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A New Look at Just War

Restoring the Augustinian Analysis

Reinhold Niebuhr’s neo-Augustinian realism has held sway among realist intellectuals and statesmen for over half a century. Recent scholarship has even uncovered a close friendship between Niebuhr and Hans Morgenthau, who went so far as to call Niebuhr his pastor.1 One of my colleagues once told me that Bill Clinton had admitted to him that Niebuhr’s Moral Man and Immoral Society is one of his favorite books. And there have been calls since 9/11 for political leaders, who have been led astray by the democracy promotion of the neo-conservatives, to return to Niebuhrian realism in their conduct of international affairs.

While neo-Augustinian realism would bring a welcome dose of sobriety to the conduct of statesmen in international affairs, not to mention a renewed sophistication to discussions about just war, to speak of “neo-Augustinian” is to beg the question of what insights the original Augustine might offer us.

The difficulty with the realism of Niebuhr and Morgenthau is that they go too far in dispensing with standards of justice and moral virtue as ways of judging the actions of statesmen.  In rejecting Kantian legalism, they give leaders a little too much leeway in practicing Machiavellian “value-free” realpolitik.  They indeed recognized the problem and never asserted the conduct of statesmen could be fully removed from ethical standards.

But while they were realists in the sense that they apprehended the practical limits of political power, they also clung to idealism.  Their rejection of the idealism of modern Kantianism and scientism was incomplete, and this affected the manner in which they spoke–as if theories of international relations have any linguistic meaning. As a result, they were never fully coherent in their moral judgments of statesmen’s actions.

A False Choice: Politics as Technical Instruments or Realpolitik

They conceived of statecraft as based on the false alternative that either one must be just and therefore weak, or unjust and therefore strong. Therefore, while they wished statesmen would act morally, they failed to explain how they could. They failed to consider ways that one could be just and strong–or how they could be strong and a bit unjust and acting with genuine penance to ensure that a just situation could be given a chance to arise.

Their failure to grasp the inadequacy of this false alternative is rooted in a tendency, shared by many, to view politics either as an activity that must be subsumed under other types of activities and realms of life, including economics and law and procedure, or as a separate, autonomous arena of activity (the latter version of “realism” reminding us of Machiavelli’s apparent injunction to untether politics from morality).

Realists share the very modern misunderstanding of politics as either a species of some more sovereign activity (whereby the rules of that sovereign activity can harness political actors), or as an untethered exercise of Machiavellian brutality.

This bipolar and modern view of politics treats politics as an abstraction, and overlooks the very simple fact that politics is conducted by persons. Moreover, politics is nothing other than persons wielding power and creating relationships with others.

The study of persons, as I and several of my colleagues have shown, is central to the study of politics, whether in so-called “domestic” politics or in the “workshop” of world politics (as Tilo Schabert has called it).2 By reminding ourselves that politics is conducted by persons, we make better sense of the ethical obligations incurred in political action, and this sheds light onto the nature of international statecraft and so-called just war theory, about which Augustine, more so than his neo-Augustinian followers, is a reliable guide.

Including All of Augustine’s Motifs

Neo-Augustinianism, with its stark contrast between political morality and religious morality, where politics is seen as an essential competition between antagonistic forces, misses important elements of Augustine’s understanding of politics–ones that would be valuable to the student of international affairs.  As Norwegian political scientist Henrick Syse has observed:

“Augustine has inspired a view of international politics as a competition between interests and antagonistic forces. But the denial of decisive significance to sovereignty, the pursuit of a better world order, and the admission of other motives than self-interest are also Augustinian motifs. Indeed, the true purpose of war, according to the Augustinian perspective, is moral in character: to hinder and punish wrongdoing that cannot be hindered and punished in any other way.”

“While he would not trust any one institution to have the necessary virtue and moral competence to do this in a perfect manner–thus, he would certainly oppose the view that one could erect a world government and create a lasting world peace–he would also deem it necessary for virtuous rulers to help oppose wrongdoing and injustice when possible and feasible.”3

In other words, for Augustine, while religious morality and political morality differ in terms of their spheres of action and purposes, they are not antithetical. The acts of statesmen, including those in war, are to be judged by the standard of virtue. Indeed, the search for the virtuous statesman–and how to educate him–is the key concern for Augustine’s approach to politics, and it is this concern that perhaps distinguishes Augustine from his neo-Augustinian followers.

Augustine and Finding the “Best Regime”

It is impossible to find, in Augustine’s writings, a just war theory or even a theory of international relations. Indeed, in this Augustine compares with nearly every other major political thinker of the ancient world. While one finds discussion in ancient political thought of how statesmen should conduct affairs toward other nations, one is hard pressed to find “war,” “foreign affairs,” or “international order” treated as a separate topic of analysis.

This is not to say they were uninterested in questions such as these, but, rather, that their inquiries into international topics were situated within broader questions of political analysis that cannot be severed from their discussion of those international topics.

For ancient Greek or Roman thinkers including Plato, Aristotle, and Cicero, the main topic, or perhaps, the topic of analysis, is the best regime. Even Cicero, who is frequently called the first just war theorist, discusses foreign affairs in his De Res Publica within a broader critique of Roman imperialism, which is rooted in his critique of what the Roman republic had become, and in light of his discussion of what the best regime could look like. Indeed, one might argue that just war theory does not appear in the history of political thought until the question “On War” in Thomas Aquinas’s Summa Theologiae.4

The Underlying Question: Justice in the Soul and in the City

For premodern political thinkers, the best regime is the fundamental question of political order because it brings with it the question of justice. Moreover, the question of the best regime also brings with it the paradox of why international affairs and just war are secondary questions for these thinkers. Distinguished scholar E. L. Fortin explains this paradox:

“Without justice in the soul, there will never be justice in the city or in the city’s relations with other cities and nations. The paradox with which we are finally confronted was all too familiar to the political thinkers of the premodern period:  good government makes for good citizens, but it is itself made by good citizens. That is the ultimate reason for which so many human societies had neither.”5

For premodern thinkers like Augustine, justice is primarily a question of the just soul. But the just soul has the best chance of arising in the just city. But the just city is composed of just souls.  This is a vicious circle, but it illuminates the paradox of justice and why just cities and just souls are so few.

God’s Intervention

Of course, for Augustine, this paradox only gets resolved by the mystical city of God, which is created by God. In other words, he “solves” the paradox of the just city by removing it from politics and by pinpointing just why only God can even enter that vicious circle to make a modicum of justice possible.

Plato, of course, notices this paradox as well when he raises the problem of where the unjust polis even gets the idea of justice: “it behooves us to be well aware that if anything whatever might be saved and become what it ought to be in such a state of political life, if you say it was saved by divine dispensation you won’t be speaking badly.”6

This raises questions as to what kind of justice can remain in politics. For some like Niebuhr, politics has little to do with justice, though I think a closer reading of Augustine allows greater promise for justice as the basis of politics (though nowhere near as much as what a utopian might wish for).7

Education as the Proper Subject of Political Thought

This paradox also explains why the bulk of premodern political thought is primarily about education. Jean-Jacques Rousseau was correct to identify Plato’s Republic first and foremost as a book about education. The same is true of Augustine’s writings. The City of God, for example, sets forth numerous defenses and explanations of Christian doctrines “against the pagans,” but it is meant as a protreptic, to be read and reread because its teaching is meant to form readers’ souls toward a love of justice.8

The texts of ancient political thought were primarily about inculcating virtue into the readers. This purpose is critical in order to understand the place of “just war” and international affairs in their thought. Again E.L. Fortin:

“All in all, Augustine’s theory left much unsaid, although probably not unthought. If anything can be said to have motivated it, it is the conviction, not that wars can ever be completely just, but that under certain more favorable circumstances they might become a trifle less unjust.”

“There are limits to how far one can go in establishing a nation’s right to the territory over which it rules or in laying down rules for the defense of that territory. As Thomas Aquinas would later say, the art of warfare (militaris) belongs preeminently to the sphere of political prudence, duly informed by a proper regard for the requirements of the common good. The contingency of its matter is such that its exercise can never be governed by universal moral and legal principles, save of the most general kind.”9

Contingency Prevents Universal Rules of Just War

There is no “just war theory” in ancient political thought, including Augustine, because actions by rulers toward other nations take place in the realm of “contingency” and therefore require political prudence, not “universal and legal principles.” Augustine at points does speak of a higher law like eternal law that governs and judges human action. However, he is primarily a virtue-thinker, especially when it comes to “just war.”10 This is why, for example, principles associated with just war theory, including just cause, cannot be firm. After all, how many regimes have justice completely on their side?

Regimes, including Rome for Augustine, can make at best a partial claim for justice, which makes his own claim that a just war is about punishing a transgressor questionable, or at best tentative, because the identity of the original transgressor, if such an entity can be said to exist, is unclear (something of course he realized, though did not always state explicitly) when political societies are so frequently founded in blood. Moreover, the purpose of a just war must be peace, as Augustine insists. However, this assumes peace is the “normal” condition of the international order, which is an assumption that Augustine also understood to be highly dubious for the “vale of tears” that constitutes the saeculum.

Peace is certainly the goal of human action and of nature, and it is the end-state of God’s plan for history. However, the type of peace to be found in the saeculum, and obtainable for human beings by their own efforts, is always insecure and is a far cry from the peace promised by the city of God. Moreover, the highest form of peace one can find in the saeculum is the peace found in the soul of one who has embraced righteousness.

Justice and the Atomic Bomb

Augustine’s writings on war consistently focus on the moral character of the ruler waging war. For Augustine, the main question is less the rules of war than the state of soul of the one waging war. War is a given in the saeculum, but it is also something that tests the wills of those waging it. Thus, Augustine always exhorts rulers to win the battle in their own souls and to consider that battle more important than the external one. This internal combat is especially important for rulers who are called upon to commit injustices, albeit those that, in E. L. Fortin’s words, are “a trifle less unjust” than their alternatives.

One thinks of President Truman’s 1945 decision to drop two atomic bombs as preferable to a land invasion of Japan. Indeed, the firebombing of Japanese cities, primarily of Tokyo, killed more people than were killed by the atomic bomb attacks on Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Truman was faced with the prospect of a land invasion costing anywhere between 60,000 and 400,000 American lives, many of whom would have had to have been transferred from Europe where the Allies had just defeated Nazi Germany.11

Truman likely would also have agreed with the views of George Marshall and Dwight Eisenhower that democracies are ill-equipped to fight long, protracted wars. Truman’s decision to use atomic weapons came at a time when he likely determined that Americans were tired of the war and a land invasion of Japan would have started something the American regime could not have completed. Echoing the Ancients’ (and Augustine’s) focus on regimes, he made the decision, based on the democratic regime’s way of war, to wage a major and decisive attack aimed at destroying the enemy.

Fortin is mostly correct to characterize Augustine’s view of human action in international affairs as bringing about something “a trifle less unjust;” but it would be inaccurate to conclude from this that Augustine condones injustice or that he damns rulers as always having to do a society’s dirty work, thereby relieving their subjects from becoming blemished by political corruption.

The Virtuous Exercise of Authority

Recall Augustine requires rulers, in order for their actions to be just, to hold legitimate authority, to have a just cause which consists of punishing evil-doers for injuring your nation, and to hold a righteous intention.12 More importantly, those called to rule as the legitimate authority also need to learn to act virtuously. It seems that Augustine provides wide latitude for statesmanship, and one can look at his treatment of lying, adultery, rebellion, and tyrannicide as models of practical reasoning in the sorts of difficult circumstances brought by the “contingency” of international affairs and especially, of war.13

The example of Augustine’s counsel for the persecution of the Donatists should remind one of the context-specific nature of acts of practical judgment. What might be right in one specific circumstance will be wrong in another. Moreover, we should not regard the rightfulness of one specific action to serve as a precedent for subsequent action (which a rule-based ethic tends to assume).

This conclusion is based on my reading of Augustine’s advice, given after much agonizing deliberation, to coerce the Donatist heretics to re-enter the church. Subsequent generations of Christians took this advice as a precedent for the persecution of schismatics and heretics, although Augustine does not seem to have regarded his counsel as precedent-setting.14

His approach here may be contrasted with his response to the Manichaean critique of the Old Testament patriarchs: that God orders new commands that contravene previous customs and covenants, and that these new commands do indeed set new precedents. However, these statements pertain to Augustine’s understanding of Biblical history, not the saeculum in general.15

Moderation and Justice in War

This leads us to consider just cause and righteous intention. In many letters to Roman officials, and in writings like City of God, Augustine exhorts rulers to keep their passions in check during warfare and to seek justice instead of vengeance.16 His counsel for rulers to keep their passions in check is not a mere counsel for moderation (which it is) but also a counsel for justice.

As Henrik Syse observes, Augustine wants rulers to seek out the common good they share with their enemies.17 This reminds us that Augustine’s principle that although just cause is one of avenging wrong-doing, it also serves as a reminder that nations never have all of justice on their own side. They also share a common good and victors especially are obliged to treat their enemies in such a manner as to bring about their future prosperity (which includes their moral reform which is necessary after having used war to punish them).

Combatants need to act for the good of their enemies as well, though this does not rule out destroying their capacity to make war or destroying the faction of their regime responsible for their unjust war. Fraternal correction can be violent, though this violence must be proportionate to the end sought.

The Fruits of Revenge

Caring for the good of one’s enemy also has a self-interested component to it. For example, could the Allies have avoided the Second World War if the First World War terms of surrender in the 1919 Treaty of Versailles had not been so harsh?  (Germany was required to accept responsibility for causing the war, to disarm itself, to make territorial concessions, to give up its colonies, and to pay crushing cash reparations to the victors.)

Did the Allies admit as much when they helped their defeated enemies after World War II with the massive economic aid program known as the Marshall Plan? Perhaps Truman’s decision to bomb Hiroshima and Nagasaki, instead of launching a ground invasion and continuing firebombing, also fulfils Augustine’s counsel for justice.

Even so, what is notable about Augustine’s counsel is that the onus is on rulers to practice justice. His theory does not assume justice can be secured by international law. He does not think justice can be secured by relying on rulers to always be just. Rather, his view is that justice can only be secured when rulers are just, and the presence of international law is of secondary importance. Politics is conducted among persons.

When the Ruler Must Sacrifice Himself

Finally, while Augustine sees it as the duty of rulers to make extremely difficult decisions based on a limited number of brutal alternatives, it may not be the case that the decision the ruler makes is one of “a little less injustice.” It might actually be just. After all, one might wish one did not have to save the people on a swamped boat by tossing one’s valuables overboard, but wishing that is irrelevant. The right thing to do is usually one thing among an extremely small range of options.18

Because one’s actions in these extreme circumstances cannot always be taken as a precedent, it seems implicit in Augustine’s counsel to practice justice that obliges the ruler to be ready to remove himself from office afterward because his “contingent” act of saving his polis might be so monstrous that it can never, ever serve as a precedent for the actions of subsequent rulers of that polis.

Consider Jean-Jacques Rousseau’s insight that the legislator cannot also be a citizen of the nation he founds (e.g., Moses). One also thinks of Air Marshall Sir Arthur Harris who became a controversial figure in Great Britain after World War II for having directed the indiscriminate bombing of German cities. Pejoratively nicknamed “Bomber Harris,” he subsequently removed himself to South Africa.

Justice seems to oblige the ruler to be ready to sacrifice his interest, his fame, and, indeed, himself. Justice seems to demand that the prudential ruler be prepared to suffer the greatest injustice of acting justly but having the reputation of being unjust.

Indeed, Augustine’s great exemplar of justice, Jesus, offered the greatest act of justice (and friendship) for which he was punished as if he had committed the greatest injustice. Such is the cross Augustine wants Christians–rulers and subjects alike–to bear. If the deaths of Socrates and Jesus are the standard of justice, then it is no wonder that premoderns often thought, in E. L. Fortin’s words, “so many human societies had neither” good government nor good citizens.

Justice for its own Sake

Augustine found few past examples of just rulers. In this he agreed with earlier thinkers. Even so, he reserves praise for the Roman general, Regulus, for his love of justice.19

Regulus was captured by the Carthaginians and agreed to plead their cause in Rome, promising to return to Carthage afterwards. But when he got to Rome he argued instead that the fighting should continue against the Carthaginians. He then fulfilled his promise and returned to Carthage, where he was tortured to death. Augustine cites him as an example of genuine virtue as practiced by a pagan. Regulus is important for Augustine because he seems to have practiced virtue for its own sake.

Augustine seems to have thought that, in rare cases, rulers are able to overcome their desire for power and to love justice for its own sake. By thinking this, Augustine seems to have been more optimistic than a realist like Hans Morgenthau.

Hans Morgenthau and Augustine

In his “Justice and Power” essay, Hans Morgenthau treats claims to justice largely as self-serving attempts to gain an advantage. Even so, instead of concluding, as did Thrasymachus in the Republic, that justice is merely the will of the stronger, Morgenthau concluded that the demand for justice is part of  the permanent and intractable human condition because justice transcends any single attempt to comprehend it: “For man, both seeking and resisting power, cannot forgo the conviction that what he does and suffers has a transcendent meaning, expressed in terms of justice.”20

Morgenthau concludes those who suffer injustice enjoy a greater claim to justice than those who wield the judicial power. Lack of power is a surer way to justice than possessing power.  This would be a dubious proposition for someone like Augustine.  For Augustine, it would be more accurate to claim that one can practice justice who has possessed but has forsaken justice.

Augustine did not have much of a theory of just war and international politics. Instead his political thought focused on the good regime and  educating readers to become just. Neo-Augustinian realists possess theories of just war and international politics, but they appear not to have spent much time thinking about the nature of the good regime, and as a result overlook persons in politics and the virtues that form their personalities amidst the contingencies of politics.

Augustine is a more reliable guide because the contingency of politics places focus on the creativity of persons who, in acting in politics, also create their personae and characters. The study of virtue is the also the empirical study of politics.21

The Atomic Bomb and the Dinner Party

Let me conclude with a reflection on what might be characterized as an Augustinian moment. As recounted in the recently published, The Presidents’ Club, Margaret Truman told the story of a dinner her father hosted for Winston Churchill just before Truman left the White House.22 A number of Truman’s staff and advisors were present, including Robert Lovett, Dean Acheson, Averell Harriman, and General Omar Bradley.

At one point Churchill asked Truman, “I hope you have your answer for that hour when you and I stand before Saint Peter and he says ‘I understand you two are responsible for putting off those atomic bombs. What have you got to say for yourselves?’”

An awkward moment, to be sure. However, at Lovett’s encouragement, Churchill agreed to put himself alone under trial, and suggested that Saint Peter would defer judgment to a trial by jury of their peers. Each guest then assumed the role as a member of the jury, pretending to be any great leader they liked: Bradley was Alexander the Great, others were Julius Caesar, Aristotle, and Washington, among others.

The Judgment of History and of God

With the exception of Aristotle, this jury panel included statesmen and soldiers (but not Voltaire, whom Churchill blocked as an atheist, and not Oliver Cromwell, whom Churchill held to be lawless). In the end, Churchill waived the jury and allowed Truman, as the “presiding judge,” to make the call.  Truman aquitted him of all charges. The authors of The President’s Club offer this comment: “Truman certainly understood as well as anyone: forced to choose between the unacceptable and the intolerable, leaders nonetheless have no choice but to lead.”

Augustine would certainly understand, and even agree to a certain extent, that the ethical standard of statesmanship is the statesman himself. He is on the same page as Aristotle (one of the jurors) on this. However, the statesmen’s choice to have Saint Peter “defer” judgment first to pagan leaders and then to Truman himself would give Augustine pause. After all, they seem to have slyly deprived God of the opportunity to render judgment upon Churchill and Truman and their devastating decision to drop the atomic bombs.

I am not here judging their real life actions other than to observe, with Churchill, the enormity of their decision. The good prudential reasons for Truman’s decision were listed above, as was his judgment to respect the democratic nature of his own regime in his waging of the war. Even so, their choice, though it be merely rhetorical, to deprive God (or the device of St. Peter) the opportunity to render judgment, is telling.

Moreover, Augustine might worry that the statesmen have slyly dodged the responsibility of statesmanship as well. As we have mentioned, Augustine thought the heaviest burden a statesman can endure is to be just while having the reputation of injustice. By making such decisions, the statesman must be prepared to accept that the judgment of history, as they like to say, will in fact be negative.

The choice of Churchill and the others to choose a jury of their peers was meant to secure a positive judgment of history. Perhaps that is their due  But they rigged the jury somewhat to ensure a positive judgment, and rigging a jury in real life would be unjust. On the other hand, their “trial” was just a parlor game played at a dinner party.

In the wider scheme of things, the men embraced justice by having accepted the risk that they would be remembered more for their unjust actions; they in fact risked suffering that greatest of injustices: that of being a just man who is remembered as unjust.

 

Notes

1. M. Benjamin Mollov, Power and Transcendence: Hans J. Morgenthau and the Jewish Experience, (Lanham, MD: Lexington Books, 2002)

2. John von Heyking and Thomas Heilke (eds.), The Primacy of Persons in Politics: Empiricism and Political Philosophy. To be published in 2013 by the Catholic University of America Press. On world politics as a “workshop,” see Tilo Schabert, How World Politics is Made: France and the Reunification of Germany, trans., John Tyler Tuttle, ed., Barry Cooper, (Columbia, MO: University of Missouri Press, 2009).

3. Henrik Syse, “Augustine and Just War: Between Virute and Duties,” Ethics, Nationalism, and Just War: Medieval and Contemporary Perspectives, eds., Henrik Syse and Gregory M. Reichberg, (Washington, DC:  Catholic University of America Press, 2007), 47-8.

4. Aquinas, Summa Theologiae II-II, 50.4.

5. E. L. Fortin, “Christianity and the Just War Tradition,” in Human Rights, Virtue, and the Common Good: Untimely Meditations on Religion and Politics, Collected Essays, vol. 3, ed., J. Brian Benestad, (Lanham, MD: Rowman and Littlefield, 1996), 292.

6. Plato, Republic, trans., Joe Sachs, (Newburyport, MA:  Focus Publishing, 2007), 492e-493a.

7. John von Heyking, Augustine and Politics as Longing in the World, (Columbia, MO:  University of Missouri Press, 2001).

8. Heyking, Augustine and Politics as Longing in the World, ch. 2.  For Christians, the love of justice is complicated by the command to practice mercy and forgiveness.  Indeed, the question of how much justice to demand before forgiveness is a perennial problem for Christian treatments of justice.  See John von Heyking, “Augustine and Punishment and the Mystery of Human Freedom,” in The Philosophy of Punishment and the History of Political Thought, ed., Peter Koritansky, (Columbia, MO:  University of Missouri Press, 2011), 56-73.

9. Fortin, “Christianity and the Just War Theory,” 292.

10.  Heyking, Augustine and Politics as Longing in the World, chap. 5.  Syse argues this point with special reference to Augustine’s understanding of just war (“Augustine and Just War”).

11. Mark Perry, Partners in Command: George Marshall and Dwight Eisenhower in War and Peace, (New York: Penguin, 2007), 361.

12. As summarized by Frederick H. Russell, “War,” in Augustine Through the Ages: An Encyclopedia, ed., Allan D. Fitzgerald, O.S.A., (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 1999), 876). After reducing Augustine’s just war thinking to these three criteria, Russell cautions that “any such attempt to reduce this thought. is bound to be a distortion that masks his inner turmoil and renders explicit assumptions that were at best implicit in his writings.  His scattered thoughts were not systematic precedents for future acts.”

Russell acknowledges that Augustine’s ideas governing just war are principles of prudence, not law. However, he fails to understand the nature of that prudence when he describes it only in terms of wrestling with “inner turmoil.”

Legitimate authority is also important because it provides combatants a surer sense of whom they are to attack (one advantage of uniformed soldiers over irregular enemies, like al-Qaeda terrorists, who blend in with non-combatant populations) and sets the boundaries for action.

13. See Heyking, Augustine and Politics as Longing in the World, chap. 5.

14. Ibid., chap. 8.

15. See Confessions, III.8.

16. His letter to Boniface (Ep. 189) is a key example. Some of Augustine’s prudential counsel for international affairs and for war have been collected in Augustine, Political Writings, eds., E. M. Atkins and R. J. Dodaro, (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2001), 205-26).

17. Syse, “Augustine and Just War,” 38-40.

18. See Aristotle, Nicomachean Ethics, 1110b9.

19. Augustine, City of God, I.15 and Heyking, Augustine and Politics as Longing in the World, 167.

20. Morgenthau, Hans, “Justice and Power,” Social Research, 41(1), Spring 1974: 174.

21. See Heyking and Heilke (eds.), Persons in Politics.

22. As summarized in Nancy Gibbs and Michael Duffy, The Presidents Club: Inside the World’s Most Exclusive Fraternity, (New York: Simon and Schuster, 2012), 523-4.

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John von Heyking is a Board Member and Book Review Editor of VoegelinView as well as a Professor of Political Science at the University of Lethbridge in Canada. He is author and editor of several books, including The Form of Politics: Aristotle and Plato on Friendship (McGill-Queen’s, 2016) and Comprehensive Judgment and Absolute Selflessness: Winston Churchill on Politics as Friendship (St. Augustine’s, 2018).

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