What would a hypothetical generation of change of this economic type look like? What are the nuts-and-bolts of this kind of lifestyle change? Is it by force? Is it circumstances? Is it a concerted change? Incentives and motivations?
Europe is trying to be more than a collection of rabidly aggressive self-centred microstates. European nationalism killed millions, least we forget. We are trying to become something different than a bunch of nationalist idiots. So of course we have an identity problem...
Charlemagne was of course not French because this identity didn’t exist back then. He too had an identity problem: he was ruling romanized folks with the help of a Roman Church, but he was Frankish... so he worked on symbols, to help forge some synthesis here, like the EU bureaucrats do. And one such symbol he used was the emperor thing.
Yet that's the whole question: would it really completely change the story? The superficial story of events happening and how exactly people reacted to them would change, but would the narrative in the Longue durée, about which the French Annales school were so enthusiastic about, really change into something totally different that we couldn't relate to?
Alternative scenarios only give some insight to the underlying power structures and of the reasons why something happened. They work like a war game: a highly realistic war game will give the players insight what actually would happen or why actually something happened. And throwing dice gives us the effect of chance. Surely the battles in a war game don't follow exactly historical reality, but they do show how the weights were stacked on the belligerents.
Quoting Gus Lamarch
Any person? I think a lot of very intelligent people do believe in the uniqueness of our time and truly think we are really different and our society is totally different from earlier times.
This is using history as a guide to the present. Still, we shouldn't forget that every historical era was unique and we cannot create a mathematical formula to explain it.
Quoting Gus Lamarch
But there's no barbarian horde on the gates that could defeat our society. Even if the US and Russia would decide to have an all-out nuclear exchange and bomb also China on the way, because why not, the places left out from the carnage, South America, Africa, Oceania, still uphold all the knowledge of our society. Our society simply isn't as fragile as the globalized society in Antiquity, because then there were huge differences between the "high-cultures" and the so-called barbarians. Just think how much people were literate then and now.
Oh yes, "never again" after WW2 was the true fighting call for the EEC/EU. And that's about it, apart from the vague idea of being the counter response to US supremacy and the obvious push from large corporations.
You see, you actually also made the example of why EU is in such trouble: unable to create a larger pan-European identity, the EU then has taken into attacking those "rabidly aggressive self-centered microstates" that actually make it up. The inability to acknowledge that the union is indeed a confederation of independent states, again clearly shown with the response to the corona-pandemic, is one of the root problems of the EU. The EU has nothing else as an answer than more integration. It is so unconfident about itself that it thinks not having more integration will lead to an abrupt collapse of the union. And the idea that the EU is the only thing preventing Europeans to getting back to killing each other is simply ridiculous. Many European countries are totally capable of being peaceful with each other without an EU, so it's very foolish and actually condescending to think so.
And this really is a tragedy, as the English have shown that creating new identity above the old national identity is possible. Being British was cleverly used to unified their defeated islanders to share a common identity (even if it didn't work with the Irish) and it has worked at least for now, which is an accomplishment. The total lack of using anything else than bureaucrats to advance the EU shows the short sightedness of those promoting the EU. So does the thinking that economic growth and prosperity would take care of this identity problem... especially when the common market hurts some countries like Greece and favors others like Germany.
Quoting Olivier5
Yet the real issue is how to get the masses to love their new identity, not only the elite.That's the hard part as it doesn't happen with a decree or sharing your wealth and power with your cronies.
The story of the Kalmar Union and comparing it to the United Kingdom tells a lot. The North European personal union lasted for some centuries until it broke up and simply was forgotten. Now is just thought as being a feudal oddity of the medieval times whereas nationalities like being Danish, Norwegian, Swedish and Finnish are the building blocks how we talk about history here. Yet if there would those rabidly nationalist and militant Kalmarists around, perhaps the union would have survived even to this day.
And looking at the history of the British Isles, you can see just how much effort have to be made to create a common new identity and how really people take these things into heart. The Romans did it smartly by enlarging the identity of being Roman and being around enough time for people to relate to this identity, unlike let's say the Macedonians with their brief time in the sun.
The Kalmar Union is interesting, thanks. (You might wish to check the history of the Delian league for another example).
The Brits did well except in Ireland. Northern Ireland is still fucked up and with Brexit it's going to worsen.
Of course, European nationalism in the 19th century erased prior identities through schooling, national languages and nationalist historiographies. The process is still not complete in Italy.
What's interesting with those who identify with their empire, is the pride it gives them. You can see some of that in the nostalgia for the USSR, the joy they had of being part of something big and powerful. They say things like "you could travel for days and the countryside would change and the people too but you would still be at home, using one currency". Not that they all liked the Soviet Union when it was still a thing but they liked that in it: the huge size, the sense of a community of nations united in a powerful league.
The Americans get this feeling.
Yet Americans have an ace in their pocket at this: anybody can become an American.
The ideology on what the country was founded upon is extremely important to Americans even to this day, and is one of the cornerstones of their nation. Only the Native Americans tribes could truly go with the normal way of looking at a country (by the land that has been inhabited for ages by the same people that share a language and culture). The US has had to replace this kind of "nativism" with the "Founding Fathers", the Constitution and the Bill of Rights as being what the country is about. And thanks to the global dominance of English, the same language has been easily taken by the newcomers and an American culture is quite dominant too.
And that makes a Michael Moore and an Trump supporter finding Americans values to their liking, even if they are quite opposed in nearly everything.
You could interpret Brexit as a failure of the Brits to reassess their nationalistic historiography, a failure to realise that their British identity was made up, created politically, and that it is to a degree based on fake nationalistic history and xenophobia.
A very good question. I have to admit, not in anyway close as Americans values are dear to Americans. Far too easily someone defines "European values" in a way that the gets a lot of Europeans don't agree with the definition.
Quoting Olivier5
Umm, it isn't fake as identities aren't fake. Every identity is made up. If people have come up with ideas that unite them, don't think that it makes them fake. And belief of there existing nations is a far more older idea than the 19th Century, where nation-states, something bit different, came to be the new vogue.
The UK has seen itself detached from Europe for a very long time as there obviously is the English Channel to start with. And this separation from the "Continental Europe" isn't so different from what other European nations think about their relation to "Europe".
I guess only France and the Benelux countries see themselves as being in the heart of Europe. Nordic countries see themselves as North European and use often the term Central Europe. Spain and Portugal or Greece see them quite far from Brussels too. Eastern European countries that were behind the Iron Curtain see themselves being different from Western Europe. Russians see themselves quite differently and many see Russians also in this way. Then there is the question just how European is Turkey or Georgia or Armenia?
Forced in a top down manner on the people, I mean, recent, not cast in stone. In fact the Scott's voted against Brexit and whether they will stay in the UK remains to be seen.
Quoting ssu
Germans and Italians too. By and large it's the old Charlemagne empire who feels European. The others are more opportunistic in their adhesion to the project.
What wouldn't be forced in a top down manner? That's the way societies work.
Quoting Olivier5
Germans have a problematic stance towards their history and Italians do feel that Brussels and the EU is far away. The best example is Greece. People do understand the role that Greece has played as the birthplace for Western European culture, but we (in the West) then disregard it's Roman past as we call the East-Romans Byzantinians. They called themselves Romans, yet spoke Greek. Another divide comes with the Church.
When you think of it, Europe's strength is in it's diversity. That might sound at first very nice and politically correct, but the simple fact is that this means disjointedness, disunity, and that you do have huge problems in creating a federation similar to the US. As we talked earlier, the Nordic countries have had totally open borders for a long time, lots of cooperation on various field and the countries view themselves as Nordic/Scandinavian. Yet there is ABSOLUTELY NO intention from anyone to recreate the Kalmar Union. There wasn't even the will to use Scandinavism as an ideology to unify Norway, Sweden and Denmark. There simply wasn't any Garibaldi or Bismarck here that would have unified the territories through military force. The political will simply didn't exist and doesn't exist.
With this insight we should look at Europe: yes, countries are willing to cooperate and have good relations between others, yet they are quite independent and value that independence. One can see the structural problem that the EU has. In my view the EU would have to understand it cannot be the US of Europe, it indeed is a confederacy of independent states, and it is wrong and actually harmful to try to reach something more.
It comes back to the fact that if you are willing really to unify Europe under one political rule, you have to use force, just like Napoleon, Charlemagne, and just like the Romans did. And the military has to be dominant and always on the alert, otherwise it will break up. This is something that the EU is not willing to understand. Perhaps this is the lesson from all the European empires that have controlled vast parts of Europe that we seem not to learn.
Who wants another European war? If the EU has any advantage, it's in offering a peaceful way to do some level of integration. It's the value proposition of the EU. And yes, the price to pay is slowness and hence patience. It's a long-term project.
Maybe another thing than internal war will speed up the creation of a European spirit. I'm thinking of a scenario in which European countries fight together against a common aggressor from outside.
What's interesting is how the Viking kingdoms turned into various nation-states after conversion to Christianity. Can you elaborate on that process and how Norway, Denmark, and Sweden became distinct but without using post-facto realities? I wonder how much was constructed out of leadership quarrels versus actual differences early on.
Emphasis on the "some level" is appropriate as that is what all EU members want.
Start from the languages: they are different. Swedes and Norwegians can understand somewhat each other while (at least in my view) Danish is a lot more different.
Perhaps Benkei or other Dutch persons here could answer this, but Dutch and German are somewhat close to each other, but still different languages. As are Finnish and Estonian, for that matter.
We can never really know the Classical World, including Rome and its empire, because its destruction was so thorough and relentless.
But did these regional distinctions take place before or after the Viking era? I would imagine it was minor differences the further back you go and then increased over time. But how and when and factors, I am not sure.
I think well before. Tacitus in 98 AD does separates many of the present people as various Germanic tribes living in the North quite accurately (talks about Swedes and Finns or Sami for example). Of course he hadn't visited the place, but still.
In the North there hasn't been huge changes in population or influx of new people as in Central or Southern Europe (at least before our time).
Firstly, how can you speak for all “Westerners”?
Secondly, there is no such thing as “the West” other than the direction which the Earth is spinning away from, that is, there’s no such thing as “the Occident”. For example, Rome and Britain are traditionally counted as “Occidental”, whereas Iran, India, Arabia, and China are regarded as “Oriental”. However, Iran and India are ethno-linguistically and culturally much closer to Rome and Britain than to Arabia or China. This is seen e.g. in the Arab worshipping the ?a?alihata and the Chinese the she?n where the Indian, the Roman, and the Englishman/-woman all worship the dev??n/de?s/t??wanz and the Iranian and the Englishman worship the ahuras/??ansunz, and in the Arab calling that “?a7’” or “s?aqi?iq” which the Englishman/-woman calls “brother” and the Iranian “barâdar”, whereas the Chinese calls it “xio?ngdi?”.
Thirdly, yearning for the Roman Empire is indeed something you would likely do if you’re into things like slavery, war-crimes, murdering people en masse, making them slay each other, or almost any other kind of barbarism. In my next comment, I’ll give a long but still not at all exhaustive list of Roman crimes. Here, I want to focus mostly on broader aspects.
Let’s start with one of the two original questions:
Quoting Gus Lamarch
The Roman Empire was the state founded by the olden dwellers of Rome, which they created through unjustifiable wars of conquest and which they based on slavery. Yes, the Roman Empire was a slave society, in which human beings were totally dehumanized and not respected at all. It could become so powerful thanks to its strong military, with which it subjugated other previously free folks. So to answer the other original question:
Quoting Gus Lamarch
No territory was truly Roman other than the city of Rome; everything else (with very few exceptions) was just robbed by the Romans from other peoples by force. Hence, the Roman Empire didn’t have legitimacy even in those territories in which it had brute power, let alone territories which its long arm couldn’t reach.
Quoting Gus Lamarch
What?! We have developed modern medicine, human rights, calculus, the theory of evolution, modern technology, relativity theory, quantum mechanics, and fantasy and sci-fi ideas which the ancients couldn’t even dream of, to name just a few things. By contrast, what did the Romans develop? Ingenious war-machines, gladiatorial fights, ways to dehumanize, abuse and torture slaves, ways to exploit the environment and so destroy it, ways to conquer, subjugate and rule other nations, and many other bad things, but little science, mostly philosophy just taken over from the Greeks, and no mathematics.
Also, by ending the Roman Empire, we ended slavery.
Quoting Ciceronianus the White
Just in some ways? Tell me one way in which we have not surpassed them by far (other than the one which I’m going to talk about soon). Did the Romans have human rights? Did they have animal rights? Didn’t their bloodthirsty masses love to watch humans and animals butcher each other? Did they care for the environment? Did they contribute to mathematics in any way?
No, they didn’t contribute to mathematics. Sorry, my bad – they did influence the development of maths, as is swuttled (explained) in the following text by mathematician Harro Heuser on page 645 of the second part Lehrbuch der Analysis Teil 2 of his classic textbook on mathematical analysis (the boldening and italics are mine):
[quote=Harro Heuser, translated from German into English by me, ???????????]When the Roman erne/earn (eagle) cast its shadow over the countries of the Eastern Mediterranean, Greek thought began to wilt. The imperial clods of dirt took pride in, unlike the quirky “Greeklets”, doing the sciences only as far as bidden by immediate need (and that means not doing them at all). Cicero reports that among the Greeks, nothing was more renowned than mathematics, “but we have cared for this art only so far as it is handy in measuring and reckoning (calculating)” (Tusc. 1, 5). Thus, the Romans indeed only interfere once with the development of mathematics: through murdering Archimedes. In the year 47 BC, Caesar set the Egyptian fleet in the harbour of Alexandria alight; the fire spread to the city and annihilated the most important bookhouse in the ancient world.[/quote]
We certainly have long surpassed the Romans not only in science, technology, and art, but also and perhaps most weightily in ethics and morality. Regarding religious matters, which Roman can hold a candle to Theech (German) mystics like Meister Eckhart?
The only way that comes to my mind in which we haven’t yet surpassed the “ancients” is this: One group of ancients has stubbornly withstood being surpassed in the field of theoretical philosophy and mysticism. These are the Platonists, including the first Academy-leader Plato, and the last one Damascius. The latter is a truly awe-inspiring thinker of beyondliness, perhaps the greatest one so far in the history of the Western philosophical tradition.
Quoting Ciceronianus the White
Yes, they did indeed, and they do not stand far behind Rome in criminality – sometimes maybe even exceeding it, perhaps like in the case of the Spanish conquests in the Americas which left millions dead. And for what? Out of lust for power and greed for wealth.
Quoting Olivier5
The Romans brought Alaric’s sack of Rome on themselves. How? Well, there were many Germanic soldiers in the Roman military. These soldiers actually helped Rome and kept it safe and stable. A prime example of a Germanic (Theedishman) who kept Rome from dying is the half-Vandal general Stilicho. However, out of xenophobia and racism that can only be called fascistic – indeed, fascism is fittingly named after the Roman fascis – and nazistic, the Romans murdered Stilicho and massacred thousands to tens of thousands of Germanic soldiers and their families – the very soldiers who had protected Rome. Of course, the survivors of this monstrous deed joined the heroic king Alaric the First (??alar?eik þ?ana F?ruman) and punished the Romans for their abominable crimes. And yet, their sack of Rome was quite civilized, showing the atheldom (nobleness) of the Goths and the other Germanic fighters.
Quoting Ciceronianus the White
It’s indeed absurd, and also deplorable, that the Germanic folks who replaced the Roman Empire with their free nations looked up to that evil Empire so much. But at least they, together with other folks like the Huns, and other factors, have brought down Rome and with it all the slavery, debasement, and huge-scale conquest. Just like Hannibal Barkas, Viriathus, Vercingetorix, Simon bar Kokhba, and many others, Arminius, Kniva, Fritigern, and Alraric are heroes who stood against the tyranny of Rome and helped in the end bring about the final fall of that unlegitimate state.
Also, those who are barbarians is the modern sense are none other than the Romans themselves, for they did not respect human wirthe (dignity) and, indeed, the wirthe of all living beings, had mostly rather base interests and motives (hunger for power, lust, and greed), and weren’t very intellectually-minded. They were a full-blooded warrior-folk, basically Huns living in cities. They were (for their time) materially sophisticated and advanced, but hygelily (intellectually) (mostly) rather poor, luxury-loving barbarians.
By the way, they were also barbarians in the ancient sense, for “barbarian” simply meant not-Greek.
Speaking of barbarians, the Greeks and Romans were pretty racist and came to use (brook) the word “barbarian” prejoratively for foreigners. But what were they really? Just like the Celts, the Germanics, the Persians, and many others, they were ultimately invasive barbarians from the Pontic-Caspian steppe who took over many regions, including Western Eurasia (a.k.a. “Europe”), and almost extinguished the (more) inborn speech and culture there.
Quoting Ciceronianus the White
Yes, the Romans were very fit evolutionarily speaking, and since nature knows no rightwiseness (justice) and the law of the jungle is the ultimate law, they were very successful not in spite of their ruthlessness, but because of it.
Quoting Ciceronianus the White
I can say for certain (save for the ground skepticism that every philosopher should likely have) that the Roman Empire was not legitimate in any way at all. But what does the world care for legitimacy? Sadly, jungle law rules supreme, as is wonderfully expressed in this fable:
Now how can you top that? (I just got a call from a guy who told me how to top at least some points. He called himself Tom...Tamj..Temj... I think Temudjin or something of the like.
Temudjin learns of the Roman perversions (sadism, gladiatorial fights).
Temudjin (raising his hands in despair): “How can Tengri let such monsters defile this good Earth?!” :wink:)
Now that I have laid out quite a few crimes committed by the Romans, but by no means all of them (the severs on which this forum is hosted have a big but finite storage capacity, you know :wink:), I must admit that not everything coming from Rome was bad. While Roman law was very unjust in some central respects, such as allowing slavery and not regarding slaves as human beings, it did have some good aspects, too, giving many people protection and order. The ideal Roman douths (virtues) were also rather admirable, and if most Romans had actually had them and the other douths, Rome would likely have have been a good state, rather than one of the evilest empires in history due to the crimes it commited. Also, the Romans abolished human sacrifice, though they themselves did sometimes sacrifice humans. Furthermore, they seem to have been somewhat less ethno-supremacist than the Greeks, I think. Another thing which the Romans have left us with is a lot of historical and ethnological texts. For example, we’d know less about the olden Germanics were it not for Tacitus’ Germania. In addition, the Romans were very good at construction, further developing concrete and domes. There may have been some other good achievements of the Romans, too. Finally, I think that some Roman philosophers such as Seneca had some truly admirable views. For instance, Seneca rightly saw that slaves are human beings just like everyone else and should thus be treated accordingly if I understand him right, and that everyone could end up a slave. He even said that all humans are slaves to higher powers. Now Seneca wasn’t perfect, but I find at least some of his views quite advanced and good.
But we shouldn’t get carried away by and only concentrate on these good aspects of an empire that had in its capital no Academy, no Al-Azhar University, no Madrasa, and no Bayt Al-Hikmah (House of Wisdom) for learning, but all the more amphitheatres like the Colosseum for bloody games.
Both Greeks and Romans were slave-holder societies, which goes directly against absolute objective moral law. Compare this to the declaration of human rights on the Cyrus Cylinder. This shows us that olden Iran is much closer to modern “Western” civilization in this repsect than are ancient Greece or Rome. Therefore, the modern “West” shouldn’t regard the latter two as part of “Western” civilization, for their values were quite different from ours and in many ways monstrous.
Another way in which olden Iran is vastly superior to olden Greece and Rome is Zarathustrism, whose all-good god Ahura Mazda is a true god while the gods of the barbarian religions of Greece and Rome were little more than supercharged humans. Zarathustrism even urges us to care for the environment, and isn’t its heart maxim good thoughts, good words, good deeds truly wonderful and deeply ethical? Compare that to the serial rapist Zeus, for example.
Quoting Pfhorrest
:up:
I also believe that the state has no right to command me, and that I have no obligation whatsoever to obey the state. No man, no extraterrestrial, no daimon, and no god has authority over me. The only law that I want to follow is the beyondly absolute objective moral law. I am not subject to the slave-mentality that lets some people acknowledge fictitious authority gained by other people or institutions by not-legitimate means.
However, I don’t hold the state to be unlegitimate either. It’s simply not legitimate. States, as well as the human species as a whole, arose out of natural processes. It turned out that states work for humans, just as they work for ants and some other hymenopterans, and just as prides work for lions, for example. Just as there’s no objective moral authority of a lion over his lionesses, there’s no objective moral authority of a king or an emperor or a state in general over its inhabitants. After all, the very existence of almost every state in the world, I dare say, is based on not-moral events. For instance, most Western Eurasian (“European”) states from antiquity to modernity are Indo-European, yet the Indo-Europeans are invasive in Europe, so how can any of those states be legitimate?
Things just happen, and states are a part of the natural evolution of things just like everything else. Many of Earth’s living things, including humans, are predatory, that is, they eat other living things. Wouln’t that, a part of the basis of the whole human race, already be illegitimate?
Human states is just as legitimate or as illegitimate as wolf packs, ant colonies, volcanic eruptions, the Sun, black holes, the Second Law of Thermodynamics, or the number 6. Then why do many humans seem to have (or at least to have had for much of history) this tendency to ascribe to natural things like states fictitious “legitimacy”? Likely because of evolution. You can easily see that humans who have a tendency to obey and fulfill certain duties can form bigger and stronger groups than humans who don’t. That’s likely why this “obedience-gene” (it’s likely not a single gene, though) has been selected for by natural selection, giving us humans a sense of fictitious legitimacy. It’s exactly the same as with ants, who also have some sense that they must, have to, are obliged to, serve their queen. But objectively, there is no such obligation. It’s just an outcome of Darwinian evolution that gives the ants this feeling of a fictitious obligation.
Thankfully, I’ve been able to free myself of the evolutionarily-caused drive to obey and serve. Innerly, I do not bow to the state, and I do not even bow to the highest gods. However, I do generally obey many laws willingly because I think that they’re (maybe by chance or by good guessing on part of the lawmaker) in accordance with transcendent moral law (which I don’t claim to have knowledge of) or because I think that they’re useful. The latter is just like the fact that I willingly drink; not because I feel a moral obligation to do so, but because I want to go on living. Laws which I regard as wrong I don’t willingly obey, but I usually obey them nontheless because I don’t want to get punished, just as I don’t go into a forest infested with rabies because I don’t want to die a horrible death, not because I ascribe some “sovereignty” to the rabies-virus over the forest.
The drive of some humans to serve and obey may have been evolutionarily beneficial, but it is and remains a slavishness-inducing drive, and since I am free, I’ve gotten rid of it. I understand that almost all of those things that claim moral authority lack it in reality, and that sometimes, they are egregiously unmoral. An evil extraterrestrial might kidnap me and regard me as a slave, but that doesn’t mean that I actually am a slave. I only become a slave once I ascribe moral legitimacy to the alien’s claim and in my mind accept that I’m a slave. However, I’m well aware that the alien has no authority over me and no authority to make me a slave.
Unluckily, many people let themselves be enslaved, at least in the past, which allowed despots to rise to power and tyrannize the rest of a folk, and also allowed empires like the Roman Empire to grow by might because the citizens accepted the fictitious right that was only enforced by might.
Although no state is legitimate, there are some states that I like more than others, just as I like our Sun more than a hypothetical black hole that would gobble up the Earth, or like I like bees more than hornets. In particular, I forechoose a nation state which respects human rights over an empire that treads on them. I would happily follow (without any moral obligation, mind you) most laws in many modern civilized states, but I would only grudgingly follow the unrightwise (unjust) laws of an empire like the Roman one, and maybe even try to overthrow said empire and laws in the end. However, since I can live pretty well in human-rights-respecting nation-states, why should I seek to cut off the branch on which I sit?
Works like War of the Worlds nicely illustrate that all the supposed legitimacy of states would be revealed as null and void by an invasion by technologically superior extraterrestrials.
I do believe in an objective moral law, but I think that it is above nature, and that hardly anyone to no one has ever seen the true objective moral law, though many have claimed to have done so.
Another deprobable slavish aspect of many humans is that they are easily awed by great deeds, regardless of whether they are good or bad. For instance, many people over the ages have admired the Roman Empire even though it was evil in many respects. Why? Because it was great, just as Alexander of Macedon, Charles the Great, and Genghis Khan were great. Yet this trait is just as argr as the feeling of having a duty to obey something or someone who doesn’t have objective moral authority, such as an emperor. Both traits are also dangerous because they allow the illegitimate and ruthless to gain power even over the minds of the slaves and the awed, who can then help them physically oppress the free folks who remain. It is indeed an argr aspect of some humans (and perhaps many other sapient living things) that they might well worship such evil and perverse aliens as the Goa’uld or the Yautja as gods if they existed (which they thankfully hopefully don’t), as is portrayed in the movies.
This deplorable tendency to view the great with awe, regardless of whether it’s good or bad, is beautifully expressed as the end of the video which I’ve linked to above.
"I doubt we of the West will ever get over the Roman Empire" doesn't mean "We of the West will never get over the Roman Empire." Nor does "I think you're being pedantic and fractious" mean "You are being pedantic and fractious."
Quoting Tristan L
"Ever get over the Roman Empire" doesn't mean "yearning for the Roman Empire."
Quoting Tristan L
Who's this "we"?
Quoting Tristan L
Legal rights, you mean? In fact, Roman citizens had quite a few of what we'd now call legal rights. If not legal, just what "rights" do we have, that don't derive from the natural law recognized by Roman jurists like Ulpian? As for animal rights, what animal rights do you maintain we have?
Quoting Tristan L
You must enjoy Hollywood movies.
Quoting Tristan L
I'm not very fond of mystics generally, nor of German mystics in particular, sorry. Nor did the Romans much, I think, until they became Christians, in which case mysticism became all the rage, and religious rage became prevalent. But I'll mention Seneca, Cicero and Marcus Aurelius, Philo and Plotinus just for the hell of it (I speak of Rome and its Empire, which included quite a few different people, you know). They were not religious in the sense that a Dominican of Eckhart's time was (necessarily so, that is to say) of course, and no doubt Eckhart was a better monk than they were, not being monks, if that's what you mean.
To which someone might answer, “Those very distinctions are pedantic”. However, the witcrafta (flitecrafter, logician) would say that we do have to make fine distinctions even if they seem pedantic. They might say that, for instance, “There may be time-anomalies trapping people” means a weaker proposition than “The are time-anomalies trapping people”, and the proposition meant by “Some people, perhaps due to such time-anomalies or for some other reason, have missed quite a few developments because they dwell in the past and are awed by long-dead cultures” does not say of any particular individual that they do those things. The witcrafta would also point out, though, that a particular individual having the aforementioned qualities lets follow the proposition involving the existential quantification.
Coming back to the topic at hand, I have to set something right: Your doubt that we’ll ever get over the Roman Empire is reckoned right. That is so because we have already long gotten over it. We have universal human rights, environmentalism, animal-wellfare, wellfare-states, we fly to the Moon and send probes beyond the rim of the Solar System, and many have already realized that Rome set up a tyrrany. Among those who see that the end of the Western Roman Empire was a good thing are not only moderners, but also many-yearhundreds-old humanists like Beatus Rhenanus, who celebrates the wins of the Germanics over the Romans during the Great Migration, Ulrich von Hutten, and Hugo Grotius. Johann Gottfried Herder rightly realizes the ephemerality of imperialism, of which Roman imperialism is a prime example. The historical materialist Friedrich Engels correctly found slavery to be a dead-end, and that unlike the Romans, the soulishly healthly Germanics could make civilization young again. By the way, let’s not forget that the Roman historian Tacitus praised Germanic douth (virtue).
Quoting Ciceronianus the White
The dwellers of the modern free Western Eurasia and their forebears and descendents.
Quoting Ciceronianus the White
Of course they had those. In fact, they are one reason why the Romans, those great administrators, were so successful. But that need not have anything to do with rightwiseness (justice), but only with rules that give a specific state (in this case the Roman Empire) an evolutionary boot (advantage). For example, the Mongol armies also had very effective discipline and laws, just as hornet colonies do. But does that make those slayers of millions of people and destroyers of Bagdad or those efficient killers of bees, respectively, rightwise?
I don’t mean legal rights that work for an individual state; rather, I mean laws that reflect objective moral law in respecting the wirthe (dignity) of all human beings (the only humans that lack it are those who have forfeited it by freely choosing to do very evil deeds).
Quoting Ciceronianus the White
I'm sure you have heard of things like animal wellfare and laws forbidding doing cruelty to animals, hunting endangered species, or the like?
Quoting Ciceronianus the White
Well, you’re actually right; it just depends on which movie. You see, they have a lot of very fine films and of course also many not so fine ones. You might want to read about something called gladiator fights, and the disgusted report that Seneca wrote about the brutality and perversion of gladiatorial games and the raw bloodthirst of the spectators.
Quoting Ciceronianus the White
Of couse you're entitled to your opinion. You need not apologize, for we’re living in free countries. However, it might interest you that the guy to whom the Western philosophical tradition is a series of footnotes according to Whitehead was basically a mystic; above his written Theory of Shapes is his unwritten Theory of Principles, and grounding that is not a doctrine, but an unsayable experience of the god Apollo as eche (eternal) andwardness (presence). This highest, deeply religious and unsayable level of Platonism was discovered by Christnia Schefer. I’ve written more about this matter here.
Also, note that you seemed to imply that we only have secular achievements over the Romans, and I believe I’ve shown you wrong if that is the case. Another point is this: With what can the Romans match the beyond-being of Plato’s One or the Godhead of Meister Eckhart?
Quoting Ciceronianus the White
When last I looked, Philo was Jewish and Plotinus likely Egyptian. By your reasoning, it seems, all the peoples who lived under Mongol rule should be regarded as Mongols, making a big part of all Eurasians Mongols.
Yes, and it’s a deplorable fact showing a manifestation of the slavish element in many humans.
Quoting Olivier5
Actually, Atawulf did originally try to erase the Roman Empire, but later found the task to hard for him to achieve.
[s]Quoting Olivier5[/s]
... stolen from other folks.
Quoting Olivier5
... which were mostly Egyptian, Babylonian, and Greek.
Quoting Olivier5
True, many people are easily awed by anything, no matter how bad (or good), so long as it is great.
No, just because he understood that he needed the structures, the laws, the culture of the empire to rule it. A certain social capital is necessary to manage a big empire, and the Goths just didn't have it.
By my egoism! Please stop filling the discussion with garbage and stupid revisionism.
The purpose of my discussion was not to judge the Romans, as this is out of the question. If you have any personal resentment for them, history doesn't care, because you only live as you do, thanks to all the splendor of the Greeks and the Romans. So please, if you are a putrid revisionist, I kindly ask you to withdraw from the discussion. You can create your own and fill it with this value inversion garbage :)
Even if you don't accept it, you're only You the way you are, because of Rome and Greece. Nihilism from the decadence of the prosperity of secular globalization. Where did I see that already? Oh, yes, Thebes and Rome, and now the West - you're a perfect example of this -.
As Rome wasn't alone and didn't just face "barbaric" tribes and the celts in the north, it would be interesting to learn how much the Persian Empire (Sassanid Empire etc.) of the same age left it's mark on the later era. Unfortunately the Mongols devastated the area of modern Iran and Iraq later while Western Europe avoided the Mongol scourge. Later Chinese culture and society obviously got similar influence from the age of Antiquity.
Yes, exactly. The Iranian religion of Zarathustrism likely influenced Christianity in weighty ways, and the latter would go on to take over as Western Eurasia’s ruling religion. That’s one way in which Iran has influenced the “Western” world.
There are also other countries which the “West” has much to thank for, such as Egygt for inventing the hieroglyphs, from which most European alphabets are ultimately drawn, including the Greek one, the Latin one, and the Fu?þark, the Phoenicians for inventing alphabetic writing and perhaps also philosophy (for Thales of Miletus may have been a Phoenician), and Mesopotamia for inventing writing and many other things, such as law codes. Also, let’s not forget the great Arab and other Islamic thinkers, scientists, and mathematicians like Omar Khayyam and Al-Khwarizmi, who greatly contributed to the modern world with their fruits of the mind (such as the discovery of algebra), or the Indians, who discovered the number zero, or the Chinese, who invented paper, the compass, gunpowder, and printing.
Quoting ssu
Yes, what a shame!
Quoting ssu
Yes, and ancient China has also influenced the western regions to a great extent.
You to have no qualms about speaking for all of them, it seems.
Quoting Tristan L
When we speak of rights which "reflect objective moral law" we speak of rights which either already are legal rights, or which we think should be legal rights, but are not. It's merely facile to boast that we now recognize moral law or accept moral rights more than did the Romans. In fact, they were as well aware of what's been called "natural law" and "natural [i][i][/i][/i]rights" than we claim to be, probably even more aware. As to slavery, for example, the jurist Ulpian maintained that everyone is born free according to natural law, regardless of the civil law; the jurist Florentinus stated that slavery is an institution against nature. You'll find the presumption of innocence, the right to confront your accuser and other modern accepted legal maxis in Roman law. Then as now, what are called natural law and natural rights were/are honored more in theory than in practice. The Roman acceptance of natural law may have its basis in the popularity of Stoicism in the Roman period among the elite. (Yes, I know Stoicism originated in Greece, but it was developed during the Empire and the Republic by such as Cicero, Seneca, Epictetus and Marcus Aurelius, and that philosophy as a guide to how to live spread throughout the Empire, and influenced later generations, through the efforts of the Roman Stoics. One doesn't hear Zeno, Cleanthes and Chrysippus referred to very often outside the academy).
Quoting Tristan L
I have some knowledge of the Roman ludi, including those involving gladiators. I know enough about them to be aware of the fact that bouts between gladiators were monitored by referees (as are modern boxing matched) and that reports of the deaths of gladiators have been wildly exaggerated, much as the reports of the massacres of Christians have been, by Hollywood and other manufacturers of titillating fantasies enjoyed by too many. That's why funerary monuments to former gladiators who had retired from the games, noting their victories, have been found. On a purely practical level, gladiators were simply too expensive to feed, house and train for them to be killed regularly. Most matches weren't fought to the death. It's of course true that they were brutal entertainments, but the fact is we don't have much basis on which to condemn them, given that there are many of us who it seems enjoy seeing others beaten senseless in ultimate fighting and cage matches, or concussed to the point of disability or death in American football and other modern "sports." Then of course there's the peculiarly Spanish ritualistic and ceremonial torture and killing of bulls. Until fairly recently, bear-baiting had its fans. Dog fights are popular among some. Seneca, of course, wasn't the only ancient Romans who loathed gladiatorial contests. Marcus Aurelius hated them as well.
Quoting Tristan L
I don't know, primarily, I would think, because I have no idea what is meant by them. I have no problem with mysticism as such, although we may not agree on what is or is not "mystical." But I don't think philosophers usefully dabble in it. Theologians, of course, must do so by the nature of their profession, but I believe their efforts, when not just special pleading, are equally futile. Self-experience, art, music, poetry may be the only means by which we can experience and understand what is called mystical. Art may evoke it, but it isn't something to be explained, or described, except very clumsily and incoherently.
Quoting Tristan L
You seem to be inclined to pigeon-hole people based on their religion, place of origin and such. Once an Egyptian, always an Egyptian, etc., in your mind, apparently--and they can be nothing else. But the Roman Empire wasn't solely made up of people born in Rome, as should be obvious. Roman citizenship expanded rapidly in the imperial period. In 212 C.E. or A.D. it was granted to all free people in the Empire. Plotinus, therefore, was a Roman citizen in all probability; as to Philo, I don't know. The mainly Greek Eastern Empire, later called the Byzantine Empire, considered itself Roman for its whole existence. Simply put, the Roman Empire wasn't confined to Rome, especially when considered in terms of its social and cultural influence and sway.
Indeed. It's noticeable in many ways, one of my pet topics being the symbolic use of public space and monuments. All the Washington DC highlights (senate, white house etc.) copy Rome. Even the obelisc is not an Egyptian reference as much as an imperial one. Romans put Egyptian obeliscs all over their city, and these monuments say: "We conquered the Egyptian empire of old." Bonaparte did the same thing in Paris: he brought back an obelisc from his Egypt campaign, to do like the Romans did and symbolise power. And that's also why there's this big obelisc planted in the heart of DC. It's basically a phalic symbol of imperial power inherited from ancient Rome.
Yes, my bad; I forgot a second “free” before “dwellers” to indicate that I mean those who are free from, among other things, being spellbound by the glamour of greatness.
Quoting Ciceronianus the White
That is indeed good and admirable. Of course, it would have been better had they totally rejected slavery, but for the ancient world, their realizations are remarkable. In fact,
Quoting Tristan L
Regarding natural law, I don’t think (though I don’t know) that anyone has actual knowledge of it, though many claim to. For example, Ulpian and Florentinus believed that all men (used gender-neutrally) are free according to natural law, but Aristotle held that some people are slaves by nature. Now I strongly believe that the two Romans are right and the Greek is wrong, but can we prove it? Can we even prove that natural law exists? I firmly believe that it does, but I also think that almost everyone only has opinions about it. My opinion on slavery is clear. Maybe all those opinions are just due to natural or nurtural properties of the brain, such as natural selection favoring certain social behavior, which thus leads to the evolution of a “moral drive” that encourages such behavior. In that case, let’s hope that what’s evolutionarily beneficial is in accordance with objective moral law (if the latter exists).
Quoting Ciceronianus the White
There possibly is quite a bit of exaggeration on their part, but I’m not drawing on them as my source. Rather, take e.g. Seneca's seventh letter to Lucilius, in which he describes brutal and murderous games.
Quoting Ciceronianus the White
I certainly do not enjoy such modern sports, and I condemn both the modern and ancient (though the moderner should be wiser, of course, which quite a few sadly aren’t). However, we should keep in mind that modern fighters aren’t forced to fight, whereas most gladiators were forced to do so. In that respect, as well in that death was officially acceptable back then but not today, the ancient is to be condemned much more severely. The basic base love of violence is likely similar, however.
Quoting Ciceronianus the White
I fully and totally forewyrd; such blood-“sports” are truly barbaric.
Quoting Ciceronianus the White
Did they really hate them per se, or just the overly bloody ones? Either way, though, it is an improvement.
Quoting Ciceronianus the White
The One is the orprinciple (German: ?urprinzip) of oneness which gives each thing oneness and thus makes its being possible. Since the One wouldn’t be truly one if it had being – for then it would be one and a being – it must be beyond being. After all, it’s the source of being itself. As for the Godhead, it is a level of the godly above (the Christian) God. It is impersonal, beyond being a mere creator, and lacks all properties. Like the One, it is fully beyond. That’s a short summary of my understanding of the matter.
Quoting Ciceronianus the White
Of course the Roman Empire contained many folks, not just ethnic Romans from Rome, and many of these were Roman citizens. Yet they weren’t truly Romans. An Egyptian need not always remain just that, true; if he (used gender-neutrally) becomes fully romanized, speaks mostly Latin, and sees himself as mainly a Roman, then I would regard him as Roman, yes. But citizenship is too little. The same goes for the Mongol Empire: If a Tatar becomes fully integrated into Mongol society and he sees himself and is seen as nothing but a Mongol, he is basically a Mongol, yes. But just being under Mongolian rule doesn’t make you Mongolian.
The human civilization of antiquity can be summarized in 4 states:
Roman Empire;
Sassanian Empire;
Aksumite Empire;
Han Dynasty of China;
All of them covered vast geographic territories, in addition to being provided with high levels of urbanization, bureaucratization and a wide locomotion structure, in addition to a stable and regulated economy. Life in the ancient classical world - excluding Late Antiquity - was practically like our own, minus the technology.
It is obvious that all these societies that represented the "globalized" world of the time would leave a unique legacy that would be the longing and inspiration for all the nations that would succeed them with the beginning of the Middle Ages. Like the Roman Empire, the Sassanid Empire also experienced submission by the Huns - The Hephthalites, also called the White Huns, were a people who lived in Central Asia and South Asia during the 5th to 8th centuries. Militarily important during 450 to 560, they were based in Bactria and expanded east to the Tarim Basin, west to Sogdia and south through Afghanistan to Pakistan and parts of northern India. They were a tribal confederation and included both nomadic and settled urban communities. They were part of the four major states known collectively as Xyon - Xionites - or Huna, being preceded by the Kidarites, and succeeded by the Alkhon and lastly the Nezak. All of these peoples have often been linked to the Huns who invaded Eastern Europe during the same period, and / or have been referred to as "Huns" -, and I can state through my studies, that the devastation faced by the Sassanids and by the Gupta dynasty in India, by the Huns, was twice as bad as that faced by the Romans in Europe.
The Aksumites paved the way for the future Ethiopian and Islamic nations of the Horn of Africa. And, well, China remains being China.
One of the biggest differences between the West and nations like Persia, was the situation in which one fell to the Islamic invasions - Sassanid Empire - completely, and the other resisted for more than 600 years - in the case of the Roman Empire -. We, unlike the Persians, were not Arabized - for now -.
For the ones who don't know about Sassanid Persia, Aksumite Ethiopia, and Han China, here are some representation of their states:
Sassanid Empire;
Aksumite Empire;
Han Dynasty.
And for the Huns; while Rome suffered from the North:
China suffered from the North:
- Xianbei is another name given to the Huns by the Chinese -
And Sassanian Persia suffered from the East:
Let's not forget. Let's try to look at them with the same objectivity (and criticism) that we look at our own "Western" history. If we do that, many interesting question arise.
For example, there is the question just why was the Golden age of Islamic science rather brief. The simple answer often given is that while Christendom had the Renaissance while Islam didn't, but I think it's not such a simple thing.
The historian Ibn Khaldun said that "Science flourishes in wealthy societies" and was correct, even now. Khaldun referred to empires/societies going through cycles similar to human growing up and the becoming old. Something similar that later Western historians have noticed too.
This is actually a very good example why in order to understand history it's important to focus on more than just one narrative. Perhaps what we lack in our history education still is to say while meanwhile... and just pick the focus and the narrative we like.
The rise of Islam happened at the perfect time, when the Roman Empire (or the Byzantinians to us) just had with Emperor Heraclius finally delivered a crushing blow to Sassanid Empire only then to be also in a weak state to suffer a defeat to the Arabs and lose the crucial Nile valley, which basically was the only reason that Constantinople was able to be a megacity of it's time. With two empires being weak at the same time gave chance for a third to be formed.
The reason why some empire is at it's height depends usually on other empires or centers being at a weak state. (Closest example may be what kind of economic powerhouse the US was in the 1950's compared to the rest of the World... something that has to do with WW2, I guess.)
The problem with this is that humanity is essentially biased. If everyone has different opinions, which one is the real one? This was the case in which Roman civilization found itself when the west fell, and it was like that in the east - Byzantine - at the time of the Arab invasions. When a nation loses its base of values ??and absolute truths, most of the time, only with the introduction of new values ??by third parties - in the case of the Western Roman Empire, the Germans, and in the case of the East, the Arabs - that purpose can be reached again. I do not deny that the freedom of the ecumenical world is wonderful, but it seems that on the grand scale of history, hegemony and order is the most successful path.
Quoting ssu
The case of Islam is a great example of the phrase "give time to time, and everything will come true". The Arabian peninsula was always on the margins of ancient and classic societies, where no one sought to conquer and annex. It is obvious that if given time, some superpower would be born from there, and that became truth in the 6th century.
Well, it is quite logical and understandable that history is taught from the viewpoint of domestic history, that people are interested in their own history, the part of history that has most effected you. The viewpoint, the chosen narrative and the bias isn't actually a problem when we simply understand that it exists. The bias really doesn't refute the fact that historical events did happen. Hence even in history you can make question that have definite yes / no answers. To the question "Was there a Roman Empire, yes or no?" you have either a true or a false answer, just as there is for the question "Is there a global pandemic happening right now?". Hence understanding there being a bias doesn't force us to embrace some post-modernist humbug of their not being that objective past. All isn't politics.
Historical events that we live through, just like the pandemic we are going through, are obviously things that we will remember and will be important for us. But so is history that we can relate to: the events that have had an impact and effected the life of the Lamarch-family, your parents and grandparents, is naturally relatable to you, Gus. And things that have happened a long time ago and that we don't have much knowledge of are 'pure history'. It might be interesting for us, but far more difficult to relate to and to understand. And once we even don't have much information and knowledge, then perhaps we have to be cautious about the biases we have.
The Battle of the Delta 1175 BCE depicting Egyptians fighting the mysterious Sea Peoples. And not much else is known...
Quoting Gus Lamarch
A nation or empire losing it's values and absolute truths, which I would call losing faith in the nation, typically happens when the nation simply hits physical limitations and it's weakness is obvious, typically when you lose wars and lose the position that earlier the country has enjoyed.
Best example of a genuine ideological collapse resulting in losing all faith in the system is the collapse of the empire called the Soviet Union. There were no American tanks on the Red Square. The Afghan Mujahideen didn't destroy the whole Soviet Army. This was a collapse not only an economic collapse (which countries do often face), it was truly about the elite losing faith in the truths and in the ideology and the 'Manifest destiny' of the nation. Even the Putsch-leaders of 1991 didn't have much faith in their endeavor to save the Soviet Union as the armed forces were collapsing and generals and units starting to choose sides. And luckily for us, the leaders during that time did avoid a second Russian civil war, something similar to the Yugoslav Civil War yet happening in a far larger scale, which we now can easily see was very close from happening after the war in Ukraine (and events in Georgia, and from the war at this moment going on in Nagorno-Karabach).
Rome didn't go like that. I think the story of Rome would have a more fitting end with Ottomans not even finding the body of emperor Constantine XI Palaiologos from the walls of Constantinople in 1453, than with a little known political figure as Romulus Augustus being deposed. Live by the sword, die by the sword.
Besides, reaching an age of nearly 1500 years is quite an achievement for any nation.
Rome’s merits are its merits, but that doesn’t change the fact that Rome committed many, many crimes, including massive genocide, depraved debauchery, and treading on human wirthe. Some of these crimes I have listed above.
Regarding the good achievements of Roman culture, we shouldn’t forget that were it not for Roman invasion and destruction, other cultures, such as those of Carthage and Gaul, might have had similar achievements, as is insightfully talked about e.g. here (see the quotation of historian Philip Matyszak).
Yet in the end, the good deeds and the misdeeds of its citizens are also those of the Roman state if it did not cleanse itself of them in the case of the misdeeds. For example, if Cato’s good advice had been followed and the criminal handed over to the tribes, his crimes would have been his alone, but as things have happened, the crimes of Caesar are the crimes of Rome just as much as the good deeds of some Roman citizens, like Roman Stoics’ realizing that slavery is against natural law (though they unfortunately didn’t reject it altogether), are merits of Rome.
But why did I only say that imperialism is wrong in most cases? Well, because in some cases, imperialism is legitimate, perhaps most importantly in the following case: If a country has possession over a treasure of great importance to humanity or the planet as a whole, but it has a base and short-sighted goverment which lacks moral principles and threatens to harm or even destroy the great treasure in question, it is the right and the duty of rightwise countries to get the treasure-possessing country to protect the treasure, first by diplomatic, political, and economic means. However, if the country with the bad government obstinately refuses to protect the treasure, the righteous states can and should rightfully conquer the violating country and take over the treasure to keep it safe. But wouldn’t they thus steal the treasure? No, for such a great treasure never was the property of an individual country in the first place.
At least with these examples we don't judge people from a totally different era and World with the morals of the present, but see just what values have existed from centuries, if not a milennium. Still, it was the Cato the Elder that ended his speeches Ceterum autem censeo Carthaginem esse delendam.
Quoting Tristan L
Yet those cultures that have succeeded in their imperialism have been able to create advanced societies and have brought integration to the World, where trade routes have been safe also for thoughts and ideas to spread. Perhaps only from the 20th Century onwards we've seen true international collaboration take place and peaceful integration, like the EEC/EU happening. Unfortunately saying something positive about historical empires seems today as denying the negative sides.
It’s true that most (though not all) ancients very likely had less to far less moral knowledge than most (though by far not all) moderners do, just as they had much less mathematical or astronomical or medical knowledge. Accodingly, a moderner who breaks moral law might have to be judged more harshly than an ancient who breaks moral law might, just as twenty-first yearhundred CE flat-earthery is more laughable than twenty-fifth century BCE flat-earthery is. However, the truth is the truth. Just as the Earth was round back then as it is now, genocide, ethno-supremacism, and misogynism were just as wrong back then as they are now – unless, of course, there is no real moral law. But in that case, it wouldn’t be meaningful to make any moral judgements at all, so let’s focus on the other case. True moral law (as opposed to useful norms) cannot have evolved or been made, for then it would be the outcome of whims of nature or living beings and so have nothing to do with real rightwiseness (justice) or unrightwiseness. Thus, the old ethno-supremacism of most Greeks and Romans (and many other people, of course) was just as bad and against objective moral law as modern ethno-supremacism. The same goes for the other vices, e.g. the misogynistic nature of much of Greek culture. Hence, those who have those bad properties ought to be condemned for having them, regardless of when they live. The same goes for douths (virtues). For instance, Rome and to a greater extent Greece have to be condemned for their ethno-supremacism, for instance, though it must be said that Rome appears to have been far less ethno-supremacist than Greece, see e.g.:
Quoting Ciceronianus the White
... which doesn’t mean that it wasn’t ethno-supremacist. After all, it did view so-called “barbarians” as inferior, didn’t it?
For philosphy, ethno-supremacism and sexism are also particularly bad, for a person might be a brilliant thinker, yet be denied the chance to unfold their potential due to false and very base ethnic or gender prejudices.
Also, there were ancients who did recognize quite a few modern values, so the crimes and other misdeeds of the ancients can’t just be excused with ignorance, can it?
Furthermore, not knowing that lions are dangerous won’t save you from getting eaten by them if you wander to close to them, so why should moral ignorance be a major excuse for vice?
The degree of condemnation rests on how much a state of ignorance can excuse badness, if at all.
Quoting ssu
Yes, I’m very much aware of that, and that’s why my specific (for the good things mentioned) praise of Cato the Younger certainly doesn’t extend to the Elder.
Quoting ssu
If that is so, then I believe it shouldn’t be. Just as the merits of an empire do not lessen its demerits, so its demerits shouldn’t be a reason for covering up its merits.
European people are the result of the breeding of pre-Indo-European females with Indo-European males. We are the children of millions of rapes spread over the continent and 2000 years.
Yet is this different from the view of the Egyptians, the Chinese or the Aztecs? What I gather, large empires are typically quite ethno-supremacist and quite full of themselves.
Quoting Tristan L
I agree. But usually we assume that people are making a statement of today when referring to history. Yet history in itself deserves focus, even some times it hasn't got much in common with our present.
Yes, generally, but in the same sense so many of us, and others, have considered people different from us inferior in some manner. The Roman Empire was fairly extraordinary, though, in that many emperors weren't from Rome or even Italy, but instead from the provinces, e.g. Spain, Africa, Syria, Gaul, Dacia and Moesia. It's also noteworthy that former slaves were able to acquire great wealth and power in the Empire once freed. A person could acquire high status regardless of origin. The Empire's dependence on the legions may account for some of this. "Barbarians" could attain power through the military, which gained more and more influence over the succession.
Some examples of Barbarians attaining power in Roman society - that in itself is already a symptom of decadence and degradation - were Flavius Stilicho - he was a high-ranking general - magister militum - in the Roman army who, for a time, became the most powerful man in the Western Roman Empire. He was half Vandal and half Gothic and married to the niece of Emperor Theodosius I; his regency for the underage Honorius marked the high point of Germanic advancement in the service of Rome -, Flavius Aetius - was a Roman general of the closing period of the Western Roman Empire. He was half gothic. He was an able military commander and the most influential man in the Western Roman Empire for two decades - 433–454 -. He managed policy in regard to the attacks of barbarian federates settled throughout the Western Roman Empire. Notably, he mustered a large Roman and allied - foederati - army to stop the Huns in the Battle of the Catalaunian Plains, ending the devastating Hunnic invasion of Attila in 451. Edward Gibbon refers to him as "the man universally celebrated as the terror of Barbarians and the support of the Republic" -, and Flavius Aspar - was an Eastern Roman patrician and magister militum - "master of soldiers" - of Alanic-Gothic descent. As the general of a Germanic army in Roman service, Aspar exerted great influence on the Eastern Roman Emperors for half a century, from the 420s to his death in 471, over Theodosius II, Marcian and Leo I -.
Quoting Tristan L
Yeah, let's condemn the precursors to our civilization. Nihilism at its peak...
Many barbarians served the Empire well, it's true. And I think the Empire generally did well by them, for the most part. The Principate was available to men of low status, as well. Some were famous as restorers of the Empire, like Aurelian and Diocletian. They clearly thought it worth saving. I can't think of any imperial power in which high status and power was more available to men of "low birth," provincials and barbarians (meaning, outsiders) than Rome.
This isn't to say it was "good." But it is to say that it was remarkable.
You’re right, that’s very likely human nature, and it’s a main reason why almost all empires are bad as far as they are empires – after all, the empire-building nation regards itself as superior to other nations and conquers them. What good aspects they might have, such as bringing peace (which is often forced, however, and then not so good) and making exchange of ideas easier, is another matter, and empires ought to be praised regarding these good aspects and likewise condemned for their bad ones.
Quoting ssu
It’s true that likely most old folks were ethno-supremacist at least to some degree. As we’ve said, that’s likely due to human nature. However, there are differences. For instance, the ancient Israelites were very ethno-supremacist and, if their old writings are to be believed, also quite good at genocide. And they even legitimized this religiously. Likewise, the ancient Greeks were very ethno-supremacist and misogynistic for the most part, though some, such as Diogenes of Sinope and the Stoics, were in favor of cosmopolitanism, and e.g. Epicurus openly taught women. On the other hand, Rome was generally far less ethno-supremacist and misogynistic as far as I know, with exceptions such as the massacre that backfired and led to the Sack of Rome in 410 AD. Then again, its contributions to science lag far behind those of Greece. In Islam, with which a series of great Empires started, all people are equal, and their ethnic origin has no bearing on their status. In olden China, “barbarians” could become Chinese if they had the ethical qualifications. So we see that while most were supremacist to some degree, some were much more so than others. Moreover, I think that empires can’t be ranked on a linear scale of goodness. For instance, while the Mongol Empire was extraordinarily brutal (and successful), it was also remarkably tolerant, much more so than e.g. medieval Europe and even ancient Greece (think of the trial of Socrates, for example). But a part of it (the Ilkhanate) also sacked the great city of Bagdad, murdered many of its citizens, and destroyed its great treasures such as the House of Wisdom.
Quoting ssu
True, but when I talk about history, I actually do mean what I say. The broad principles which I apply to the past I also apply to the present, of course, and I believe that we should learn from the past, but when I judge the past, I really judge the past. When I say “Roman Empire”, I really mean the Roman Empire and not some present state (though some things I say about the former could perhaps be applied to the latter).
Quoting ssu
Yes, I totally agree.
Quoting Tristan L
By the way, I can’t help but notice that @ssu’s country is not one of them :wink:.
Yes, I agree.
Quoting Ciceronianus the White
Quoting Ciceronianus the White
That is indeed a good aspect of Rome. Compare that to the (for the most part) very ethno-supremacist ancient Greeks (Diogenes of Sinope and Stoics were notable exceptions) and Israelites, for instance. However, I don’t think that Rome was alone with its relative openness (which you didn’t assert, I know). For instance, in olden China, a “barbarian” (?, yi?) could become Chinese and vice versa depending on morality. According to the teaching of Islam, which set up a succession of great Empires, all people are equal, regardless of ethnic origin. These are but two examples.
Quoting Ciceronianus the White
Unfortunately, you are right. I have long wanted to write about this matter and had originally planned a thread of its own, but since you’ve brought up the issue, I might as well write about it here.
Even today, in the twenty-first yearhundred, there are still quite a few people who consider themselves and/or their respective ethnic, gender or other group to be inherently superior to others or other groups. These are the supremacists; they are those who judge the worth of a human being (or other sentient being for that matter) based on irrelevant criteria, namely criteria other than moral goodness, such as identity, ethnicity, or gender. They actually do the world harm – if they are allowed to. With their obsolete mentality, they seek to divert human energy away from useful things, such as finding cures for diseases, doing away with injustice, protecting this beautiful planet Earth and all the wonderful living beings on it, and peacefully spreading our civilization into space e.g. to survive the death of the Sun, and into harmful and base things like domination and injustice. Supremacism is a forlorn post, of course, so they won’t have any good arguments for it. They’ll simply ignore all the good arguments against it and obstinately preach their outdated Stone-Age doctrines. They waste their own energy on fighting others for the sake of domination, they – in a way – waste the energy of those who fight against them, and, if they got their way, they’d waste the energy of the oppressed by not allowing the latter to unfold their potential.
The douth (virtue) and outstandingness of an individual depends only on their formay (ability) to do good (not on their ethnic group or gender, for instance), which is directly related to their ethical and other knowledge and smartness, and more weightily on their use of free will to choose goodness itself over badness itself. I think – though I might have to refine my evaluation, as is perhaps the case for all evaluations – that the best individuals are good-hearted and smart, the second-best are the good-hearted but not highly intelligent ones, the second-worst are the bad-hearted but unintelligent ones, and the worst are the bad-hearted and intelligent ones. Also, we have to keep in mind that intelligence in a restricted sense need not be accompanied by overall smartness on the highest level. For instance, a ruler might be very efficient at conquering and ruling others and so be intelligent in that sense, but he would still not be smart overall, because he obviously lacks the wit to see that domination of others and worldly power are base and fleeting and no permanent asset of the soul.
Supremacists do not realize this and are therefore severely lacking in ethical knowledge. Ethno-supremacism is on the national level what egoism is on the individual level. These and the other kinds of supremacism try to throw a wrench into the progress of humanity due to the aforementioned reasons. They seek to harm individual human beings because of the latter’s otherness regardless of the latter’s douth and excellence, and thus would stifle the progress of mankind if they got their way in addition to being blatantly unrightwise (unjust). They would harm the human species as a whole because of that and because they put the interests of the mortal individual and the mostly ephemeral ethnic group (after all, how long do distinct ethnic groups exist?) above the interests of the whole, and moreover, their interests are base at that. Among cells of many-celled organisms, the egoists are called cancer cells, for they seek only to reach their own short-sighted goals, and if successful, in the process destroy healthy cells and the organism as a whole, achieving their own demise in the end. This is similar to the way a succes of supremacism would bring down our great human civilization.
A very good example of how ethno-supremacism is self-destructive comes from Rome. As you rightly said,
Quoting Ciceronianus the White
:up:
Among these “barbarians” was the half-Vandal Stilicho, who, like his Germanic troops, protected Rome and kept it stable. The relative Roman openness which you have mentioned paid off, and is likely one of the reasons for the success of the Roman Empire, also compared to much more ethno-supremacist nations like ancient Greece. Yet then, fascists came to power in Rome, murdered Stilicho and began a systematic extermination of Germanics. This backfired twofold, for it robbed the Empire of a great pillar and provoked the Sack of Rome by King Alaric I. Fast-forward to the twentieth century, and we see fascists bring their own folks to their knees.
And of course, supremacism, especially ethno-supremacism, often leads to wars, which waste human and material resources and destroy human achievements (take the destruction of the House of Wisdom by Mongol warriors as an example) for base and ultimately useless goals.
The supremacists ought to be taught in order to cleanse them of their detrimental ignorance, their harmful bigotry, and their dangerous tendency to stifle development and erode civilization. But what if that doesn’t help? Should we perhaps look to the course of action taken by the immune system of a healthy individual with regard to cancer cells for answers?
Once these dangers to the nascent human nation have vanished and been vanquished – and thankfully, they are diminishing – we need not have gotten rid of all nations save for the great human one and become totally selfless. After all, competition is also a driver of development. However, all the supremacism will be gone, replaced by a broad gast (spirit) of mutal respect and working together seasoned with a pinch of competition. The nation of mankind, and later hopefully all ethical sapient lifeforms, as well as its role as stewart and protector of Earth’s life and later maybe other lifeforms, is something to be truly patriotic about and proud of. Dr. Matt O'Dowd expresses a similar view at time 13:05 in the following video by PBS Space Time:
What he is not able to perceive is that this concept of "ethnic supremacy" did not exist - and in reality, never did exist - in the Classical Age. Human society is based on the victory of the best over the worst, always. A single person being against it is completely insignificant. I am grateful to our - and here I use plural because they were OUR and not MINE - ancestors for building a civilization as glorious and beautiful as Rome. It was built on blood, genocide and war, however, we are all sons of the winners - in the case of the West: Greece and Rome -; being ressentful for those who have long since lost, means nothing on the grand scale of humanity.
I thought that with JerseyFlight's ban this rotten and evil use of doublethink would have ended, however, it seems that these cancers keep spreading..
The only purpose of a civilizaiton is to be good to its own people, nothing more, nothing less. Rome was good to Romans, ancient Greece was good to Ancient Greeks, etc...
Yes, and even though we may like the historical underdogs, those who lost, it doesn't mean that them losers where any better morally speaking.
.
Mind you, the European project is about that: recognising that there exists a European indentify, built through empires as it was, that transcends national identities. The project makes sense because European nationalism and division killed so many in the last century.
Any European who resent the Roman Empire for killing millions should remember what happened in the 1940's in those oh-so-civilized parts.
Quoting Olivier5
Well, that would include Greece and, in a way, also Rome. Greece was conquered by the Romans and stayed under their domination for over one-and-a-half thousand years, after which it was conquered by the Ottomans and ruled by them for more than three-and-a-half centuries. The Romans were militarily and politically much more successful, but their Western Empire fell due to inner and outer factors, not least among these the attacks of Germanics and Huns. The Eastern Empire held out much longer, but it was was beaten back again and again by great Muslim commanders like the brilliant Arab general Ch?lid ibn al-Wal?d. In the end, it was conquered outright by the Ottoman Turks, and its capital city for more than a yearthousand, the “Second Rome”, is under the rule of a Muslim country to this very day.
It’s also true that the losers need not be morally better than the winners. One example is given by the Battle of the Allia, another by the Battle of the Catalaunian Plains, and yet another by the Battle of Pydna.
Quoting Olivier5
But that’s the thing: what happened in the 1940’s was not due to civilized nations, but due to people with the old primitive mentality gaining power. The Italian fascists under Mussolini wanted to rebuild the Roman Empire in Earnest, and the German fascists, also knows as Nazis, under Hitler likewise wanted to build an empire (and succeded for a short time). These people had the old “my-nation-is-better-than-yours”-mentality of much of the ancient world as well as the radical ethno-supremacism of some ancients (Aristotle comes to mind here). Indeed, I’ve already drawn such a parallel:
Quoting Tristan L
Quoting Olivier5
Exactly that kind of nationalism is the one which makes nations create empires by subduing other nations – “my-nation-is-better-than-yours”-nationalism, you know. It fueled both ancient empire-building and the world wars.
The European Union is precisely not that; it’s a peaceful “empire”, if you will, based on human rights, democracy, and the rights of all folks, a union which seeks to allow nations to willingly dissolve the boundaries between them. The individual European nations committed many crimes and atrocities, mostly through their empires (as did many other peoples in the world), such as the Macedonian Empire, the Roman Empire, the Frankish Empire, the Spanish Empire, the Portuguese Empire, the French Empire, the British Empire, Faschist Italy, and Nazi Germany (and e.g. the Hunnish Empire and the Mongol Empire in the case of not-European peoples). The EU itself, by contrast, did not. It is the exact antithesis to the supremacist nationalism and the imperialism resulting from the latter.
The "eccentricity" of Rome and the future of Europe
MAURIZIO BETTINI
Published on 23/11/2021
Speech delivered on the occasion of the European Day on Languages and Cultures of Antiquity.
Today's theme is immense, so I will limit myself to two salient points that concern the function of teaching classical culture in today's Europe, and especially in that of tomorrow. The first concerns language, the second culture.
Regarding language, we must first refute a prejudice. In the common perception, Latin as well as Greek are considered as "dead" languages. Many deduce that these languages are useless: "What is the point of studying languages that no one speaks anymore? But what does the "death" of a language really mean?
Today, there are about seven thousand languages spoken on earth. This sounds like a lot, but it is not much when compared to the number of languages that have disappeared over the years, for various reasons: one third of the multitude of languages spoken by the North American Indians has already died out, another third barely survives, spoken by a small number of speakers who are now very old. As for the thousand languages spoken in Central and South America, only one, Guarani, can hope to survive: along with Spanish, it is the official language of Paraguay. A real linguistic hecatomb. In this sense, Latin and Greek are - unfortunately - in good company. But not all languages die in the same way, and not all dead languages are alike.
How can a language like Latin be considered "dead"? The fate of Latin is not comparable to that of the indigenous American or Australian languages, irrevocably dead and without descendants. After them, these languages have left no legacy, except for the files of a few linguists. On the contrary, Latin never really died, its fortune has remained immense through the centuries. As is well known, this idiom survives in the many Romance languages that have been derived from it: the structure and lexicon of Latin continue to live on in French, Italian, Romanian, Castilian, Catalan, Portuguese... Moreover, all these languages have kept coming back to Latin - by "re-Latinizing" themselves with each generation - through the classical education practiced in Europe for centuries. This means that, in the Romance languages and cultures, Latin has been "born again" countless times.
Latin is also massively present in the language, which for many reasons plays a dominant role in the cultural, economic and political relations of the contemporary world, namely English. For, despite its Germanic origins, today's English contains 70% of words of Latin origin. It has also been calculated that, of the thousand words you need to know to get into an English-speaking university, 90% are of Latin origin.
In recent years, especially in America and England, there has been a lot of controversy about the Greek and Latin classics, which have been accused of being the source of a racist, white supremacist, misogynistic culture and other similar complaints. This controversy has been called "cancel culture" or "decolonize the classics". There have been some pretty absurd proposals, such as abolishing the teaching of classics at university altogether, refusing to read classical texts that are not "appropriate" in terms of race, gender, violence, and so on. Such arguments have the merit of making us think from a new perspective about the role that classical texts have played in our Western tradition and about the change in perspective that can be brought to bear on the classics, a change that is more necessary than ever today.
But that is not what interests us now; it is the "words" used to describe this movement: "cancel culture" and "decolonize the classics".
Indeed, "culture" is a Latin word, "cultura"; "cancel" itself derives from the Latin "cancellare", which properly indicates the act of the copyist who marks with crossed lines a word or phrase to be "deleted" in a text, thus creating the image of a "grid", in Latin "cancellum"; "classics" is obviously the Latin word "classicus"; as for "de-colonize", it is not only that "colonize" is a derivative of the Latin "colonia", but the preverb used in the English compound "de-" is itself a Latin preverb which retains its original morphological function: as a preverb, it indicates in Latin the notion of "far from", of "deprivation of" ("de-cedo"," de-duco", "de-migro", etc.). “Decolonize” is therefore a perfectly formed Latin compound.
In conclusion, we are faced with proposals which declare the need to erase classical culture while being entirely articulated from Latin words and even from the morphology of this “hated” language. The point is that Latin “speaks” within ourselves, without our realizing it. Latin forms the "deep consciousness" of the intellectual language of the West.
Second point: culture. For a long time, at least in Italy, at school, the study of Antiquity was based on two paths: on the one hand, the study of history (wars and battles, political upheavals, evolution of forms of government) and, on the other hand, the study of language and literature (syntactic grammar learning, author biographies, anthological readings). Today, in a global society which increasingly conceives of the relations between people in terms of "cultures" (in the religious, ethnic, political sense), it is time to abandon this traditional perspective and instead approach the study of Greek and Roman "culture" as such. A "culture" which must be deepened in its aspects not only linguistic, literary or event, but also family, sexual,religious, institutional, artistic, by asking questions about gender, the relationship between masters and slaves, or the role and position of animals in society.
The Romans would agree with us, because they would say that in order to understand their civilization, one must first study their mores (customs, way of life), that is the word - so important in the construction of Roman society - which they would use to signify their "culture". In this way, we will be able to make our students discover that the Elders were indeed "like us" in many aspects - our "ancestors" as they are called - because we have inherited a large part of their ways of living and thinking through the practices of Western education; but that the Elders are also "other than us" in relation to an equally large amount of customs and ways of life.
By taking this path, in particular through the practice of translation, the study of ancient culture could become a veritable "gymnasium" of confrontation with the other, an exercise whose practice is essential in contemporary European societies. The comparison between cultures - ours and those of the Greeks and Romans, but also the Greek culture versus the Roman culture - will allow us to highlight the aspects of the classical heritage which shock our modern sensibilities (slavery, discrimination against women, treating blood and violence as a show), to discuss the original historical context and the influences they sometimes exerted on the development of culture over time.
Indeed, it should not be forgotten that the classical heritage does not only include democracy or freedom, but also slavery, violence and discrimination. For what concerns us specifically on this day, the practice of the comparison between cultures can also help us to define which model to adopt and which to reject in our conception of the future Europe. And in this regard, I would like to compare two foundation myths, one Roman, the other Greek.
According to the traditional account of the founding of Rome, Romulus first gathered in his asylum people from everywhere, free or slaves as many as they were; after that, the founder had a circular pit dug where they placed the first fruits of everything the use of which was legitimized by law or made necessary by nature. [Plutarch - Life of Romulus]. At the end, each one threw into the pit a handful of soil brought from the country from which he had come, and they mixed everything together. They gave this pit the name of "mundus", the "world".
This pit dug by Romulus is loaded with significance. They threw in it both products of culture and products of nature, to signify the creation of a new life, the emergence of a new civilization. In addition - and this is for us the most significant moment of the episode - are thrown into the pit clods of earth coming from the various places of origin of those who had gathered around Romulus.
What meaning can be given to this singular passage from the myth? It certainly delivers a very strong symbolic message: creating one's own earth, building it almost as an act of a cosmological import - Romulus creates a mundus, in fact, "a world" - an act which goes far beyond usual foundation rites. The act of mixing these clods of earth brought from afar reflects the mixture of men from all these different places that Romulus gathers in the asylum at the time of founding the new city: by welcoming the earth from other territories, the soil of Rome becomes in a very concrete way a “land of asylum”.
In the mythical representation, the soil of the city will be configured as both the one and the multiple: one, because the clods, initially distinct, are then mixed; multiple, because it derives its origins from as many different “soils” as clods of earth. The political message of this myth is very strong, it highlights one of the main characteristics of Roman culture: openness. The same provision that allows not only foreigners, but also slaves, to become Roman citizens, thereby subjecting the Roman community to continuous "reshuffle". This fundamental inclination to openness, which constitutes the backbone of Roman culture through the centuries, finds its narrative expression in a founding tale which mixes, on one side, men, on the other, clods of earth, in a perfect parallelism.
Here is now the Greek myth which could be compared with the Roman myth just related. This is another foundational myth, which also speaks of land, origin and peoples, but which conveys a message completely opposite to the myth of asylum and clods of earth: it is about Athenian autochthony. This myth claimed that the Athenians came from "this very land" on which they lived - this is the literal meaning of the word "autochthony", "autochton": by that they mean that they were "born" of the earth. Attica, that they were the first inhabitants of this soil, and therefore the only worthy to reside there.
However, in Athens, the tendency to exclude did not come only from the myth, it was also present in the law. Indeed, one could not become a citizen, as in Rome: one was a citizen, or not. Only the sons of both Athenian parents could enjoy this privilege, while all the others - foreigners, metics and slaves - had no possibility of claiming it. The model of autochthony thus conveys the image of a culture which, unlike the Roman vision, places its identity only in itself: while Roman culture is "eccentric", by basing its identity on men from "outside" and their mix, Athenian culture wants to be "autocentric", as can be seen in several identity movements today. The contrast between the two myths, Roman and Greek,could not be more explicit: in Athens, it is the earth which produces the men, in Rome, it is the men who produce the earth.
In conclusion, the myth of the founding of Rome - mixture of men, mixture of lands - gives concrete reality to the symbolic and lasting representation that the Romans wanted to give of themselves: mixture, multiplicity, movement. In this original myth, the Romans had in short left a place not only for otherness, for diversity, but even for the possibility of being both oneself and other. Roman culture does not hesitate to define itself as a passage, to situate its identity also outside itself.
The identity of the Romans, if they had one, was of an "eccentric" nature: this is why their civilization can still offer a valid model for a Europe in which it is increasingly necessary to be both oneself and others, citizens of a country and at the same time citizens of a community of countries: a Europe which, on the contrary, sometimes insists on finding itself by breaking up into a plurality of (so-called) sovereign nations centered on themselves, thus following the Athenian path of autochthony and closure.
:up:
Can you help me out here, and provide an example of anything at all that is morally legitimate? Thanks.
You've parsed a hair that I'd like to further explore. Regarding Alice, you distinguish between her morally legitimate command/force, and her lack of arbitrary authority. Okay, I get that. But, regarding the state, if it prevents Bob from attacking innocent Charlie under threat of force, is that immoral? Why would that be arbitrary?
And, if the state claims arbitrary authority, why is that morally illegitimate instead of simply amoral authority? My point being, can a non-human entity be immoral? Like a corporation, or a tree, or a wolf? Can't it simply be amoral?
It's not immoral, precisely because it's not arbitrary. It's the arbitrariness of the claimed authority of the state that makes it morally illegitimate. To legitimately oblige or prohibit something requires sound reasons to back that up; obligation or prohibition without sound reasons is thereby arbitrary and thus illegitimate.
Quoting James Riley
Moral illegitimacy is a species of amorality; it's the lack of moral justification. That doesn't make it immoral, though in general, for independent reasons, anything you might do to force someone to do something is usually immoral, unless you have legitimate moral justification to command them to do so. Basically, if there is a sound moral reason that would rightly prohibit them from doing something, you have justification to stop them from doing it. But you don't have -- and nobody has -- justification to just make anybody do or not do anything for no reason at all, just because they say so. But states by definition claim the power to do so, and since they're not morally justified in that claim, they are morally illegitimate.
Secular-wise, yes. Christianwise, god's supreme. Its earthly governors are kings, who are to preside over a territory. The moral of the story in Christian mythology is to obey the ruler, that's the whole point of the exercise. "All authority derives from god", therefore the subjects are morally obligated (obligato) to serve the king to the best of their abilities.
Where is this arbitrary claim of authority (in the U.S.)?
Quoting Pfhorrest
When I read the U.S. Declaration of Independence, and the Constitution of the United States, I see one of the most morally compelling justifications for any authority that I have ever read. Not just state authority, but any authority. There is no "just because they say so". There is always a reason. In fact, due process of law demands a reason. States are not by any definition claiming power to act arbitrarily. Far from it.
is not the use of (or threat of) coercion the primary means by which States prove their legitimacy?
Let's say Alaska declares all of itself to be an independent nation. The new state controls the southern coast from Kodiak and Anchorage down to Ketchikan. Most of the territory of Alaska is under the control of the local governments which predate the new nation.
After several years, Sovereign Alaska has yet to extend its control beyond the coastal areas. The people who run the nation are respectable, urbane, sophisticated people who compare favorably to governments elsewhere. Where they are in control, life is peaceable and the people there are happy. But still, they control very little of their territory.
Do you consider them legitimate at this point? Or would you expect them to use force to gain control of the remaining territory?
There are a number of national states, like Somalia, that are considered "failed states". Pretty much no one is in charge. Syria is bad, but Bashar Hafez al-Assad has largely retained control of the government and territory, albeit with savage violence. Syria is still Syria, more or less. Hasn't Assad proved his legitimacy? (He's a loathsome person, but that's another matter.). I don't like the Taliban, either. But, like it or not, they have gained control of Afghanistan. Since they don't seem to want to all drop dead, they have gained legitimacy.
The Republic of Congo has been described as a failed state. Seems like it to me. Various non-governmental actors have stepped in to do some of the things a state is supposed to do (above and beyond controlling territory). That proves the point: The 'State' is out of order. Kaput. Illegitimate.
Each state constitution and the US constitution has a clause granting their legislature the power to create and enforce laws in general; often with some limitations, and sometimes nominally only within certain limited domains, but in practice that's always completely ignored, e.g. the US Congress doesn't have to cite which of the enumerated powers granted to them they are passing a law in the name of and show that that law accomplishes that purpose, unless they're challenged by the Supreme Court in which case they can usually just comically hyper-extend one of the enumerated powers like the Commerce Clause. In practice, if a state (either the constituent states or the federal state, in the case of the US) agrees with itself that something is a law, then you're forced to comply regardless of any argument to the contrary, which is tantamount to "because we said so".
Quoting Bitter Crank
Successfully exercising a monopoly on the use of force is what proves that they are actually a state, and not just claiming to be one. But being actually a state doesn't make them morally legitimate.
E.g. the Republic of China clearly is not the state in control of China generally, since their effective power is limited to the island of Taiwan. But even if they did in fact exercise a monopoly on the use of force over China as a whole, while that would make them the actual Chinese state, it would not make them morally legitimate.
So there is no claim of arbitrary authority. It is all based upon due process of law. And due process of law is all based upon the moral arguments set forth in the organic documents.
If one uses brute force to compel compliance, that is not de facto or de jure arbitrary. It may very well be morally founded. The "victim" of such force will complain such force is arbitrary. But that does not make it so. The power of the state is such that it need not spell it out for each individual, so long as it has been spelled out for everyone. The fact that an individual is ignorant of the law is no excuse, so long as the law is out there for the individual to have consulted.
The state does not need to explain itself so long as it has explained itself. Personally, I don't want my state having to run around pre-emptively explaining to Bob why he should not victimize innocent Charlie. If Bob's sense of morality does not comport with the state's sense of morality, that does not render the state's punishment of Bob to be arbitrary. Fuck Bob. Moral persuasion is set forth in innumerable locations, regardless of the the organic documents. If Bob is not persuaded, his suffering of the consequences is not arbitrary. It is well founded in morality.
And it does not have to be spelled out for everyone, only for itself. If part of the state (e.g. the legislature) says that such-and-such is mandatory or prohibited and the rest of the state (e.g. the judiciary) goes along with it, then no further explanation to anyone is taken to be necessary. There is no one else to appeal to, and if there de facto were (some powerful entity that could curtail the state), then the state would cry that that other entity was de jure illegitimate, because the state's authority is beyond question (according to the state).
That is incorrect. It does have to be spelled out for everyone. The fact that it must be is one part of the moral authority underpinning the state. I kicked the federal government's ass a few times in court. My argument was the old tried and true charge of "Arbitrary, capricious, and abuse of discretion and otherwise not in accordance with law." The state lost because it was acting arbitrarily, etc.
Quoting Pfhorrest
That is incorrect. No further explanation to anyone is necessary because it has already been explained. You knew or should have known better. Just because your cause is a loser, does not mean the legislature did not follow the law and that the courts rubber-stamped it. It just means you are a loser. Your "If" is a big IF. Your IF is assuming that when the legislature says that such-and-such is mandatory or prohibited and the judiciary went along with it, that they were wrong; that they were arbitrary. The moral underpinnings of the U.S. system give you recourse; even up to and including waivers of sovereignty under Federal Tort Claims, etc.
Quoting Pfhorrest
Where would you go? The World Court? Jesus? Will you keep forum-shopping until you find a someone who rules in *your* favor? What would make you right? You don't have a right to appeal until you win unless you are right. The fact that the state finds you wrong does not mean it lack moral authority under the laws, as set forth in our organic documents. It just means you're a loser.
Quoting Pfhorrest
Nowhere does the state say the state's authority is beyond question. The state specifically provides you with MORAL ways to question it's authority. If you don't think those ways are moral (see Declaration of Independence and Constitution) then the state goes one step further and allows you to find some other place in the world more to your liking.
The point here is this: Power does not = moral illegitimacy. Demanding the state agree with you, or provide endless review with unlimited scope and standards, is morally illegitimate.
That just means an agent of the state did something contrary to what the state said they could. It's the laws themselves that can be arbitrary.
Quoting James Riley
Documents which can say anything, or be interpreted to mean anything, that the people with all the power say they do.
Quoting James Riley
See Hume's "carried aboard a ship asleep".
Quoting James Riley
I never said it did. I said power != moral legitimacy. Just because they can force you to comply with their commands does not make their commands morally binding.
First of all, "can be" does not equal "are". You need to come up with an example. While you are searching, find one that was promulgated in violation of the moral principles set forth in the underlying authority.
Quoting Pfhorrest
That would be you, not the the documents. You are saying they can say anything. But they don't. They say something. That something is the moral underpinning that you interpret to mean nothing because they are, allegedly, interpreted or applied or promulgated arbitrarily. So you see, it is your unsubstantiated interpretation that is arbitrary. And I see no morality in your claim.
My son just asked me about the definition of "pretentious." We talked about it. I think you are pretending to a morality by pretending to charge the state with arbitrariness just because you are jealous of the state's power to compel you by force. Yes, the state can compel you by force. But that does not mean the state is acting immorally, either in the compelling, or in the promulgation and enforcement of the laws that it acts pursuant to while forcing compliance.
Quoting Pfhorrest
No thanks. I will allow you to argue on your own two feet.
Quoting Pfhorrest
???
Quoting Pfhorrest
Now you are switching horses, from "arbitrary" to "morally binding." If you don't feel morally bound, that does not mean the state has to honor your morality (or lack thereof). Nor does that mean the state is arbitrary or immoral in it's refusal to respect your morality (or lack thereof).
"When in the Course of human events, it becomes necessary for one people to dissolve the political bands which have connected them with another, and to assume among the powers of the earth, the separate and equal station to which the Laws of Nature and of Nature’s God entitle them, a decent respect to the opinions of mankind requires that they should declare the causes which impel them to the separation. Emphasis added.
After stating that, the Declaration goes on to do exactly that, laying out the moral authority which is anything but arbitrary.
After delineating all that moral authority, the Constitution kicks off likewise: "We the People of the United States, in Order to form a more perfect Union, establish Justice, insure domestic Tranquility, provide for the common defense, promote the general Welfare, and secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity, do ordain and establish this Constitution for the United States of America."
Now you may think that is all empty BS, but it's not. Anyone who endeavors to interfere with the stated goals may sit back, self-righteously, indignantly, jealously, and complain about the power they don't have, but that does not mean the state is acting without moral legitimacy.
Quoting Pfhorrest
You said: Quoting Pfhorrest
Maybe you could explain yourself. Maybe we are just two ships passing in the night, talking about something entirely different, talking passed each other. I'll need some help.
Do you think there are such things as unjust laws? Morally bad, wrong laws, that morally should not be enforced, and that nobody is morally obligated to obey -- despite, nevertheless, actually being the law, in full compliance with all legal requirements for laws?
If you say yes to that, you are agreeing with me. That the state commands something -- that something is obligatory according to the law -- does not make it morally obligatory. It's not necessarily wrong to disobey it. (There might be things that the state commands, and that are obligatory, but they're not obligatory just because the state commands them).
If you say no to that, then you're a reprehensible monster and I'm not going to continue this conversation.
When I said no state is morally legitimate, I meant that nobody has a moral power to command just any old thing, and nobody has a moral duty to obey everything someone commands. The state's edicts carry no moral weight. The state might command things that are also morally obligatory, and in that case people have a moral duty to do those things, but they would have a duty to do them even if the state hadn't commanded them -- the state's commands make no moral difference. It is morally permissible to disobey the state, so long as there not some other moral obligation that aligns with what the state commands. You're morally free to ignore whether or not something is commanded by the state in deciding what to do. That is the sense in which the state is morally illegitimate.
I am not saying that having power makes the state morally illegitimate in that sense. Such moral illegitimacy is the default state of affairs. If a powerless nobody went about commanding everyone to do as they said, that would be morally illegitimate too: nobody would be obliged to obey them. But if that powerless nobody suddenly gained power enough to make everybody do as they said... they would still be morally illegitimate. They would be a state, as in, they would have a monopoly on the use of force, but that wouldn't give them any more moral legitimacy.
I do think there are such things as unjust laws, morally bad, wrong laws, that morally should not be enforced, and that nobody is morally obligated to obey, but I don't think they are in compliance with all legal requirements for laws. I asked you for examples, but crickets.
Quoting Pfhorrest
Okay, but before you go, I’m going to tell you something you don’t want to hear. I do so because the state-loving, paternalistic dad in me thinks it will be good for you to hear.
You really aren’t that special. Now don’t get me wrong. You are special. In fact, I think the U.S., at least ostensibly, thinks you are more special than any other state. (I say “ostensibly” because the state itself has been corrupted by the Plutocracy who doesn’t think you are worth shit; well, unless you are producing or consuming for them.) But you aren’t so special that the state will subordinate itself to you. In fact, it would be grossly immoral for the state to subordinate itself to you. You are not a sovereign citizen, and you are not sovereign. The state does not, nor should it, allow appeals from the SCOTUS to you. Sorry.
But that little piece of reality, as harsh as it may seem to you, does not then mean the state is immoral, or that it lacks moral legitimacy. Indeed, it proves just how moral the state is. I certainly don’t want you running things, or having state power. Now that-there would be immoral!
I just gave the balance of your post a cursory glance but didn't see much new, other than an effort to change what you originally said. So, as a reprehensible monster, I'll exercise my sovereign powers of evil to stay my wrath, and exercise the magnanimity of the state. Carry on.