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Abstract
This paper is an ethical exegesis of the biblical story of Gibeah, which concludes the Book of Judges (19–21), to show the catastrophic failure of the anti-political politics of the “community of virtue”, i.e., the rejection of power for the sake of moral society, such as proposed by libertarians, neo-liberals, anarchists and utopians. I consider Kant’s statement of the political problem: given humanity’s unsocial sociality, where each person is tempted to act as an exception to universal law, humans need rulers, but how to obtain rulers who are not themselves ruled by power, and become tyrannical, rather than being ruled by justice? The solution proposed by “the community of virtue” would reject power altogether and replace it with society regulated exclusively according to the moral virtue of its members. The Bible’s story of Gibeah shows graphically and conclusively the failure of any such attempt. Instead, as with normative political philosophy, the Bible endorses the rule of a king, i.e., the rule of the state, and a politics whereby power is disciplined to serve justice because it is rooted in Torah, i.e., a fundamental covenant, charter or constitution, aware and vigilant regarding the ambiguities and temptations of sovereignty, and therefore, ideally, always open to critique. As exemplified by biblical prophets, political protest against injustices perpetrated by the powerful against the least—widow, orphan, stranger—is at once religious obligation and true patriotism.
Highlights
That the political pertains to public power, the power of public order, but such power as subject to ethics, which is to say constrained by goodness, or to say this more precisely, that the political is the public struggle of individuals and parties, in shifting alliances, to establish justice, respect for each by respect for all, has been known since the axial age of Ancient Greece, the Hebrew Bible, the Chinese Classics, the Hindu Vedas, to name only a few well known instances
In the West, seminal foundational writings, from Plato’s Republic, Aristotle’s Politics, Thucydides’ History of the Peloponnesian War, to the Scriptures written in Hebrew, Greek, Aramaic, Latin and Arabic, all treat the struggles of politics in the light of justice, whether human or divine
Mahatma Gandhi often remarked on the role of politics in religious life: “I could not be leading a religious life unless I
Summary
That the political pertains to public power, the power of public order, but such power as subject to ethics, which is to say constrained by goodness, or to say this more precisely, that the political is the public struggle of individuals and parties, in shifting alliances, to establish justice, respect for each by respect for all, has been known since the axial age of Ancient Greece, the Hebrew Bible, the Chinese Classics, the Hindu Vedas, to name only a few well known instances. In the West, seminal foundational writings, from Plato’s Republic, Aristotle’s Politics, Thucydides’ History of the Peloponnesian War, to the Scriptures written in Hebrew, Greek, Aramaic, Latin and Arabic, all treat the struggles of politics in the light of justice, whether human or divine. In this way, as the ethics of power, of the commons, politics—not business, not family, not cult pieties, not knowledge, not contemplation or ecstasy, not wealth or titles, not power or virtue by themselves—has come to represent, to most tangibly represent, humanity’s highest, most comprehensive spirituality.. It is our contention that, with this story, the Bible intends to forcefully and unmistakably convey its rejection of the anti-political politics of the community of virtue. (4) we conclude with a brief sketch of the Bible’s alternative solution, the state (“monarchy”) as government limited by a fundamental document of right (Torah, covenant, charter, constitution), always receptive to criticism
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