Tag: legitimacy

Chinese emphasis on the state as a moral entity and on the ruler as the primary ethical actor gave the notions of corruption and subversion special meanings. Among the Chinese military texts considered here, only T’ai Kung’s Six Secret Teachings explores the potential of corrupting an enemy; it is not an essential of Chinese martial thought. Nonetheless, the discussion of this subject in the Six Secret Teachings is particularly illuminating in that it differs considerably from the constant discussion of underhanded tricks in the South Asian classic the Arthashastra. The Six Secret Teachings urges a just ruler to tempt his adversary to reveal his own evil nature. In showing himself to be corrupt, the adversary would lose the Mandate of Heaven and, therefore, the support of his people. The goal is not to subvert specific policies, ministers, or generals but to allow the opponent to undermine his own legitimacy. “[A]ssist him in his licentiousness and indulge in music in order to dissipate his will. Make him generous gifts of pearls and jade, and ply him with beautiful women.” While music occupied special spiritual importance in Confucian thought, “music” here probably also means “pleasure,” as both were written with the same character. “Debauch him with beautiful women, entice him with profit. Nurture him with flowers, and provide him with the company of female musicians.” So vital is perceived virtue to power that moral shortcomings threaten a king and the state itself.

— John A. Lynn, Battle, pp. 43-44

According to Confucian principles, governments were maintained by their moral weight, their capacity to promote welfare and justice. Such a virtuous government enjoyed the Mandate of Heaven, and dynasties fell when they lost this mandate. Consequently the moral corruption of a ruler provided a harbinger of his fall.

— John A. Lynn, Battle, p. 42

What attitudes about warfare are suggested by the common features of primitive religion? The signals are mixed. The constant participation of the spirit world conveys a sense of “bellicism”—of warfare as part of the natural world. At the same time, warfare seems to be regarded, even by the most warlike, as a sort of interruption of normal life. Warriors must be dressed and painted so as to change their personalities. Special ceremonies signal their departure from normal life, and others, their return to it. Above all, warfare requires justification: The constant efforts to secure the favor of the spirit world imply that fighting and killing to avenge wrongs are required by the order of the world. …[T]he elaborate ritualization of primitive warfare both promotes war and limits it. It is possible to discern in primitive religion the germs of all later philosophical and theological interpretations of warfare, including both jus ad bellum (the right to make war) and jus in bello (rights in war).

Specific myths about the origins of war are difficult to find because the practice is so taken for granted. Most mythology seems to assume that conflict is simply part of the cosmos and has been so always, among spirits as well as men. Even if there was a primitive dreamtime inhabited by ancestors or gods, these beings fought with one another. Often the cosmos itself must be born in battle, as in the Babylonian creation myth, where the gods fight Tiamat the cosmic dragon and make the world out of her dismembered body.

In organized chiefdoms, the rituals of war take on a theocratic function: The chief is a deputy of the gods, sometimes divine himself, and all warfare has to be explained as an act of the gods, fought for their honor and glory and the honor and glory of their chiefly champion. All warfare must still be justified as an act of righteous vengeance. As shamans once brought down the spirits with magic to help the people avenge their wrongs, so priests petition the gods with sacrifice to avenge the wrongs of the chief.

In the early civilizations religion does not change much in the ideology of war. The rituals of war become more costly and ferocious, and the gods and their myths are more clearly defined by organized temple priesthoods. But all aspects of warfare are still interpreted in the terms of theocratic kingly militarism. The inscriptions of the Assyrian kings attribute all their victories and massacres to the power of Assur, a being far more reliable than the primitive spirits in that he had little use for chivalric conventions and none at all for purification rites.

— Doyne Dawson, The Origins of Western Warfare, pp. 40-41

Emphasis mine.