14.1Whoness of a people

What is the social-ontological task here? In what sense is it sensible to speak of global whoness and global power plays? Who are the players in such global power plays? The globe is here taken to mean the totality of beings on Earth, considered not as whats but as whos. Such whos are, in the first place, individual human beings and then all those associations of human beings — We’s— formed by sociating estimative interplays, many of which have already appeared in previous chapters, such as families, enterprises, labour unions, industry associations up to governments and states. The last named are the ‘biggest’ We-whos so far considered who wield power over a people for the sake of that people’s freedom of interplay. A people itself is formed through mutually estimating each other as sharing an historically shaped, cultural way of life with each other that is positively cultivated, treasured and thus esteemed. A people belongs together in some kind of cultural identity. This identity itself may contain tensions of not belonging when certain groups within the population distinguish themselves from each other by estimating each other only deficiently, as in the case of tensions and conflicts along lines of religious belief. Such differences may override a people’s belonging together in a cultural identity through sharing a common history and cultural practices. Cultural identity itself consitutes a kind of We through which many individuals can feel a sense of belonging together despite obvious wide differences otherwise, such as two individual whos estimating each other as belonging together merely insofar as they recognize that they speak with the same accent.

Whos, therefore, can sociate estimatively in many different ways along very different lines of identification that abstract from other differences. Sharing a common descent, language, history, geography or customs provides bases for estimating each other as belonging together in the one nation. The word ‘nation’ itself refers etymologically to a common birth from the same source. A shared geography where a cultivated culture is lived thereby becomes a national territory. Who you are become is decisively shaped by having been cast by your birth into a social milieu and environment with certain cultivated customary practices, especially speaking a language with a similar accent and lilt. In this social environment with its customary sociating practices with which you are intimately familiar from birth you feel at home. Through the course of your life you widen the horizon of the sociating environment to which you belong and with which you identify. One of these horizons is the nation that sociates many sharing a culture with each other. Such nations may coincide with being ruled by a unified government that overrides many regional differences otherwise, so that a people sociates under a nation state. In other cases, by dint of historical struggles to lead their lives, nations may be constituted as a We only within a region of a nation state. National territory thereby diverges from the territory governed by a state. This is also the case where a nation conceived as belonging together in a cultural We straddles the borders of territories governed by individual states. Belonging together as a nation therefore may conflict with belonging together under the rule of a state. Such conflict can go as far as rebellion by a culturally identified We against the state and civil war. Or it may restrict itself to frictions between different cultural We’s that may or may not be located geographically, as in the case of religious antagonisms.

In all these cases, however, the various We’s sociating people in an identity arise from mutually estimative interplays in which identity and difference are recognized and constituted. Where differences are ascertained in such estimative interplay, a difference between a We and a Them comes about which may or may not provide grounds for rivalry or even antagonism and hostility. The question as to the whoness of a people therefore has no clear-cut answer along the lines of a nation state with a sovereign territory over which it rules that coincides with the geographical region in which a unified We carries on its cultural life. The whoness of a nation may not be the We of a nation state. In other words, the We of a nation and the power of rule exercised by a state over a populace may be dirempted, thus rupturing any national we-ness of a people.

Belonging together in the We of a people coincident with a nation state may therefore be merely invocative in character, invoking the unity of a people under a nation state. If this is so, in what sense can we speak of global whoness, given that whoness itself is constituted through mutually estimative interplay between and among people marked by both identity and difference? A global We could only be invoked or evoked in summoning a togetherness in sharing the globe with which whos could identify themselves, as in ‘we’ all belong together due to all of us being human beings and as such endowed with human rights, or due to our all sharing the same planet Earth, or, even more baldly and devoid of genuine whoness, our belonging to the same species of animal. Such an invoked we-ness is highly abstract and brittle, for there are also so many differences invoking far more narrowly circumscribed We’s such as estimating each other as speaking the same language or sharing the same customs of everyday life. This as signifies that all belonging-together in a We is always an hermeneutic performance and achievement of estimating each other as such-and-such, and this performance may well require also cutural rituals invoking a belonging-together such as the commemoration of decisive historic events through which a people defined itself as a people for itself and also toward the outside, for other people and peoples. Such a decisive event is often the victorious outcome of a power struggle such as establishing certain civil rights vis-à-vis a ruler, the outcome of a civil war or a foreign war. In commemorating, people together (co-) recall from memory an event, now absent, from the temporal dimension of yesterness (the ‘past’, Gewesenheit, beenness), thus invoking themselves hermeneutically as the We of a people.

The We of a people’s cultural identity, by contrast, is lived more implicitly in belonging together by cultivating shared customs and practices which the people encompassed by that We value and esteem, such as the custom, or rather cult, of ancestor worship. The culturally cultivated way(s) of life of a people may come to expression and even be established by literary works in the language of that people, including founding myths, which define who they are and with which they identify as facets of their selves to which they revert in understanding themselves as the cultural We of a people. Such culturally significant works are themselves cultivated as part of a people’s culture defining who they in their belonging-together.

Toward the outside there can be cultural exchange through which people from different cultures come to estimate and esteem each other’s foreign cultural practices. Such estimative cultural interchange is furthered by learning foreign languages to gain better access to another people’s cultural way of life. There are also many deficient modes of such cultural interplay such as estimating other cultures as inferior to one’s own or simply ‘cultivating’ a disinterest in or narrow-minded ignorance of another culture. Migration between peoples with their distinctive cultures leads also to an intermixing of customs and a refashioning of a given people’s own culture and ways of life. Cultures themselves are permeable to each other in an estimative interplay sui generis. An hermetically sealed-off culture is the exception and, since the globalization of the 15th century initiated by European ships, and borne by the European thirst for trade, exploitation and colonies, anyway impossible. Intercultural interplay is the rule, not the exception; it softens the edges between self-defined cultures by engendering mutual appreciation of other ways of life and the works of foreign cultures. Whoness of peoples is thus a phenomenon of mutual estimative interplay that goes far beyond the trading of goods.

In the following I will consider only the interplay between nation states and peoples unified in nation states, thus assuming that a people is more or less itself united in a national identity and that this nation is governed by a single territorial state.

Throughout the present inquiry to this point, the focus has been on the individual, sociation of individuals and their power interplay amongst themselves and with government and state. On the level of the power interplays among nation states, now to be briefly discussed, the entire problematic repeats itself on a higher, extended plane with other phenomenal aspects. The core social ontology of whoness with its concepts of exchange, mutually estimative interchange, social power (as ontologically distinct from the effective power of traditional ontology of movement), are now played out among nation-state players on the global, geo-political stage carved up into sovereign state territories. This holds true even though empirically, the political world today is precisely not structured solely according to power interplays among nation states founded upon civil societies imbued with the rule of law. There are also numerous so-called ‘asymmetric’ power interplays with ‘rebels’ who revolt against any rules of play that have been established among nation states in international law intended to limit the means of violent force permissible in resolving conflicts among themselves. Such rebels, invariably labelled ‘terrorists’ by the nation states themselves, since they do not respect a state’s sovereignty, do not respect any such rules, including the law of war, but employ all available means of violence without restriction, if only they seem advantageous in furthering their goals, including undermining a state’s hold on power over its people by terrorizing the population at large. They need not have ambitions as global power players, but — fueled by regional, cultural grievances and long-standing historical antagonisms and struggles — may be revolting against a single nation state’s power internally in an insurrection.

As already discussed, although the whoness of a people, as who it identifies itself mirrored in its lived world, may well be partially constituted by its belonging-together as a nation ruled by a state, thus constituting the unity of a nation state as an individual, sovereign, political player acting on the world stage of politics, there is no lack of deficient modes of existence of the nation state. There are, for instance, failed states locked in quasi-civil war, and fragmented countries where belonging together in an identity is not constituted so much by nationality, but primarily by tribes and clans, or where religious, linguistic or regional differences divide a nominally national people into more or less latently antagonistic factions.

Furthermore, there are many nation states around the globe not based upon the rule of law for a civil society which regard such rule of law from the liberal tradition as alien to their own far more hierarchical or despotic cultures of political rule. In all these latter cases, the concept of the free individual and the abstract person under the rule of law, which is a Western, but nevertheless universal, conception of human being, has not been recognized throughout the entire world, and correspondingly, the state in question does not acknowledge that level of universality on which its citizens would be guaranteed and would enjoy the universal status of persons and therefore also the freedoms of free, mutually estimative power interplay among themselves. Nevertheless, the concept of the nation state based on rule of law with its core of liberal individual freedoms-in-interplay retains its status as the leading conception for organizing the world’s peoples and countries, for the peoples of nation states do aspire, more or less, to the freedom of a people consisting of free individuals, their conceptions of living together having long since been infiltrated, if not subverted, by originally Western ideas of freedom. This is also documented in all the world’s nation states having formally signed up to documents such as the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and also to membership in international bodies such as the United Nations. By paying lip service to universal human rights through becoming signatories to universal documents, even repressive nation states have committed themselves to at least playing a game of appearing to respect the core of free interplay among individual human beings, and so have to dissemble before global opinion that is overwhelmingly imbued with conceptions of human rights, no matter how confused, superficial, contradictory and vague such conceptions may be.

The major and essential difference between the power plays among nation states in world politics and the power interplays that go on within societies is the lack of an overarching world Leviathan that would keep all the individual states “in awe” for the sake of “comfortable, safe, and peaceable living one amongst another” (Hobbes), thus restricting the internal power interplays to the exercise of social powers other than physical force (cf. Chapter 10.1). The power plays among states are therefore in a perennial state of Ought-to-be. On this topic Hegel says, “that the treaties upon which the obligations among states rest ought to be kept.” (daß die Traktate, als auf welchen die Verbindlicheiten der Staaten gegeneinander beruhen, gehalten werden sollen. RPh. § 333, cf. § 330). A state breaking a treaty can lead to war with another state. Obligations among states, which are laid down in treaties of many kinds, are analogous to contracts among persons natural and otherwise in civil society, with the great difference in the rules of power interplay being that contracts can be enforced by the rule of law exercised by a state’s judiciary, whereas treaties among states only ought to be kept under international law, whose bodies of enforcement are comparatively weak and often reduced to merely diplomatic interplay whose means of coercion reside mainly in trade sanctions imposed by a group of nation states acting in concert against a renegade nation state. A world body to watch over the obligations states have taken upon themselves in treaties of all kinds relies upon the moral power of an appeal to states’ keeping their word combined with the inestimable value of trust in international interplay, whilst lacking an ultimate power of coercive enforcement.

A world community of states has arisen in the shape of the United Nations, with its own (highly deficient, highly deformed, because not universal) rules of play for the power plays among nation states, and specific treaties such as the World Trade Organization, which at least has the covenanted power to impose fines for infringements of international rules of trade. In cases of open international conflict, each individual nation state decides whether it is in its own sovereign self-interest to bow to the moral, ultimately persuasive rhetorical power as practised by diplomacy and the mass media, which have the power of moulding world opinion. As analyzed in Chapter 10, such ‘soft’ rhetorical power is certainly socio-ontologically different in kind from ‘hard’ physical force, but it is not entirely ineffective, if only because nation states profit reciprocally from bonds of trust that are so easily broken and difficult to re-establish once rent. In pursuing its calculated self-interest, a nation state, may well bend, over time, to the pressure of a world consensus derived from universal principles and rights serving as a moral world regulative. Let us listen further to Hegel on the global, estimative, power play among nation states.

14.2The state as the universal that remains particular in the interplay among foreign powers

When dialectically unfolding the power interplay among states according to their concept in §§ 330ff (The Outer Right of State) in his Rechtsphilosophie, Hegel insists that the concept of an individual state striving for its own “wellbeing” (Wohl, § 336) is “particular” (besondere, § 340), not universal (allgemein). The diremption between particularity and universality is thus displaced from civil society, which was said to be “the system of ethical life lost in its extremes” (das System der in ihre Extreme verlorenen Sittlichkeit, § 184) (a contradiction only purportedly resolved by positing the state as the universal instance that substantially embodies freedom, as has been shown in Chapter 12), to a renewed, presumably irresolvable diremption between the particular, individual states in their “irritability” (Reizbarkeit, § 334) and the universal of “world history” (Weltgeschichte, § 342), which latter is claimed to be nothing other than “the interpretation and realization of the universal spirited mind” (die Auslegung und Verwirklichung des allgemeinen Geistes, § 342), i.e. nothing other than eine Gestalt of the hermeneutic As through which an age is cast ontologically behind the backs of those living in it.

The state itself, existing as it does in reality, is therefore ultimately, for Hegel himself, a particular state, and a truly universal state never comes to be realized as a state but remains hovering as Weltgeist, i.e. as world-mind, in which and for which the beingness of beings is cast in an historical age. The realization in world history for Hegel is an unfolding of universal Geist in a “transition to its next highest stage” (Übergang in seine nächste höhere Stufe, § 344) that can be understood as an historical constellation of being in the Heideggerian sense or as an hermeneutic cast, respectively. In this way, the realization of universal spirited mind as objektiver Geist, even according to Hegel himself, is constantly deferred, and the split between particularity and universality is retained on a higher plane beyond that of civil society and even beyond that of the nation state in the power interplay among nation states.

Hence Hegel himself concedes that the power interplay among states, “the outer right of states” (das äußere Staatsrecht, § 330), i.e. ‘foreign relations’, according even to its philosophical, socio-ontological concept, assumes merely “the form of Ought” (die Form des Sollens,§ 330) because “the fact that it is real is based on different sovereign wills” (daß es wirklich ist, auf unterschiedenen souveränen Willen beruht, § 330); “...thus in this respect it must always remain a matter of Ought” (so muß es in dieser Beziehung immer beim Sollen bleiben, § 330 Add.). Furthermore, the vain, finite reality of “mutual, independent caprice” (der beiderseitigen selbständigen Willkür, § 332), personified as it is in heads of state, with their proclivity for arrogant, phallic hubris, is acknowledged by Hegel’s philosophical thinking insofar as it pronounces, “the principle of international law among peoples” to be “the universal right that ought to prevail in and for itself among states” (Der Grundsatz des Völkerrechts, als des allgemeinen, an und für sich zwischen den Staaten gelten sollenden Rechts... § 333).

If the impotence of the universal concept in the realm of the power interplay among states is acknowledged insofar as its status as based on a ‘mere Ought’, and the particularity of capricious, hubristic, individual sovereign wills is conceded (and these sovereign wills do not have to be the wills of monarchs, but can equally well be the wills of, say, democratically elected heads of state, despots or other demagogues and autocratic rulers), then the “immediate reality” (unmittelbare Wirklichkeit, § 332) of the state as the instance that exercises real power inwardly over civil society and its cell unit, the family, must also be marked by the qualification that the state, in its inner reality too, is merely finite human beings, in their own striving for high who-estimation or gain, governing finite human beings. In particular, this implies that the speculative-dialectical τέλος of final reconciliation of reality with reason in the absolute idea remains beyond reach.

14.3Brute international power interplays

The brute, physical force of military power is an option for a nation state to assert its self-interest, and the exercise of this option can lead to war. The threat of its exercise is also already a means of self-assertion of a state’s power in global conflicts and plays a major role in global diplomacy (international persuasion, bargaining and arm-twisting) when it comes to a conjuncture when the outbreak of war is to be prevented. Even the territorial integrity guaranteed by international treaties outlawing territorial expansion or wars of aggression enjoy only the status of Ought which an aggressive nation state can infringe as part of its geo-political power strategy in an uncertain power game. The self-interest with the highest moral claim with respect to initiating military conflict is national self-defence, whereas economic national self-interest is asserted primarily through mutual interest, bargaining and mutual agreement, albeit that certain national economies with less economic power (mediated through the medium of reified value in all its forms through to foreign direct investment of capital) are generally disadvantaged in such agreements. Therefore there is a tendency to make multilateral trade agreements in which the economic weights of each national economy are somewhat evened out. Super-power states with potent economies may be inclined to bully other states to assert themselves.

The moral, rhetorical power of world opinion as shaped, manipulated and circulated through the world media, although a diffuse ‘factor’ in the power plays of world politics, nevertheless is the domain in which the legitimacy or otherwise of nation states’ actions, especially their military actions leading to or threatening military hostility or outright war, is judged with palpable effects on a nation state’s who-status in the world and therefore consequences, especially economic ones, for its interplay with other nation states. Today it is illegitimate for a nation state to wage war simply to assert its economic or similar interests. There are many, complexly interlinked levels in the power play among nation states, including the economic (e.g. free trade agreements), the cultural (e.g. fostering of cultural exchanges, of learning foreign languages), the diplomatic (e.g. formation of alliances, including cultural, economic, technological and military alliances) and, ultimately, war, which poses the greatest risk for a nation state, for its outcome and the surprising turn of events in armed conflict remain highly uncertain. Each level of this international power play can have infinite, unexpected twists and turns in how the power game is played out by heads of state, foreign ministers, diplomats, trade representatives, etc.

If war breaks out between states, the consequences quickly become incalculable, especially when it is taken into account that war between nation states also opens the opportunity for antagonisms within a nation state between sections of the population to erupt in civil war. To win a war, a nation state is prepared to deploy all means possible, including the most dastardly and unspeakably atrocious. International law concerning the conduct of war itself degenerates into mere words in the face of a warring nation state’s determination to act ruthlessly and savagely, committing atrocities against the enemy’s military and civilian population under the cover of propaganda, barefaced lies, deception, duplicity. The powerlessness or hesitation of a world Leviathan, or rather, a consensual world body like the United Nations, to intervene can make a bitter and cruel war with no holds barred the occasion for the world’s nation states’ performing a farce on the global diplomatic stage in open view of an impotent global audience.

Socio-ontologically, however, there are no new basic ‘looks’ of social power here (cf. Chapter 10.1), but nevertheless endless possible, even hitherto unheard-of, ontic variations of power plays to be played out in history. The main feature of interest is the above-mentioned lack of a world-state Leviathan. Such a power vacuum allows the moral, rhetorical powers of diplomacy and world opinion to have more sway, especially since the development of mass media supported by global communications networks. The mass media themselves report on geopolitical events from within their own preconceptions and cultural prejudices that have always already pre-formed the information to in-form, sway and pander to the mooded minds of their readers, listeners and viewers, invariably simultaneously invoking a fake We. Such rhetorical sway is also manipulable by individual nation states themselves via their own propagandistic media channels. Quite apart from any manipulative propragandistic intentions of individual media outlets or the government, the rhetoric of the media must be adapted to the cultural mind-set of a people for it to be understood and persuasive.

In particular, it makes a great difference whether and to what extent (originally Western) liberal conceptions of society and government with their core of free and fair interplay among all the players in civil society, the state and among nation states have taken cultural root in a people’s mind. In the rhetorical exchanges between and among nation states a government will often revert to its own cultural traditions of hierarchical or despotic rule to deflect rhetorical incursions by universal conceptions of human freedom and human rights. In other cases, a despot will pay lip service to universal human rights in all respects while covertly trampling on them to cynically further political ends. The susceptibility of a people to demagoguery depends partly on the cultural mindset that has itself been shaped through historical struggles.

14.4Nationalism, protectionism and free, estimative power interplay among peoples

With regard to individual human beings, who are at the root of all interplay of freedom, if there is to be freedom at all, the formation of personal identity as a who through belonging to a certain people or a nation harbours the danger of nationalism which inscribes a difference among the world’s peoples, asserting a superiority which goes against the grain of a universal fraternity of a multitude of peoples sharing the Earth. This is one of the side-effects of the constitution of a ‘we the people’ as a nation state. Whoness constituted through a national identity, when sharpened into political nationalism (based sometimes narrowly on ethnic birth rather than sharing customs in social living), can lead to dangerous frictions among, and also within nations. Such nationalism, in turn, is a rhetorical phenomenon which can be counteracted by rhetoric that makes the case for the universal status of human being (the dignity accorded to each and every individual through universal human rights) as against the particularity of national differences. There is an endless, ongoing struggle over asserting politically an actuality of the universal, inviolable dignity of the person against not only the crudities of bellicose, jingoistic nationalism (which is invariably linked also to ethnic, linguistic, religious or other particularities that become politically charged with potential and actual violence) but also the meanness of particular mass-egoistic self-interests. Such mass egoism has only been further inculcated by the idea of the social welfare state. Such meanness comes to the fore, shamelessly showing its ugly face, in all sorts of subtle variations of protectionism through which citizens in particular sectors and situations clamour for their nation state to protect them from the brunt of the world economic power play by putting other, foreign players at a disadvantage through wielding nation-state power. Since the striving for security (say, of jobs) competes with the striving for freedom, which is always risky and challenging, a people, or broad sections thereof, may suddenly ‘discover’ (or invent) its peculiar nationality as a good ‘reason’ to protect itself against foreign trade competition, quite apart from any considerations of fair trade-interplay.

If nationalism is an aggressive play against other peoples in the power interplay among nation states, and protection is a defensive play against other peoples, then there is another mode of power play in which peoples can be for each other in such international power plays by estimating appreciatively each other’s powers in the mutual benefits they can bring through their exercise. This can be seen first of all on the economic level of international trade, and has long since (1817) been formulated in economics by David Ricardo260 as the mutual benefit of comparative advantage. Already in Chapter 9.5 it was shown that there is no limit to what people can do for each other in exercising their powers and abilities in each other’s favour. Such mutual benefit from estimative interplay, however, is not restricted to trade, but extends also and especially to cultural interchange and interplay in which two peoples can mutually benefit from getting to know each other’s worlds, in particular in how they are set to work by the powers of creative individuals in works of art and literature. In this lies also the possibility of learning endlessly from each other in giving to each other. There are endless potentials for peoples to exercise their abilities for each other’s benefit in interchanges and, in this sense, there are no limits to growth both economically and culturally. Such mutually appreciative power interplay is consonant with peoples’ living peaceably with each other, whereas an aggressive or defensive stance against each other leads to tensions that ultimately do not enhance living with each other, but rather detract from its possibilities. Such tensions and antagonisms fanned by despots and demagogues can play into geopolitical strategies that include the threat of or actual unleashing of military forces in initiating incalculable hostilities.

Freedom is — that is, it presences in the world — only through mutually esteeming power interplays among people, including globally among peoples.