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Greek Political Heritage and Totalitarianism1

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  05 August 2009

C. J. Friedrich
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Extract

IN A FAMOUS dialogue between the Athenian ambassadors and the Council of the small island of Melos, Thucydides has given the classical statement of the “right” of the stronger. “The brave Milesians soon see that they cannot appeal to the Athenians' sense of justice, because the Athenians recognize no standard but their own political advantage…By making the Athenians justify the right of the stronger through the law of nature, and transform God from the guardian of justice into the pattern of all earthly authority and force, Thucydides gives the realistic policy of Athens the depth and validity of a philosophical doctrine.” The Dutch, in the days of Peter Breughel, used to say: “the big fish devour the little fish” to which Spinoza added “by natural right.” That is the doctrine of the “state,”as inherited from the Greeks. Similar situations still haunt us. Did the Russians by natural right seek to destroy Finnish independence?

Type
Research Article
Information
The Review of Politics , Volume 2 , Issue 2 , April 1940 , pp. 218 - 225
Copyright
Copyright © University of Notre Dame 1940

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References

2 Jaeger, , op. cit. p. 398Google Scholar.

3 References here are legion. Suffice it here to cite Stalin's Leninism, Mussolini's article On the State in the Encyclopedia Ilaliana and J. B. Ashton's The Fascist — His Stale and His Mind. The slight anarchist hangover which makes the Stalinist still inclined to speak of the proletariat rather than the state, makes no real difference. What he means is the mass or collectivity as instrumentalized through the bureaucracy of party and government. What else does the state ever mean?

4 Friedrich, C. J., “The Deification of the State,” The Review of Politics, vol. I, no. 1, 01, 1939, p. 21.Google Scholar

5 Jaeger, op. cit. p. 323Google Scholar.

6 Jaeger, , op. cit, p. 74Google Scholar. It is instructive that Jaeger should follow this by the observation that “no doubt a history of German culture could be written without mentioning politics for many years at the time: the political life of Germany has onlyrecently come to have a fundamental effect on its culture.”

7 Jaeger, , op. cit. p. 89Google Scholar.

8 Jaeger, , op. cit. p. 90Google Scholar.

9 Jaeger, , op. cit. p. 91Google Scholar.

10 Jaeger, , op. cit. p. 102Google Scholar.

11 Jaeger, , op. cit. p. 304Google Scholar. This seems rather doubtful in the light of the history of political thought. See e.g. Confucius.

12 May we note here that Hobbes, the modern philosopher of power, drew permanent inspiration from Thucydides whose history he edited and prefaced. Cf. Straus' keen analysis of this point in his The Political Philosophy of Thomas Hobhes.

13 Jaeger, , op. cit. p. 75Google Scholar.

14 This, I fear, also applies to Eduard Heimann's Ehrenreitung of the Greeks, when he writes: “Only in one item is this Fascist interpretation fallacious. In its claim to be the rightful heir of the Greek all-inclusive political organization, the citystate, and of the Greek worship of natural beauty, fascism ignores the fundamental fact that Greek culture rests entirely on the values of logos and cosmos.” It would be perhaps more pertinent to observe that neither Mussolini, nor Hitler nor Goering would have made a pretty picture in a Greek stadium, — without clothes.