Ts’ui Chii said to Lao Tzu, “You say there must be no government. But it there is no government, how are men’s hearts to be improved?” “The last thing you should do,” said Lao Tzu, “is to tamper with men’s hearts. The heart of man is like a spring; if you press it down, it only springs up the higher…. It can be hot as the fiercest fire; cold as the hardest ice. So swift is it that in the space of a nod it can go twice to the end of the world and back again. In repose, it is quiet as the bed at a pool; in action, mysterious as Heaven. A wild steed that cannot be tethered — such is the heart of man.”
Chuang Tzu (Trans. Waley).
Liberty, morality, and the human dignity of man consist precisely in this, that he does good, not because it is commanded, but because he conceives it, wills it, and loves it.
Bakunin.
A perfect society is that which excludes all private property. Such was the primitive well being which was overturned by the sin of our first fathers.
St. Basil.
If beans and millet were as plentiful as fire and water, such a thing as a bad man would not exist among the people.
Mencius.
The characteristic political attitude of today is not one of positive belief, but of despair. Nobody seriously believes in the social philosophies of the immediate past. There are a few people, but a diminishing number, who still believe that Marxism, as an economic system, offer a a coherent alternative to capitalism, and socialism has, indeed, triumphed in one country. But it has not changed the servile nature of human bondage. Man is everywhere still in chains. The motive of his activity remains economic, and this economic motive inevitably leads to the social inequalities from which he had hoped to escape. In face of this double failure, of capitalism and of socialism, the desperation of the masses has taken shape as fascism — a revolutionary but wholly negative movement which aims at establishing a selfish organization of power within the general chaos. In this political wilderness most people are lost, and if they do not give way to despair, they resort to a private world of prayer. But others persist in believing that a new world could be built if only we would abandon the economic concepts upon which both socialism and capitalism are based. To realize that new world we must prefer the values of freedom and equality above all other values — above personal wealth, technical power and nationalism. In the past this view has been held by the world’s greatest seers, but their followers have been a numerically insignificant minority, especially in the political sphere, where their doctrine has been called anarchism. It may be a tactical mistake to try and restate the eternal truth under a name which is ambiguous — for what is “without ruler,” the literal meaning of the word, is not necessarily “without order,” the meaning often loosely ascribed to it. The sense of historical continuity, and a feeling for philosophical rectitude cannot, however, be compromised. Any vague or romantic associations which the word has acquired are incidental. The doctrine itself remains absolute and pure. There are thousands, if not millions, of people who instinctively hold these ideas, and who would accept the doctrine if it were made clear to them. A doctrine must be recognized by a common name. I know of no better name than Anarchism. In this essay I shall attempt to restate the fundamental principles of the political philosophy denoted by this name.
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Giorgio Agamben: Where are the just?
Who are the just? What does it mean to be just? Certainly, it is not a quality of a subject, an attribute of this or that man, this or that woman. Justice—Benjamin wrote—is a state of the world, a dimension of being, not of will or intention. Things are just, Spinoza said, when you see them not in a certain time or place, but when you see them in God. That is why justice is something you can never possess, but only contemplate. And yet, when you see things as they are in God, the flower of that flower, the smile of that smile, the innocence of that innocent being, then you feel a demand from which you cannot escape, a demand that neither asks nor commands anything, but acts within you beyond all will or intention—it simply is, and there is nothing more to be done. I will never forget the words of a young woman who was part of a resistance organisation in a country occupied by the Nazis. She had been arrested and tortured, and she had not spoken. When she was released, her comrades wanted to celebrate her like a heroine, telling her that if she had managed to endure the torture it was because of the strength of her political convictions, her loyalty to the cause, and similar nonsense. But she shook her head and said only: no, I did it because I liked it, on a whim. She had seen justice, she had felt a demand that overwhelmed her on all sides, but she had not thought for a single instant about being just, about justice possibly belonging to her. If she had only believed in the just cause, but had not seen justice, she would have succumbed to the torture, she would have spoken.
That is why, according to Hebrew tradition, the righteous, the tzadikim, are hidden in the world, hidden above all from themselves. And that is why there is something paradoxical about wanting to reward the righteous, as if it were the other side of that justice which consists of punishing the guilty. Just as punishment can never originate from justice, but only from law, neither do reward and recognition belong to justice. The righteous person recognised and rewarded, the tzadik no longer hidden, is no longer righteous.
The mystery of law, that is, the mystery of guilt and punishment, should not be confused with the mystery of justice. Therefore, it is perhaps good that the guilty be punished, but it is not equally certain that the righteous should be rewarded. They go through the world unrecognized until the end of time, and only in this way, says the legend, do they save the world.
Quodlibet, July 3, 2026