[wat0n]

Would President Lincoln be justified in fighting a brutal civil war until the southern states return to the Union and abolish slavery?

The actual question is, would President Lincoln be justified in punishing the Southern militias for their attack of Fort Sumter?

This question makes it look as if Lincoln started the hostilities, when he did not.

Furthermore, one could indeed condemn attacks targeting children while at the same time believing fighting the war was fair.

[Potemkin]

The actual question is, would President Lincoln be justified in punishing the Southern militias for their attack of Fort Sumter?

This question makes it look as if Lincoln started the hostilities, when he did not.

Furthermore, one could indeed condemn attacks targeting children while at the same time believing fighting the war was fair.

Some Southerners still refer to the Civil War as “the war of Northern aggression”. Are they wrong to do so? After all, once they had seceded, Fort Sumter was being ‘illegally occupied’ by Northern troops. From their point of view, they had every right to expel them by force. Once you accept that the secession of the Southern states was legal, then Lincoln was the aggressor.

[wat0n]

Some Southerners still refer to the Civil War as “the war of Northern aggression”. Are they wrong to do so? After all, once they had seceded, Fort Sumter was being ‘illegally occupied’ by Northern troops. From their point of view, they had every right to expel them by force. Once you accept that the secession of the Southern states was legal, then Lincoln was the aggressor.

No, they are not right. It is also not true the secession was legal - indeed, the union is meant to be perpetual as evidenced by the Articles of Confederation, which the US Constitution was written to improve on. It's also why there's no legal procedure for leaving the Union.

Either way, I think the issue of who actually started using military force is clearly important to your example - and it still does not deal with the issue of whether oppression (real or imagined) justifies any and all types of action. That's why I took that fragment from Mein Kampf - Hitler believed Germans were oppressed in Austria-Hungary, and that this did indeed justify all sorts of action (including breaking the law). I think it's unnecessary to say what happened next.

[Potemkin]

No, they are not right. It is also not true the secession was legal - indeed, the union is meant to be perpetual as evidenced by the Articles of Confederation, which the US Constitution was written to improve on. It's also why there's no legal procedure for leaving the Union.

Either way, I think the issue of who actually started using military force is clearly important to your example - and it still does not deal with the issue of whether oppression (real or imagined) justifies any and all types of action. That's why I took that fragment from Mein Kampf - Hitler believed Germans were oppressed in Austria-Hungary, and that this did indeed justify all sorts of action (including breaking the law). I think it's unnecessary to say what happened next.

People who feel oppressed tend to respond violently, and have even been known to *gasp* break the law. This is true whether they are Nazis, Southern slave-owners, or actual slaves. Why does this shock you so much?

[wat0n]

People who feel oppressed tend to respond violently, and have even been known to *gasp* break the law. This is true whether they are Nazis, Southern slave-owners, or actual slaves. Why does this shock you so much?

Should we honor their feelings?

Does feeling oppressed give you the right to murder children and even justify glorifying that?

[Wellsy]

One comes to the issue of means and end, as well as the matter of stepping outside the law. How-to distinguish a mere criminal from someone acting to change things for the good, they are still accountable for the wrongs they commit in its pursuit.

https://www.ethicalpolitics.org/ablunden/works/hegel-civil-disobedience.htm

I must act according to my conscience and according to my knowledge of the consequences of my action. I must not be reckless. If there are nonetheless bad consequences for my action but I was acting within the law, then the law needs to be amended and I cannot be blamed. On the other hand, if I act outside the law, then I am responsible for bad consequences which flow from my act, and the fact that I did not foresee these bad outcomes is no excuse.

This is something of the greatest importance for all those who choose to be social change activists and guided by their own conscience rather than by the laws and customs of the society to which they belong. Other subjects have determined the general Good to be quite other than you have, otherwise there would be no point in activism. By what right do you believe that you know best? There is an inherent “moral risk” in being an activist. The maxim that ‘the road to hell is paved in good intentions’ has a basis in social experience. The subject guided solely by their own conscience may equally well do evil in the world as do good. Provided abstract right is respected, there is no criterion within Morality which distinguishes between good and evil.

Hegel points out that:
“since action is an alteration which is to take place in an actual world and so will have recognition in it, it must in general accord with what has validity there.” (PR §132n.)

So the only way that a subject may ensure that, guided by their own conscience, they do good and not evil, is to ensure that they conform to the customs and laws of their community, including the very rules they seek to overthrow. You do not live in a socialist utopia. Your actions must make sense within the society in which you act.
…
In 2018, the newly-appointed General Secretary of the Australian Council of Trade Unions, Sally McManus, was asked on ABC TV: “We live in a country where there are laws that are established by a parliament that all citizens are expected to abide by ..., regardless of whether you agree or disagree with those laws.” Personally, I was delighted when McManus responded: “I believe in the rule of law where the law is fair, when the law is right. But when it’s unjust, I don’t think there’s a problem with breaking it” (7:30 Report, 15 March 2018).
Hegel would have agreed with the interviewer’s position. According to Hegel, moral choice is limited by the law of the land, as rightly interpreted, and whoever steps outside those limits bears responsibility for any wrong which may result. The question is: to what higher authority was Sally McManus appealing when (unlike her comrades who had an eye to a future parliamentary position), claimed the right, as ACTU General Secretary, to break the laws of the Australian government?

To be clear, McManus was not taking upon herself the right to violate the law; she was speaking as the representative of the labour movement in Australia. She was appealing to the history and principles of the self-legislating, institutionalised labour movement which is as ancient as the state itself and has as much right to objectivity as does the state.

There was no such thing in Hegel’s day; the struggles of working people were subsumed under the category of “social problems,” and Hegel’s conception of social class - a conception which was largely shared in his day even among working people in England - was that the employers were the leaders of the “business class” while the landed aristocracy were the leaders of the “agricultural class.” But since Hegel’s life time a labour movement has grown up through the same kind of historically protracted continuous struggle and suffering as lies behind any state worthy of the same. In Australia, as in many states, the labour movement has been institutionalised with many of the kind of compromises that have been extended to churches. The difference is, however, that the labour movement claims interest in the mundane secular life of the community, whereas the churches have an interest only in saving souls (in every other respect a church is like any other element of civil society).

It is then fair to say that the institutionalised labour movement stands as high an authority over the affairs of employees and employers as does the state. The subordination of the unions to the state, which predominates, is merely something relative, temporary and inessential. The labour movement therefore stands on an equal footing with the state in those actions which bear upon its responsibilities and duties. For Hegel there was no higher authority than the state. He specifically excluded the idea of a League of Nations. Nations should stick to treaties and contracts made with each other, but they could not be bound by any higher authority, even God or the Church. “The march of God in the world, that is what the state is” PS §258ad.

The right to break the law is possible only by appeal to a higher Earthly authority.

Apart from the labour movement, what other institutions can lay claim to authority which, at least in relation to a finite domain of actions, can stand on an equal footing with the state?

While Hegel seems to have approved of the British Raj in India, there can be no doubt that he would have wholeheartedly approved of the Indian Independence War, just as he approved of the Haitian Revolution against French imperialism. Not only did Gandhi lead his nation to national liberation - the highest right of all in Hegel’s eyes - but his followers did so both by laying their lives on the line and by civil disobedience, that is, but nonviolent struggle.

If we can presume Hegelian approval for the Indian Independence Struggle, then surely he must also approve of the US Civil Rights Movement which based itself on Gandhi’s principles. The Civil Rights leaders frequently represented themselves as continuators of the National Liberation Movements sweeping through Africa and Asia after World War Two. The difference being that they did not seek to cancel or overturn or secede from the state - they simply demanded inclusion on an equal footing with white Americans. This demand Hegel would undoubtedly have solidarised with. I can say this despite Hegel’s explicitly racist views because in Hegel’s views, the slave (for example) is morally obliged to fight for their own emancipation and would draw opprobrium from Hegel to the extent that they failed to do so. This is unambiguously demonstrated in his fulsome support for the slaves of Haiti.
Insofar then as the US Civil Rights Movement can be seen as part of a worldwide movement of Black people for their emancipation, then I think it deserves recognition as an equal to any state in its claim to objectivity.

The so-called second wave of the Women’s Liberation Movement took off explicitly under the inspiration of the Civil Rights Movement, coining the word “sexism” to emphasise the parallel of sex discrimination with racial discrimination. Feminism also has a long history stretching as far back in Europe to the Liberal Feminists of Hegel’s time, indeed including his own sister and the wives of two of his best friends. The question is indeed less clear-cut here, and becomes even more so when we move to the claims of the various movements claiming recognition of diverse gender identities. Nonetheless, I believe the principle is clear.

In so far as a subject acts on behalf of and in accordance with decisions of any great movement of emancipation then they may claim a basis for civil disobedience. This is not to say that any such claim may be accepted ipso facto, but simply that a claim to act as part of such an historically grounded liberation movement is legitimate. The rightness of action remains to proven by historical precedent or in terms of the founding concept and special principles of the relevant movement.

This right does not extend to made-up liberation movements such as White Supremacy or Men’s Groups. But does this give licence to every small Socialist sect to engage in civil disobedience at the direction of the sect’s central committee on the basis that the group is part of the labour movement? And what of Gandhi or Nelson Mandela or the Suffragettes who suffered persecution at a time when the right of their movement was not yet recognised?

The right of heroes.

Hegel was an ardent admirer of Napoleon and he introduced the category of ‘hero’ into his social theory having Napoleon in mind. He recognized that sweeping changes like the abolition of feudal relics in Germany and the introduction of the Code napoleon could only be made by heroes ‒ individuals who act as instruments of the Idea, History if you like ‒ with a ‘higher right’, to sweep away old institutions and create new ones. These heroes would necessarily, by lights of their own community, do wrong, even evil, and what is more would generally not be thanked by posterity either.

Hegel talks about the role of heroes in founding new states out of a state of nature, but “Once the state has been founded, there can no longer be any heroes. They come on the scene only in uncivilised conditions” (PR §93ad.).
However, he also says (PR §351) that the same ‘right of heroes’ extends to, for example, ‘civilized’ nations which trample on the rights of ‘barbarians’, and further, that pastoral people who treat hunters and gatherers in the same way. In other words, in the case of an historic leap in state form, such as that posed between hunter-gathers and pastoral peoples or between pastoral peoples and ‘civilized’ states, and so presumably between capitalism and socialism. Such leaps cannot be achieved by the gradual evolution of the existing laws and customs, but can only be achieved by ‘rightful’ coercion and the sweeping aside of the old laws.

So when Ghandi first stood up to the British Raj he did not have the Indian Independence Movement behind him. True, there had been continuous if sporadic struggles since the 1850s, but Gandhi was ‘his own man’. He never acted under the discipline of the Congress Party, the official representative of the Indian Independence struggle. He struck out on his own and because of his gift for assessing the mood and capacities of the masses and their activists, he was able to pull the whole movement in behind him. He was India’s Napoleon. Hegel recognises that the right of heroes is only established in the subsequent founding of a new state. Absent that victory, the putative hero is a wrongdoer, condemned both by his or her contemporaries and history.



Conclusion

My point is that no left-wing (let alone right-wing) group can unilaterally claim the mantel of the right of heroes. The civil disobedient must act as the legitimate agent of a supra-state, historical movement. And even in doing so, the civil disobedient submits to the punishment appropriate for their transgression and accepts responsibility for all the consequences of their action including the impact of repression exercised against their supporters and followers. This is a heavy burden to bear, but no real relief from oppression comes without risk and suffering.

It is hard to consider things in the abstract, general priceples independent the specific circumstances.
Moral judgement does not entail such clear cut conclusions and simply flattens the complexity of actual life like math problem and often ignores tragic circumstances. However with the above, history may not absolve one fall wrongs.

A lot of violence is senseless rage from pain and even when incited for some gain, readily gets out of hand like lighting a fire, it may burn all that you love with it, it can become indiscriminate. At the same time the absolute denial of violence often downplays the maintaince of violence in apparent stability of a hegemony and only sees resistance as violence while everyday acts of aggression in defense of a status quo is not even characterized as violence sometimes if it is even called into question as illegitimate.

Really, I think there is contention around me ans when really disputes are about ends, and so double standards arise. There is no morally pure struggle even when it has just claims for human emancipation and development.
So how to judge? I think that always comes to what means and ends are. Where if even a great end can justify certain means even if instrumentally useful.

Much violence is simply terrorism though and is condemned both in its brutality and its means to an end as it is desperation. But one can also understand the basis of such desperation without justifying it.

[wat0n]

Going back to the Hitler example, he felt Germans were oppressed in Austria-Hungary because he believed they weren't getting their "fair share" of political power. But were they? And if they were, were ethnic Germans more oppressed in the Empire than other ethnic groups?

Means and ends is one aspect of the issue, another also has to do with who decides what the reality of the situation is. Who judges who's oppressed and who isn't?

[Potemkin]

Going back to the Hitler example, he felt Germans were oppressed in Austria-Hungary because he believed they weren't getting their "fair share" of political power. But were they? And if they were, were ethnic Germans more oppressed in the Empire than other ethnic groups?

Means and ends is one aspect of the issue, another also has to do with who decides what the reality of the situation is. Who judges who's oppressed and who isn't?

They themselves decide. After all, if the ethnic Germans in the Austro-Hungarian Empire hadn’t felt themselves to be oppressed (whether rightly or wrongly) then Hitler would have gained no political traction with it and likely would never have mentioned it Mein Kampf.

[wat0n]

They themselves decide. After all, if the ethnic Germans in the Austro-Hungarian Empire hadn’t felt themselves to be oppressed (whether rightly or wrongly) then Hitler would have gained no political traction with it and likely would never have mentioned it Mein Kampf.

Does that mean we should glorify what they did based on their feelings?

I'm simply sticking to the comparison made in the OP, which basically boils down to this question.

[annatar1914]

People who feel oppressed tend to respond violently, and have even been known to *gasp* break the law. This is true whether they are Nazis, Southern slave-owners, or actual slaves. Why does this shock you so much?

@Potemkin :

I am no longer shocked by some people's shock, the shock itself, when encountered by this reality. Nonetheless I do find it curious as to what the roots are of this perception. I refuse to believe that it's actual naivete about human readiness to commit violence behind this shock but maybe I am wrong.

Is it about people they don't like breaking their monopoly on the use of physical force?

[wat0n]

@Potemkin :

I am no longer shocked by some people's shock, the shock itself, when encountered by this reality. Nonetheless I do find it curious as to what the roots are of this perception. I refuse to believe that it's actual naivete about human readiness to commit violence behind this shock but maybe I am wrong.

Is it about people they don't like breaking their monopoly on the use of physical force?

That people tend to do all sorts of terrible things because of their feelings is nothing new... But why would others glorify that?

[Unthinking Majority]

One man’s terrorist is another man’s freedom fighter, @Robert Urbanek. Nelson Mandela was a ‘terrorist’, until he wasn’t. George Washington was a ‘terrorist’, until he wasn’t.

There's no excuse for specifically targeting children and nobody is a hero for doing it.

[Unthinking Majority]

People who have never been oppressed have no conception of what it could feel like, or the kind of response it can trigger. They lack the imagination or the empathy to even try to understand. They feel pity for themselves only.

The rebels killed children. A lifetime of abuse isn't an excuse to slaughter children with knives and blunt instruments.

[noemon]

There's no excuse for specifically targeting children and nobody is a hero for doing it.

For who? For the people themselves, a hero is a hero regardless of pity for the enemy's offspring which is a very secondary thought given the circumstances of rebellion from real or perceived slavery, in and of itself.

For a foreign population with no meat, why would such a person even be a hero to begin with? So other things are weighed in especially when both protagonists kill children so the hero of the story for outside spectators is again not reliant on that particular either.

There are plenty of national heroes possibly everywhere that had actually killed children but their busts and figures still grace national histories, museums and galleries.

[wat0n]

Indeed, to see Palestinians glorify attacks against Israeli civilians by the various Palestinian factions is not surprising to me. It's questionable yet not surprising.

But why would Americans do that?

[noemon]

For outside spectators, David vs Goliath and/or antisemitism depending on the case.

[Unthinking Majority]

For who? For the people themselves, a hero is a hero regardless of pity for the enemy's offspring which is a very secondary thought given the circumstances of rebellion from real or perceived slavery, in and of itself.

For a foreign population with no meat, why would such a person even be a hero to begin with? So other things are weighed in especially when both protagonists kill children so the hero of the story for outside spectators is again not reliant on that particular either.

Anyone who views Hamas or Nat Turner as a hero or laud their actions while knowing what they did is an unethical human being. Violent acts specifically targeting children is disgusting. White slavers are also no heroes, and an eye for an eye (revenge) is not ethical, especially when it comes to harming children. A hero is someone to look up to, idolize, and maybe even seek to emulate if put in the same situation.

Jackie Robinson is a hero, MLK is a hero, and you don't have to be an African-American or an American to view them as such. Since i'm human I have skin in the game. Non-violence isn't necessary to be a hero, but acting with basic morals is...at least for anyone with a basic sense of right and wrong.

Who people regard as their heroes tells a lot about their character. The people and organizations in North America i've seen laud the Oct 7 attacks as legitimate acts of resistance have poor character and morals and are letting their hatred and rage overpower their basic sense of justice and morality.

[Unthinking Majority]

For outside spectators, David vs Goliath and/or antisemitism depending on the case.

Did David break into Goliath's home and kill all his kids with rocks and rape his wife?

[Unthinking Majority]

Indeed, to see Palestinians glorify attacks against Israeli civilians by the various Palestinian factions is not surprising to me. It's questionable yet not surprising.

But why would Americans do that?

We've witnessed IDF kill people in cold blood too. When emotions like anger, hate, resentment rule over our better judgement humans turn back into animals.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gaza_flotilla_raid

https://www.cnn.com/2022/09/05/middleea ... index.html

[wat0n]

We've witnessed IDF kill people in cold blood too. When emotions like anger, hate, resentment rule over our better judgement humans turn back into animals.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gaza_flotilla_raid

https://www.cnn.com/2022/09/05/middleea ... index.html

This would still not explain why would anyone who's got no meat in the conflict support violence against civilians. Those shouldn't feel such anger, hate or resentment as to be ruled over their better judgement since they aren't experiencing the violence to begin with.