On the History of Human Rights

In 2021, during the height of the pandemic, a friend published an excellent novel, and in one of the closing scenes, there is a dialogue between the main character and a professor he meets in a café in Athens. During their conversation, some of the fundamental concepts in the Western political lexicon, such as democracy and human rights, are interrogated. The dialogue highlighted how these concepts are eminently debatable and theoretically contested, which was very thought provoking because I, like most Westerners, took these concepts for granted, and just assumed that they were out there and part of nature, like the weather or the cosmos. I asked my friend where he obtained the material for this scene, and he replied from the works of French philosopher Alain de Benoist, and two in particular: Au-delà des droits de l'homme, and Démocratie: le problème. Intrigued, I decided to read them during the summer of 2025 (in their original French versions) and, similar to the scene in the mentioned novel, his ideas forced me to think in new ways about these largely unquestioned concepts in the Western political vocabulary.

 

De Benoist’s main argument in the first book is that the idea of human rights, as they are understood in the West, does not have a sound theoretical foundation.  Human rights are understood as universal, independent of culture, history, or civilization, and as a birthright of all individuals. This belief is part of the general education system, enshrined in many legal documents (not the least, the UN Charter), and motivates many political parties’ and activists’ activities. In the mentioned texts we learn—or perhaps reminded is a better term—that the seeds of this idea emerged in a specific religious (Christian) and cultural (Western) context which is not universal. Other cultures and civilizations, for example, especially in the East, emphasized duty and responsibility to the collective rather than the idea of “rights” in opposition to society and/or state.  On the question of democracy, de Benoist also employs historical analysis to show that the inventors of this regime—the ancient Greeks—had a very different understanding and practice than we moderns: similar to Eastern civilizations’ understanding, it was rooted in obligations towards, and participation in, the community, not in the idea of individual rights assumed to be distinct and/or separate from group (nation, culture, ethnicity, etc) membership.

 

Both texts were published two generations ago, and yet they have contemporary relevance, given the crisis of democracy that the West is currently experiencing. This crisis has many explanations, and the books under review may provide another one, namely, that the liberal focus on individual rights, both economic and cultural, in some cases has clashed with the collective interests of the community, generating various grievances. The populist backlash, animated by the demand for the restoration of the “people’s” sovereignty, attests to the sense felt by many that their political regimes are unrepresentative of the collective as they define it.

 

History of Human Rights

 

Ancient Greece and Rome did not have a conception of universal human rights. They had the concept of citizenship, but the practices that today we would call “rights”, for example, to property, or to vote, were strictly related to membership to a community, and were predicated on the obligations towards, and contributions to, said community. A major anthropological rupture occurred with the arrival of Christianity on the historical scene, which presupposed the existence of a relationship with God that was independent of the relationship to the group. Moreover, Christians introduced the revolutionary idea that human beings—all human beings—were created in God’s image, and possessed a soul which conferred a property called “dignity,” simply by virtue of being born as a member of humanity. Here, in fact, we have the seeds of modern human rights: the idea of universality, and the mystical notion  there exists a substance called a soul which gives the individual instrinsic value independent of the collectivity.  

 

It would take many centuries before this idea would take its contemporary secular form. The French and the American revolutions, in particular, were major turning points, although the latter more directly maintained the religious associations (“all endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights…”). It is generally understood that the French revolution was more secular, but Alain de Benoist shows that below the surface of the anti-religious rhetoric, the supernatural foundations were maintained, perhaps because it could not have been otherwise. Contrary to widely held views, the idea of human rights finds little justification in nature alone. Nature, in fact, is radically unequal, and provides little grounds for the ontological assumptions of human rights (freedom, universal reason, dignity, individualism, justice, etc).

 

The idea of universality, whether in religious or secular form, contains within it an intolerance of contrary ideas, and this tendency to not recognize the validity of alternative views makes wars more bloody. For example, the French revolution—which, it bears repeating, was an attempt to secularize religious ideas—was followed by the great terror and the revolutionary wars across Europe which led to far more deaths than the Crusades many centuries prior. One reason is that the revolutionaries were now fighting for “liberty”, and so ipso facto opponents did not have legitimate claims to authority.

 

Further evidence of its religious origin is that the idea of human rights has for many Westerners obtained a sacred character. To question them is similar to how it was to question God in pre-modern times, despite the fact that concept is constantly evolving; some human rights today would have been unthinkable only 20 or 30 years ago. One reason for the continuously changing panoply of human rights is that their radical individualist and anti-collectivist nature provides little grounds for placing limits on claims to them. Consequently, it contains the seeds of an inflation of rights, as individual desires more and more become the basis of rights claims.  

 

As individual rights expand, unrepresentative institutions such as the courts settle disputes related to them; consequently, they arrogate to themselves more power to create laws which override public opinion or the legislatures that, in theory, express the views of the majority. The tension between the individual and the collective can become acute such that majorities in some societies have the perception—and in politics perception matters more than reality—that things have gone awry.

 

In contemporary politics, different political groups appropriate the language of human rights to further their ideology. Free-market liberals, for example, claim that individuals have rights to property, meaning to purchase, sell, invest, or trade with whomever they please, domestically or internationally. Actors on the contemporary left, meanwhile, apply this reasoning to cultural or identity domains—for example, the rights of individuals to migrate, or to affirm their sexual identity. Although both would claim to be defending the interests of groups (property owners in the first, minorities in the second), they are both, in fact, denying the right of the larger group—family, tribe, nation, religion, state, etc—to place limits in individuals’ claims.

 

Communities may have valid reasons for limiting the right, say, to property or migration, and yet in Western discourse, certainly among an element of the intelligentsia, this is rarely recognized.  Many people, especially those outside of major cosmopolitan cities, may object to the changes in their countries or communities which may accrue as a result of the trade and migration perhaps because of an attachment to culture or tradition. This is one of the grievances which fuels populism, which is in some ways a reassertion of the claim that collective interests should override individual rights. For instance, protectionism in the form of tariffs is essentially saying: individuals do not have the right to trade with foreigners.  Placing limits on migration, meanwhile, conveys the message that individuals do not have the right to freely cross borders. In both cases, limits on the individual are justified on the basis of some collective, or the wish to protect an aspect of society. From this perspective, it is sometimes amusing to observe parties on the left and right insulting each other on matters of policy, when the real dispute is on which individual rights—economic or cultural—to privilege. (It also highlights that the much aligned libertarians—a tiny minority of liberals—are the only ones who are actually coherent as they defend individual rights—economic and cultural—across the board).

 

Many contemporary commentators call populists “authoritarian” because they defend positions that violate individual rights, either economic or cultural. But this conflates liberalism and democracy, which is another tendency of contemporary Western discourse. The texts under review helpfully remind readers that the two are distinct and in many ways in tension. The etymological origin of the Greek“cracy” in democracy points to its meaning as a form of political rule, while liberalism, historically and etymologically, is an ideology about limiting government power over individuals. Thus, it is entirely logically possible to be illiberal and democratic, or conversely, anti-democratic and liberal. Indeed, it is this divide, rather than the left-right axis, which may better account for many contemporary political conflicts: populists, for example, fall squarely in the former, while many cosmopolitan elites in large cities are more likely to emphasise individual rights—to property or to migrate—whether or not the majority agrees.

 

The contested nature of the concept of democracy is also revealed when we consider that liberals and socialists have very different ideas of its meaning. Liberals adopt a rules-based definition: secure property rights, elections where many parties compete for power, and courts to adjudicate disputes. Socialists, meanwhile, look at underlying societal inequalities, arguing that democracy is more related to substantive societal outcomes.

 

The texts under review are mostly a critique of the first not the second conception; Alain de Benoist accepts the socialist critique of liberal forms of democracy but goes further by highlighting some more important conditions which are arguably sine qua non. One is group membership, which provides cohesion, a sense of shared destiny, and social trust, and it is these which ultimately provide the legitimacy of different political regimes, whether monarchical or democratic. It follows that democratic regimes without these traits can lack legitimacy, which is another way of saying consent, the opposite of which is coercion. A unified sense of group membership also allows political and social conflicts to occur peacefully, because conflicts are subsumed to higher principles to which all are committed or adhere to. For democracy to function properly, this sense of shared destiny should also motivate participation, or active citizenship, which was central to the Greek conception and which de Benoist argues provides a standard against which we can compare contemporary political systems.  On these indicators, many Western countries fall short, with some showing that around half of citizens do not vote. Polarisation is endemic and indicates very low social trust. Much public opinion data which shows how majorities in the US and Europe do not believe that they can influence political outcomes.  And citizens have many valid reasons for this perception, such as the role of wealth and lobbying in determining policy, or the general sense that leaders are not accountable for their decisions. 

 

 

What is to be done, then, to address the crisis of Western democracy? De Benoist argues that referendums are a useful mechanism, as they help to accomplish several objectives. One is to override the will of the elite or the political class. There are moments in history when a political class and elite do not reflect the wishes of the majority and certainly not the preferences of those on the lower end of the social hierarchy. Another is to give citizens of all social classes, but especially those on the lower end, the possibility to decide on the laws and direction of their country.

 

Thus it is not surprising that populists around the world often demand referendums on major questions domestic or international. In a very important sense, they are demanding a return to Greek forms of democracy, in which there is widespread participation, and where ordinary citizens—who form the majority—and not the elite make decisions on policy. The wish for a referendum, whatever the public justification, reflects the widely felt sense that the other institutions of the policy—parliaments, regulatory agencies, schools, courts, etc—are making decisions not representative of what the majority wants, or that the political class is deeply corrupt and not trustworthy. The lesson from the Greeks is that allowing more referendums would enhance democratic participation even if majorites voted for policies that violated individual rights

Paris in the Summer of 2025

In the summer of 2025 I spent 3 weeks in Paris to carry out research at the French national library. It is my 5th time in the city, and some of the previous experiences are recounted on this blogpost here and here. Re-reading my initial impressions of Paris, I am reminded of how I was dazzled by the city’s beauty and allure, similar to being in a new relationship, with all the novelty and excitement, which obscures the beloved’s shortcomings. This time, my relationship with the city is much more mature, sober, and realistic, and consequently many of Paris’s defects were evident. Moreover, last time I went to Paris my departure city was Toronto—a city with many of the same defects—while this time it was the clean and orderly Shanghai. Similar to how a new relationship with a more high-quality partner helps to shed light on the defects of the previous one, the experience of Shanghai made many of the problems in Paris very stark. A broader lesson from this latest trip to Paris is how much of lived reality is a function of comparisons, which structure, and hence create, reality because they reveal some things and not others, and help determine the gap between what is experienced and what is considered the realm of the possible.

 

My lodgings in Paris were in 10^th arrondissement. Although I have spent much time in the city, and knew some areas are more degraded than others, I lack the knowledge to specify which ones exactly fall into one or the other categories. Consequently I inadvertently booked a place on Airbnb in one of the city’s shady neighbourhoods. The apartment, moreover, was very small, indeed much smaller than the profile led me to imagine, which was not a problem for the bedroom, but for the kitchen and bathroom was quite inconvenient, as simple activities like showering, making coffee, or cooking required bodily contortions to avoid bumping into walls, counters, or appliances. It is on the fifth floor of a centuries old building without an elevator, but this was not really a problem except on very hot days. Every morning, I’d walk down the spiralling stairs with wooden steps which were sunken in the middle from so many years of use; it reminded me of the stairs one might encounter in a medieval church or castle. The main exit opens to a courtyard where the trash bins are placed, and in the evenings there were always hungry rats looking for bits of food on the ground by the bins. Leaving the courtyard and going onto the street one must pass through and open an old rusty gate which would make a creaking sound from the worn hinges each and every time it opened; the impression created by this sound was that of the typical scene in a horror film, when the character opens the gate to enter the front yard of old and abandoned house.

 

Upon leaving the compound and entering the street, to the right is the famous monument Porte St. Denis (see picture), which attests to the neighbourhood’s past glory, and which contrasts with the present degradation. 

Little did I know when I rented the Airbnb that the area is full of prostitutes, who are openly selling their services. Many are middle aged French women, and I was surprised to see Chinese women doing the same; this defies the stereotype of the typical Chinese immigrant. They were new arrivals, and I knew this because I speak Chinese and overheard them speaking to each other many times. One transgender prostitute was always on the corner just outside the building, and would always smile at me seductively as I was leaving for the library. I could not help but think: what would make him/her/them think that I could be a potential client?! When walking past in the morning, I had just woken up and had breakfast, shaved and showered, dressed in ordinary clothing, and had my backpack with the items—computer, food, paper, etc—necessary for spending the entire day doing research at the library; in terms of appearance I probably looked little different from all the other ordinary people going to work or to school, rather than, say, the type who has been partying all night and wants to continue having “fun.”

 

Going to the library in the morning was quite pleasant in part because the weather was mostly beautiful during my stay. I was in Paris for 3 weeks, and my departure city, Shanghai, was swelteringly hot and humid. I arrived in Paris during a period when the average afternoon temperature was around 25 degrees, while in the mornings and evenings the temperature would fall to between 14-16 degrees. In practice, it meant I could walk and bike—two activities which bring me much pleasure—without sweating, as occurs in Shanghai during the summer, when even short walks lead to the discomfort and inconvenience of profusely prespirating in newly washed clothes.

 

During the day I would be at the French National Library, which is a veritable treasure trove of sources for research on the subject I occupied myself with this summer, namely, France’s relations with its former colonies in SubSaharan Africa. I was able to consult texts unavailable elsewhere, and the next step will be to revise several articles on the topic and then submit them for publication.

 

In the evening, I would often spend time with friends. One was a former colleague at Trent University, who now works in Cyprus, and who fortuitously happened to be in Paris to carry out research during the same period. Despite living in different countries, we have kept in touch via regular Whatsapp calls. The last time I saw him was 3 years ago, and it was great to catch up. I have other friends in the city with whom I would often spend the evenings, and this was a source of much enjoyment, not the least because our communication is entirely in French, allowing me to practice and put into use this beautiful language.

 

After dinner with friends, we’d often go for walks, another experience which allows one to see the great contrasts in the city. The tourist hotspots, such as Parc du Luxembourg or Tuilerie Gardens (in front of the Louvre museum) are very well kept by the city authorities—clean, orderly, and safe. In other parts of town, one might as well be in a different country. The neighbourhood of my Airbnb has been described; the Gare du Nord, a 20 minute walk away, meanwhile, is even more of a cesspool. Unassimilated migrants loitering all around, homeless people and alcoholics lying or passed out on the ground, litter on the sidewalks and graffiti on the walls, the stench of urine, all combine to create a deep sense of insecurity and disorder. And the Gare Du Nord’s stunningly beautiful architectural design(see picture)—with its neoclassical stone walls, Greek columns and Roman statues—only makes the present condition even more stark.

 

Of course, most, or perhaps all, major Western cities, have extremely degraded neighbourhoods, although many of my friends—who like me frequently travel around the world—agree that it has worsened especially since Covid. In any case, during this last trip to Paris I was much more aware, and bothered, by this degradation, leading to reflections on why. One reason is that the novelty of the city has worn off, as it were. As mentioned, the first time coming to Paris I was dazzled by the city’s beauty, partly because I was coming from Toronto, a mostly drab and soulless concrete and steel North American modern city (with some exceptions, for example, the Brewery District). Toronto, moreover, has many of the social problems seen in Paris, not least in the neighborhood in which I lived for 8 years, and so I had become desensitized or accustomed to seeing many loitering homeless and drug addicts, plus dirty streets and public spaces, almost every day.

 

This time, I arrived in Paris from Shanghai, a city that is mostly clean and orderly, especially the train stations. The only migrants one sees in Shanghai are Chinese from the countryside, but the government strictly controls their movements precisely to avoid many of the problems one sees in Paris. For example, inland Chinese who wish to live in Shanghai or Beijing must have a contract for work, housing, and health insurance; this ensures that only the gainfully employed and securely housed can live in the city. Consequently, there is nothing even remotely similar to the scenes mentioned above of crowds of unemployed or homeless migrants loitering in public spaces. In Shanghai, similarly, one does not see drug addicted and/or mentally ill roaming the streets, graffiti is nonexistent, litter on the ground is rare, and safety and security is the default condition of almost every area of the city.

 

The experience of living in Shanghai is a stark reminder that cities and public spaces are not inevitably degraded, and that how authorities manage a city greatly determines livability. From this perspective, the degraded condition of many parts of Paris is the result of choice, that is, of government incompetence. When government officials are committed to creating the conditions for a clean, safe, and orderly city, as is the case in Shanghai, they can make it happen. It is a matter of political will and resources, one or both of which are absent in Paris and most other major Western cities.

A Review of Michela Fontana's Matteo Ricci: A Jesuit in the Ming Court

Michela Fontana’s Matteo Ricci: A Jesuit in the Ming Court presents the fascinating adventures of the eponymous Jesuit and his travels to China in 1582. The award winning book is a riveting account of this crucial period in history, the age of exploration made possible by the Portuguese and Spanish being the first to circumnavigate the entire globe. It was the former who established a settlement in the Chinese territory of Macao, and hence launched an important phase of extensive interactions with this ancient civilization, a country which, for many Europeans, was wrapped in mystery and intrigue, in part because by then most European intellectuals had either read, or were familiar with, Marco Polo’s account of the Middle Kingdom published over 3 centuries prior.

 

The Jesuits had a mission to spread the faith around the world, and their approach to accomplishing this was to transmit Western knowledge and science, which by then had significantly advanced as evidenced by many breakthrough inventions including microscopes, clocks, maps, and other instruments of measurement. It was partly for this reason that the Jesuit order stressed the importance of secular and scientific knowledge and education alongside theology. Membership required rigorous and extensive training and Jesuits, as a result, were composed only of the brightest and talented individuals. A small portion of Jesuits took on the arduous task of travelling to far away places in the Americas and Asia to carry out their mission, and here, too, only the extraordinary were selected. Travelling to Asia, for example, required six months by ship, and 25% of ships and their passengers were lost either to bad weather, pirates, or sickness. Moreover, they had to leave their relatively comfortable lives in Europe forever, and therefore had to abandon the attachments of friends and family to live in strange lands where they would be exposed to violence, pathogens, and other life threatening challenges. Consequently, many died relatively young, including the Jesuit who is the focus of this blogpost.

 

Thus, only the most talented, committed, and physically fit members were suitable for the mission to Asia, and Matteo Ricci fit this profile. Given his talents, he could have remained in Europe and prospered in any field (most likely in his case, academia), while enjoying the comforts of living in Rome, Milan, or Paris, but he decided to renounce this and take the risky voyage to China with the knowledge that he would never return. This in itself makes Ricci an extraordinary character, but his adventures in China were even more remarkable as they would end up changing the history of China, Europe, and their relations with each other. He not only successfully converted many Chinese, he also brought Western science and knowledge. Throughout, he mastered the language and developed a deep affection for China, which was reciprocated by the Chinese, who were very fond of Li Madou (Ricci’s Chinese name) and who continue to celebrate him in the present era. This blogpost will highlight Ricci’s adventures in the Middle Kingdom as recounted in Fontana’s superbly written text. Additionally, an effort will be made to relate Ricci’s story to the present state of China and its relations with the outside world.

 

The Silk Road

 

The geographical space we now call Europe had extensive trade ties with China during antiquity. Via the ancient Silk Road, elite Romans were able to purchase luxuries from the far East especially silk, porcelain, and tea, while the Chinese purchased horses, honey, and wine from the Romans. Given the distances, however, direct contact was rare or perhaps non-existent, as a round trip took 18 months, and it was middle men, usually Persian, Turkish or Arab traders, who transported the goods in both directions. Nonetheless, Rome and China were aware of each other, as evidenced by the names in their respective languages (“Sinae” and “Daqin”). This mainly economic interaction survived many upheavals, until it was permanently closed by the Ottoman conquests of Constantinople in 1453, giving them a monopoly on trade with China.

 

Marco Polo’s travels represent the next important phase in Europe’s relations with China. He travelled there with his father and brother in 1271 mainly looking for trading opportunities. At the time, China and large parts of Eurasia were ruled by the Mongol empire, and Marco Polo travelled to their territories and lived there for 24 years, and was even made an official by Mongol Emperor Kublai Khan. When he returned to Italy, he recounted his story which was published in 1300 and which circulated widely, helping to fuel Europe’s enduring curiosity about China.

 

The Portuguese established a settlement in Macao in 1557 and from there helped to launch evangelization missions across Asia. China, for many, was the main prize, in part because of its size and in part because it by then had a very advanced civilization. Rome was recruiting members who could help to carry out this mission, and Matteo Ricci volunteered.

 

He arrived on 1582, and the first task was to study Mandarin. By then he already spoke Latin, Italian, Hebrew, and Greek, but this did not prepare him for the difficulty of learning Chinese in part because it has a completely different writing system, and at the time, there was no pinyin—the phonetic spelling of Chinese using the Roman alphabet—to assist in the endeavour. Despite the difficulty, within a year he could speak without an interpretor, and after three years, his Chinese was sufficient to carry out his duties as a Jesuit priest—carry out the Catholic mass, evangelization, and communication, written and oral, with local parishioners and officials.

 

He would eventually master the language, such that he was able to write and publish widely read books entirely in Chinese, such as The True Meaning of the Lord of Heaven, that presented Christian thought and Western philosophy. He also translated important books to Chinese including Euclid’s The Elements, which introduced Western geometry.  These textual and literary accomplishments represent a major advance in China-Europe relations, in part because they greatly facilitated the transmission of knowledge. A mastery of language led to an in-depth knowledge of China, making Matteo Ricci history’s first Sinologist. And it is here where Fontana’s text really fires up the imagination, as Ricci’s observations allow us to better compare the similarities and differences between Europe’s and China’s respective civilizations.

 

One difficulty encountered by Ricci was convincing locals about the existence of the Christian diety, which was personal, monotheistic, generative, a perfectly loving and just lawgiver. Such a conception required several ontological assumptions which were absent in China’s civilization; if nature was characterized with decay and death, while God was not, the latter had to be in a sense separate from nature even though he created it. And the monotheistic element required the belief that all other deities were false. In the Chinese conception of the cosmos, there was no clear separation between nature and the spirit world. The various aspects of nature— the heavens, seasons, etc—were divine, and this conception influenced how society was organized. The emperor, for example, was also called the son of heaven and represented, among other things, the link between the people and the cosmos. Partly for this reason, one of his major duties was to calculate the major dates on the calendar.

 

In Europe at the time, ordinary people and the elite—i.e., the nobility and aristocracy—shared the same religion. In China, in contrast, the elite were mostly Confucian, which was more a philosophy about how to live and govern well than a religion. The masses, meanwhile, believed in various divinities, mainly Bhuddist but also Taoist. China, therefore, was polytheist, and different religions had co-existed for thousands of years. Existing religions erected statues of the various divinities and worshipped them. For Ricci, this was idolatrous, and convincing them of this, and that there existed a single invisible God who loved them, and with whom they would be reunited after death, represented a radical rupture from existing beliefs.

 

For Ricci as for other Catholics, Jesus was God incarnate, and the crucified Christ provided an image which helped to give flesh to the narrative about the relationship between humans and the divine. But for the Jesuits, it was science which provided the basis for the faith, as it revealed a universe governed by precise laws and regularities which implied a kind of intelligent law giver. Western science showed the law of cause and effect, and if such a pattern occurred chronologically, there needed to be a First Cause, given that it would be illogical to posit retrospectively an infinity of causes. Many elite Chinese were convinced by these explanations and converted, yet the pace of conversions was relatively slow compared to elsewhere in Asia, in part because of the incompatibility of some local practices.

 

For example,  polygamy was a common practice especially among the elite. Ricci discovered that many had concubines. When Ricci told them that such as practice was forbidden among Catholics, and that sexual relations were only permitted among married and monogamous couples, many balked about the necessity of denying themselves a custom that few every questioned. A Jesuit in the Ming Court tells the story of the scholar-bureacrat Li Zhizao, who had to grapple with this dilemma. Like other Chinese literati, he was fascinated by Ricci’s scientific knowledge, and especially by the predictive accuracy of his calculations which contrasted with the erroneous ones of locals; for Zhizao, this was proof that Ricci’s religion represented truth. But he had a mistress with whom he enjoyed the pleasures of the flesh, and giving her up while committing exclusively to his wife and the mother his children seemed like an unreasonable sacrifice. Many other Chinese undoubtedly struggled to resolve the conundrum, and many likely were unwilling to convert precisely for this reason. A similar situation occurred half a century after Ricci’s travels at the highest level of the Chinese state. Emperor Zhu Youlang, whose mother and sister had converted to Christianity, refused to baptism because of the prohibition on polygamy.

 

Another local characteristic Ricci had to contend with was the tendency of Chinese to consult astrologers and fortune tellers. For Catholics, this practice is forbidden in part because a core feature of the faith is that humans’ destiny is determined by the choices they make—their commitment to God, church, family, and virtuous living. Fortune tellers, for Ricci, denied the importance of human agency, and its popularity was the consequence of the fear of death which resulted from the absence of the concept of heaven; for the Chinese, death meant nothingness, and this motivated their desire to avoid it as long as possible. Fortune tellers, many Chinese believed, possessed knowledge that could help them in this regard, who in turn exploited this fear by charging fees for telling them what they wanted to hear. This tendency to be susceptible to quackery because of the wish to avoid death existed at the highest levels of society: emperors throughout China’s history, for example, paid handsome amounts of money to alchemists in their pursuit of elixirs of immortality. Ricci observed the huge market for these kinds of services and made great efforts to convince the Chinese that it was a complete waste of money, rooted in irrational fears. And he practiced what he preached, as he himself had no fear of death; this was another factor that greatly impressed locals and undoubtedly led to some conversions.

 

Ricci’s interactions with government officials allowed him to observe and understand the political system in China, and this too is a fascinating part of A Jesuit in the Ming Court. The most salient aspect he discovered was the influence of the Confucian governing philosophy, which emphasized the importance of virtue and merit as the basis of governing. This belief was manifest in the annual ritual of the imperial examinations, where Chinese across the country from all social classes competed to obtain high scores on exams which tested their knowledge of Confucius, plus poetry, history, and public administration. The best performers would be selected as government officials in the highest echelons of the administration, an outcome which promised status, income, and security. Competition was therefore fierce and students spent immense amounts of time, and families spent large amounts of money, to prepare for this exam which helped ensure that only the most talented governed the various parts of the country. This practice still exists 400 years later in the form of the gaokao, showing that, despite the many changes in regime during that period (monarchy, liberal republic, socialist republic, empire, nation, etc) there is a continuity which speaks to some enduring aspects of the civilization encountered by Ricci.

 

Another feature encountered by Ricci which has endured to the present is political centralization. The Europe that Ricci left had a fragmented political system governed by many different independent political entities, as after the collapse of Rome the continent remained mostly divided. China, comparable in size and even ethnic diversity, had unified under a single emperor in 221 BC, and when Ricci arrived, had a single emperor who ruled all its territories. From antiquity to the period of Ricci’s arrival, the state had collapsed at least 6 times, but seemed to have always reconstituted itself so that power once again became centralized in the capital. Of course, such a pattern is observable in the present era even though the reigning form of political organization—nation, republic, socialism—is very different from previous regimes. This too provides evidence of a kind of civilizational DNA which transcends history’s political upheavals.

 

The Europe that Ricci left behind was very violent, something recognized by Ricci himself. Street brawls were a common occurrence, many walked in public fully armed, and there were wars of conquest on the continent and beyond. Perhaps in part from the Roman legacy and from the medieval honour system, war and violence were important elements of politics and hence philosophy. In China, Ricci discovered the reigning philosophy—Confucianism—had little to say about military strategy or defense, and emphasized the importance of virtue, harmony, and stability. Public violence was rare, and locals were never armed. Although the Chinese had invented gun powder, they had little interest in wars of conquest or in colonization. Contemporary China, again, displays the same pattern. The last war fought by this great power was in 1979 against Vietnam, whereas its peers—for example the US and Russia—have in the past 40 years fought multiple wars. Moreover, the latter two countries are relatively violent, with high homicide rates, while in China murder is relatively rare, and in fact it is one of the most secure countries in the world.

 

This centralization of political power entailed a specific form of governing, derived from Confucianism, which emphasized the importance of social harmony. And it was this which provided the criteria for determining whether foreign ideas and activities were allowed to operate in the country. The Jesuits received permission to evangelize mainly because Chinese officials, including the emperor, were deeply impressed by their scientific knowledge, which, they correctly concluded, offered an opportunity for learning which could enrich and strengthen the empire. A Jesuit in the Ming Court recounts how some local officials deemed the religious aspect to be a threat to domestic stability, but when a decision on the question had to be made by the highest political authority in the capital, it was observed how the Catholic faith was conducive to harmony and stability. One reason is that Confucianism was wholly compatible with Catholicism, especially the emphasis on virtue, community service, and self improvement.

 

Since then, with some brief interruptions, Catholicism has been an officially recognized religion. There are now approximately 10 million Catholics in the country who can practice their faith without molestation. This reveals another enduring tendency in Chinese governance: religions require official permission to operate and this is granted only if they are deemed to be consistent with stability and harmony. Partly for this reason, many protestant sects—such as Christian Zionism, or the prosperity gospel, or Jehovah’s Witnesses, to name a few—would not be granted permission to operate as they all contain beliefs which are not religious as such.

 

The ultimate purpose of Ricci’s travels was to convert China to Catholicism. On this measure, he perhaps did not achieve his objectives, as during his 27 years of evangelization, Fontana calculates that maybe 2500 conversions occurred.  Nonetheless, Ricci and the Jesuits left an enduring legacy which remains to the present day. In China, he is referred to affectionately with his Chinese name, Li Madou, and is celebrated by the highest authorities, as is Marco Polo, with statues, monuments, and by being part of educational curriculum, such that most Chinese, even ordinary ones, are familiar with his story. His mastery of the language and even culture in some ways made him an honorary Chinese; in the words of Ricci’s contemporary Guo Qinluo, “Li Madou has lived in the Middle Kingdom for a long time. He is no longer a foreigner but Chinese, as he belongs to China”. One sees his legacy in the beautiful cathedral in Shanghai, built by French Jesuits between 1905-1910, and in the Jesuit library which preserves their texts and documents.

 

Ricci’s adventures also helped to fuel Europe’s enduring fascination with China and even the tendency of Sinophilia observable among some intellectuals. In the 400 years since, relations between China and Europe have been characterized with oscillations of opening and closing, cooperation and conflict. In the most recent phase of interaction, which can be dated from China’s opening in 1978 to the present, relations have flourished as measured by the amount of trade and travel between the two continents. Moreover, the opening of over 200 Confucian institutes across Europe highlights the two-way direction of cultural transmission which, despite some tensions and setbacks, continues to be highly enriching for both.

A Review of Kenneth Waltz's "Man, State, and War"

During the academic year 2024-2025, a colleague requested that I lead a seminar for PhD students, one that  would be organized around a key text considered to be a classic in the field. He sent me a list of potential books, and I selected Kenneth Waltz’s Man, State, and War. His works are required reading around the world for majors in international relations, and in my career as a teacher of the discipline I have assigned his works when discussing questions of war and peace, so that students may learn the particular answers provided by the school of thought commonly known as ‘realpolitik’ or simply ‘realism’. With wars raging in Europe and the Middle East, the question of why wars occur has become pressing. Science, in my view, cannot provide a definitive answer, but theories which aim to explain war can help to sharpen our thinking, assist in considering plausible explanations, and establish the parameters of testing our arguments in the light of evidence in the form of observable events, facts, patterns, or tendencies.

Man, State, and War is very helpful for this endeavour. Unlike most scholarship, which usually and understandably interrogates narrow or niche nodes of inquiry, the text aims to answer one of the big questions of human affairs, which can be pithily summarized as “Why War”? Or, more specifically, why do wars persist throughout history despite very different epochs, cultures, economic and political structures? Man, State and War provides an answer which itself was not original but which—and here is the novelty and value of the text—is expressed in a very accessible form, in a way which provokes fruitful thought and generative discussion.

 The reason for the recurrence of war, argues Waltz, is that the overarching system of international relations is anarchical in the sense that there are no authorities above the state which can peacefully resolve conflict the way, say, a court or legislature can do domestically. Consequently, states must rely on themselves for dispute resolution, and in the absence of an overarching political or legal structure with legitimate coercive power, it is their strength—in the form of economic and military power—which will determine the outcome. The incentive for states, then, is to maximize power, and since all are behaving this way, there is a constant struggle for supremacy which often breaks out in war.

 One reason for the argument’s importance is that it challenges other explanations, such as a corrupted human nature or the notion of “bad” states, which most believed before Waltz’s text and perhaps still do. In part because of the way the argument is presented, and in part because it challenges widely held views on the reasons for war, the text has become a classic, meaning it has value that transcends the period in which it was written (mid-1950s), and had a significant influence on later writers in a way that makes it required reading for understanding the history of thought.

 The first time I read parts of the text was during my MA and PhD studies between 2007-2013, and I closely re-read the text in its entirety in the Spring of 2025 to help ensure fruitful discussions during the seminar. Re-reading the text after so many years and the accumulation of knowledge and experience allowed, I think, for a more in-depth interpretation of Man, State, and War. This blogpost will present my analysis of the text’s main contributions to our understanding of war and peace, while making connections to the wars currently raging in Ukraine and the Middle East.

 Commonly held—and wrong—explanations for war

 Most people most of the time perhaps do not theorize the question of war for any number of reasons. One may be that for some, war is a just a part of human affairs, similar to other social practises, and hence there is little need for explanation anymore than we need to explain why, for example, we eat, sleep, poop, marry, and reproduce. Others take this supposed natural tendency as their starting point in attempting to explain war, and in fact classical thinkers have linked war to features of human nature which predispose man to violence. Man, State and War cites thinkers as diverse as Confucius, Saint Augustine, and Niebuhr who observe some intrinsic defects, moral or cognitive, which prevent groups from peacefully and rationally resolving their differences. For Christian thinkers, this was ultimately the result of man’s original sin, which came from Adam’s disobedience and desire to become a god himself. More secular thinkers writing in the 20th century, such as Henry Morgenthau, discarded the religious content but maintained the form of a defective human nature which he called animus dominandi, or the desire/wilfulness to dominate.

 The chief critique of this argument in Man, State and War is that human nature is too imprecise a variable. Human nature is related to everything, including, importantly, peace, and so if it is the cause of war, it must also be the cause of the absence of war. Intellectually this does not take us very far, because over-explanations by definition are hard to test or refute. If we want to explain why, for example, WW1 occurred, and we posit human nature as the explanation, and can say the same for why the war ended, we are not in fact providing an explanation for the war that can be challenged with other arguments (such as German militarism, or British and French colonial supremacy, etc).

 Another widely held explanation is that it is the character of the state which generates war. This explanation is indissoluble from the modern state system which emerged in the 17th century, and the birth of two ideologies—liberalism and socialism—in the 18th and 19th centuries. The latter ideologies not only provided ideals around which states and societies should be organized, they also attempted to explain many social institutions, including war. For liberals, the main cause of war was non-liberal states, by which they meant monarchy, mercantilist, or other political forms which did operate on the basis of their understanding of liberal democracy, which includes enshrining the right to property, and votes in multiparty elections. Most people most of the time want to better their economic condition, and it is they who mostly pay the price of war; it follows that if citizens have a say, they will vote against war. Ergo, wars occur because small unrepresentative political authorities such as monarchies want to gain glory or territory. It follows that if all countries became liberal democracies, war would disappear from human affairs.

 Waltz also shows how implausible this. To say that war would disappear if all countries were liberal democracies is tantamount to say we would stop fighting if we all agreed on the fundamentals of life; in this sense, in form it is little different from saying war would end if we were all Muslims, Christians, or Bhuddists. This may or may not be true, but it is trivial, speculative, utopian, and hence does not conform to the rigours of scientific investigation. Moreover, the core belief that liberal democracies are more peaceful than monarchies does not stand up to scrutiny. Man, State, and War cites England’s Glorious Revolution in 1688, which many liberals see as a key historical turning point. Waltz shows how England subsequently became more entangled in the affairs of other nations and hence more prone to war. The reason is that a change in the regime led to a change in the nature of warfare. Under monarchy, wars were fought mainly by mercenaries and for limited objectives; consequently the damage was often minimal. Liberal states, in contrast, justify war on the basis of ideals, and in this sense was similar to a religious crusade. Wars become, as a consequence, more frequent and destructive.

 The ideological elements of socialism—critical of private property and markets—differ significantly from liberalism, but for our purposes they have more in common than they like to admit. Both are products of the 18th and 19th centuries, are utopian, and teological. Both also derive from their ideology explanations of war, and blame small coteries of unrepresentative elites who act on the basis of selfish or narrow interests. While for liberals it is monarchies or authoritarians, for socialists it private capital who profit from war and are able to use their influence to capture the state apparatus. If capitalism is the cause of war, the solution is for all countries to adopt socialism. Here we encounter the same trivial observation made by liberals, mainly, if we were all the same, we would not fight. Waltz also cites evidence from WW1 to show the failure of this theory’s predictions. As war fever was heating up, socialists across Europe shared the above-mentioned explanation. Representatives of workers, who were the majority, were determined to not participate unless the war was “defensive”. As fighting became inevitable, workers and socialists almost invariably sided with their nations rather than with workers in neighbouring countries, and when fighting began, almost all of them contributed to their nation’s efforts on the ground that it was “defensive”. Thus, when push came to shove, loyalty to the nation trumped any socialist convictions about the reasons for the war.

 The reason both of the main explanations mentioned above—human nature, and the structure of the state—fail, says Waltz, is that they do not take into account the structure of the international system. To help readers understand on a deep level how this system works, Man, State and War relies especially on the thought of Jean-Jacques Rousseau, and particularly the stag hunt parable. Imagine 5 starving men go hunting for a stag, and that success requires their combined efforts. During the hunt, one man sees a rabbit, if he kills and eats it he will satisfy his own hunger and improve chances of survival, but this will undermine the interests of the group. If he refuses because of an ironclad commitment to the group, he risks missing this opportunity and starving to death. Which option does he take? According to the parable, taking the former option places him in a state of war with his fellows, and this will occur frequently. In a state of anarchy, there is no system to punish that individual for betraying the interests of the group.

 The point of the intellectual exercise is to highlight several features of anarchy. One is that self-interest will trump the collective interest especially when valuable resources are in play. Second is that under anarchy one cannot rely on others because the threat of defection is very high. Third, self-reliance creates competition for scarce resources, and when inevitable disputes occur, they are resolved through force not law or morality. Fourth, if power determines outcomes, intentions or the character of states does not matter. Rather, coercive power—economic and military capability—is determinative. Consequently, states may feel threatened by the relative not absolute capabilities of their rivals. From this emerges the balance of power, a feature that is structural and cannot be wished away.

 From this perspective, wars occur relatively frequently because there is nothing to stop them. The immediate causes are usually the kinds of common disputes which arise because men want things, not because they are devils, but it is anarchy which ultimately turns these disputes into war. For Waltz, this explanation is neither moral nor immoral, it is amoral, similar to a fact of nature. Does this mean that the utopian desire for eternal peace is a pipe dream? Most likely war can never be abolished, but its outbreak can be mitigated via a judicious adjustment of the balance of power. According to the theory presented in Man, State, and War, a major cause of the outbreak of war is the security dilemma, which occurs when one state threatens others because of its asymmetric capabilities. Excessively powerful states feel less obliged to avoid war because weaker states cannot retaliate in a way that imposes severe costs. At the same time, if states increase their relative power too rapidly, weaker states may be inclined to strike before it is too late, leading to the outbreak of war. In contrast, a stable balance of power creates mutual deterrence, whereby states know that they will pay a high price if they attack, making them more reluctant to fight and more likely to negotiate a peaceful settlement of the dispute. In latter works, Waltz uses this framework to explain why the Cold War did not break out in direct fighting between the USA and the USSR: they were relatively militarily balanced, especially because of the possession of nuclear weapons, and this imposed restraint and hence peace.

 This places a responsibility on all states to maintain a relatively stable and equal balance of power, despite the inevitable inequalities among them. Powerful states must avoid provoking their rivals by engaging in action which makes their capabilities overwhelmingly preponderate and therefore threatening. Weaker states, meanwhile, must also resist the temptation to surpass other states in terms of coercive power. Achieving this when only conventional military forces are involved is very hard in part because of the high degree of uncertainty, but nuclear weapons can alter calculations in a way conducive to peace, as they are relatively equal in their destructive capacity, and leave little room for uncertainty. Consequently, states which possess them have a de facto equality of power. For this reason, many realists have defended the counter-intuitive position that allowing states to develop these weapons is conducive to peace not war.

 During the seminar, students and I discussed some of the problems with this explanation. Regarding the Cold War, it was rightly pointed out that, although there was no direct conflict between the USA and the USSR, they fought indirectly—in Korea or Vietnam—which led to millions of deaths. Thus, rather than preventing war, relative parity between the two superpowers only served to redirect it in other directions, and in ways that were very destructive for other countries. Moreover, the emphasis on power inequalities in the context of an anarchical system does not explain why, for example, two unequal states like the US and Canada, or China and Singapore, can have very peaceful relations.

 We can now attempt to see the practical and contemporary value of the arguments presented in Man, State, and War via a consideration of two conflicts raging at the time of writing, in Ukraine and Middle East. Regarding the former, realists almost universally blame Western countries, and in particular their attempt to expand NATO, on the grounds that it destabilized the balance of power. NATO is a military organization controlled by the US, and members states have offensive military hardware controlled by the Washington on their territories. American statesmen such as George F. Kennan knew that this would antagonize Russia, for this reason Secretary of State James Baker assured Russian leaders that NATO would not expand. This promise was not kept, triggering hostilities. Those who blame Putin or Russian imperialism are relying, consciously or not, on the “bad states” argument presented above, which assumes, of course, that the US and its European partners are “good” states. They neglect to consider that if, for example, Mexico were to join a military bloc controlled by Beijing, military action from Washington would be inevitable. The solution, then, is for Western countries to renounce their goal of Ukraine’s membership in NATO. Under the presidency of Donald Trump, the US has already done this, and major European countries will eventually have to accept the same terms.

 The war between Israel and Iran is perhaps more complicated. The former launched the war to prevent the latter from obtaining a nuclear weapon, yet from the perspective of Waltz’s arguments, had Iran possessed such a weapon, the war would not have happened. Many Israelis and their backers say a nuclear Iran poses an existential threat, but the text under discussion leads to other conclusions, namely, that it would be conducive to peace because of the effects of deterrence. A nuclear Iran could not use the weapon against Israel because it knows that Israel’s counter-attack with nuclear weapons would destroy Iran. Many Israelis might reply that the logic of deterrence doesn’t work because Iran led by suicidal Islamists. This is said despite the fact that Iran has all the trappings of a modern state—clearly defined territories, citizens and responsibilities towards them and towards its neighbours. Therefore, Iran, like all other states, would not risk its own survival. It follows that the logic of deterrence would be just as effective between Israel and Iran as, say, between the nuclear armed Pakistan and India. In the latter case, you also have one side with an Islamic government, but there is no evidence that this has altered its calculations on the potential use of nuclear weapons. In fact, a case can be made that, although fighting has broken out between India and Pakistan, it has always almost always quickly resolved in part because both sides want to avoid the existential risk of nuclear confrontation.

A Review of Virgil's The Aeneid

It took me around a year to get through Virgil’s timeless classic The Aeneid, not because of its length or difficulty, but rather because of the manner in which it was read. A hard copy lay beside my bed throughout this period, as one of my habits is to read a physical book—not a kindle or other electronic device—before going to sleep. And given that by the time I lay down in bed in the evening I am very tired, there are limits to how much I can read under those circumstances. Often, in fact, I am too tired to read at all and upon laying down immediately fall asleep, leaving the text untouched for days. The main reason is that during the day I am very busy with other activities, and when I am not working, I take the opportunity to study Chinese, which is quite time consuming. For that reason, this past year I have had little time for pleasure reading or for writing blogposts. 

This way of reading a book—slowly and over a lengthy period of time—will perhaps limit the depth of appraisal, as identifying connections between its different parts—usually necessary to capture the book’s overarching message or impact—becomes tenuous or difficult as memories of earlier passages fade even while reading progresses. Nonetheless, I was able to absorb enough to develop a lasting impression which will be the focus of this blogpost. The key elements worth noting are the aesthetic quality of the text, which is emotionally intense and musical, and the content of the story which is reminder of the wide civilizational gap which separates us from the ancients. To demonstrate the latter, it would be useful to compare the worldview presented in The Aeneid with contemporary Western sensibilities which have been strongly influenced by Christianity; this religion, in the history of Western civilization, represented a major rupture in terms of how the cosmos, humans’ place in it, and the society of our fellows, were understood. The Aeneid is a stark reminder of that fact.  

The version I read tells the story in verse, and each line is structured to give a rhythmic quality to the text. Often, a paragraph begins with a line composed of one word which appears not at the beginning, or left side of the paragraph, but at the right-end (see below for examples), forcing the reader to read one word then pause before proceeding. The effect is that of anticipation of an impending movement or motion which transports or nudges the reader to the subsequent scenes. Unlike in Dante’s Divine Comedy—a text which was strongly influenced by Virgil’s masterpiece—the lines in The Aeneid do not rhyme, but this does not detract from their musical like quality. After the first and usually very brief sentence, each line of each paragraph has a similar length, producing symmetrical pauses as the reading proceeds, contributing to the text’s musicality. Unlike us moderns, the ancients read out loud, and I did the same for large sections of the book, and discovered that this greatly adds to the sense that The Aeneid is a song as much as a poem. 

At the same time, one’s voice when reading aloud is influenced by the emotionally intense language, and this too enriches the experience. The emotional intensity of some parts of the story convey hope and despair, triumph and loss, or pleasure and suffering. Scenes depicting war and those depicting romance, not surprisingly, leave the most lasting impression in this regard. In the second chapter, the final hours of Troy, we read about the death of Priam, king of Troy and father of Aeneas, at the hands of Neoptolemus son of Achilles, who 

…drags the old man,
straight to the alter, quaking, slithering on through
slicks of his son’s blood, and twisting Priam’s hair
a flash of steel—he buries it hilt-deep in the king’s flank
Such was the fate of Priam…
with Troy blazing before his eyes
the monarch who once had ruled in all his glory
the many lands of Asia, Asia’s many tribes
The head wrenched from the shoulders.
A corpse without a name.

The final chapter, “The Sword Decides All,” recounts the battles which occurred after the Trojans landed on Italian soil and were resisted by the local Latins. These encounters would determine the fate of Aeneas’s enterprise and the subsequent history of the peninsula. Here the reader also encounters gripping scenes of fighting between the Trojans and the natives of Italian soil:

As the Latin columns charge them
charging them come Agyllines and Trojans streaming up
with Arcadian ranks decked out in blazoned gear and
one lust drives them all: to let the sword decide.

“War lust” appears frequently in the text, highlighting how the ancients entangled sexual drives with violence and face to face combat. Both are a form of intimacy in that the parties,’ often sweaty, bodies clash and contract, pounding and penetrating, with a power dynamic akin to a contest of wills which will leave only one with achieving their objective, or that makes one the supplicant and the other with the power to refuse or walk away. The Italian language has preserved this close connection between lust and violence, as the word “conquistare,” or conquer, is synonymous with successful seduction, and is still used to convey that meaning in everyday conversation. 

The same chapter culminates with the final battle between Aeneas and Turnus, the latter a leader of Latins, which would determine the Trojans’ founding of the settlement—Rome—which eventually would become the Roman empire. The fighting lasts for several pages, and Turnus is gravely injured and losing his strength:

                                                           Just as in dreams
when the nightly spell of sleep falls heavy on our eyes
and we seem entranced by longing to keep on racing on
no use, in the midst of one last burst of speed
we sink down, consumed, our tongue won’t work
and tried and true, the power that filled our body
fails—we strain but the voice and words won’t follow.
So with Turnus.

Turnus is prostrate on the ground but not yet completely defeated. While facing his opponent Aeneas, he says:

I deserve it all. No mercy please.
Seize your moment now…

Aeneas, ferocious in armor, stood there, still, 

shifting his gaze, and held his sword-arm back…

Aeneas seems reluctant to strike the final blow, but fate had other ideas. Aeneas’s comrade, the young Pallas, who had been injured by Turnus earlier in the battle, appears and reminds Aeneas of the terrible losses and sacrifices incurred during combat with the Latins. He plants:

his iron sword hilt-deep in his enemy’s heart.
Turnus’ limbs went limp in the chill of death.
His life breath fled with a groan of outrage
down to the shades below.

Perhaps the most gripping part of the text recounts the love affair between Aeneas and Dido, Queen of Carthage, in the chapter “The Tragic Queen of Carthage.” In the previous chapter readers see their budding love developing during a banquet she made for the Trojans, whom, as fate would have it, while sailing from Troy to Italy, had shipwrecked on North African soil. The opening verses of the chapter set the stage for the drama which was about to come:

                                              The Queen
consumed by the fire buried in her heart.
The man’s courage, the sheer pride of his line
they all come pressing home to her, over and over.
His looks, his words, they pierce her heart and cling—
no peace, no rest for her body, love will give her none.

Their love is consummated only because of the gods’ machinations, especially Juno who of course unbeknownst to the poor Dido, have more venal motives, namely to prevent Aeneas from fulfilling his destiny to found the Roman empire. If Aeneas developed a romantic attachment, thought Juno, he would remain in Carthage with his lover. One day, Aeneas and Dido are out hunting, and the Juno triggers a thunderstorm that forces them to find shelter in a cave, where alone and in close quarters, the natural next step could occur:

The skies have begun to rumble, peals of thunder first
and the storm breaking next, a cloudburst pelting hail…
primordial Earth and Juno, Queen of marriage
give the signal and lightening torches flair
and the high sky bears witness to the wedding
nymphs on the mountaintops wail out the wedding hymn. 
This was the first day of her death, the first of her grief.

Aeneas is genuinely in love with Dido, but he was destined against his will to sail to Italy and found the new colony which would become Rome, meaning he could not remain in Carthage. Dido, of course, enflamed by her love, could not accept this course of action, and is maddened by her grief:

in the midst of outbursts, desperate, flinging herself
from the light of day, sweeping out of his sight
leaving him numb with doubt, with much to fear…

                                                 Love, you tyrant!
To what extremes won’t you compel our hearts?
Again she resorts to tears, driven to move the man
or try, with prayers—a suppliant kneeling, humbling
her pride to passion.

At this point in the text hope is not completely lost, as Aeneas is deeply torn by destiny and love pulling him apart. Although readers know the outcome, Virgil gives readers the impression that Aeneas may change his mind, as he wrestles with the dilemma, but in the end he must sacrifice pleasure and desire for the greater good of self-sacrifice and glory, a recurring motif in Roman history and mythology, which would be reproduced in a different form with Aeneas’s descendants, and first kings of Rome, the twin brothers Romulus and Remo; the former murdered the latter because of a sacrilegious violation of the new city’s religious traditions which threatened to undermine the entire project. 

When Dido finally realizes her appeals are to no avail, she is outraged and wants vengeance. Virgil presents readers with what perhaps is the most memorable section of The Aeneid, in the verse which foretells the Punic wars, the existential conflict between Carthage and Rome which lasted 146 years and which almost relegated the Roman experiment to the dustbin of history:

This is my prayer, my final cry—I pour it out
with my own lifeblood. And you, my Tyrians
harry with hatred all his line, his race to come:
make that offering to my ashes, send it down below.
No love between our peoples, ever, no pacts of peace!
Come rising up from my bones, you avenger still unknown,
to stalk those Trojan settlers, hunt with fire and iron
now or in time to come, whenever the power is yours.
Shore clash with shore, sea against sea and sword
against sword—this is my curse—war between all

our peoples, all their children, endless war!

Civilizational divide

The Aeneid is also a window into how the ancients thought about their place in the cosmos. It is worth remembering that the text was not considered, as it is today, simply a novel or poem to be approached as an abstract work of art. Rather, it was popularly read by masses and elites, and as recounted by the historian Mary Beard, it was a cultural reference point among the different classes of the empire, and perceived as an accurate account of Rome’s founding. In that sense, its status was closer to the Bible or the Koran rather than a simple piece of literature. The gods’ machinations in the lives of protagonists were not, as might be understood today, entirely a product Virgil’s expansive imagination. Rather, it reflected how people believed the gods actually behaved and interfered in human affairs.  And from this starting point we can assess the wide civilizational gap which separates the ancients from their descendants in the medieval, modern, and post-modern periods. 

The first thing to note is that Aeneas was the son the goddess Venus and the Trojan prince Anchises, in the sense of being conceived via carnal, physical intercourse between a goddess and a mortal. The gods, thus, sired warlike offspring, strong and dominating alpha males who conquer entire countries, slaughtering and looting in their quests for glory, all of course, with the favour and assistance of divine forbearers. Aeneas, of course, is not unique in this regard; different gods produce different offspring, but they almost always form the ruling class, the nobility, who can count on the gods’ favourable interference in their attempts to conquer, kill, enslave, rule. 

Compare this with the Christian understanding of the relationship between God and man. First is that Mary is impregnated, not by an act of coitus, but rather by the Holy Spirit, that mysterious substance which is part of the trinity and therefore God; this perhaps helped to preserve her purity as a woman married to Joseph. Second is that the offspring is not a conqueror or a dominant and attractive alpha male, but rather an ordinary looking, perhaps even emaciated, humble and non-violent peacemaker. Third is that he is born among a subject peoples, as the Jews were under the Roman empire, and teaches that doing God’s will on earth entails helping the lowly—sick, poor, weak. 

The Christian understanding of God and man would have sounded bizarre to the ancients for the simple reason that this conception of the divine was utterly alien to them. And their different understandings of the divine helps account for their different norms, morals, legal systems, and how society was organized. Among the ancients, the divine favours strong, the beautiful, and brave warriors, and it logically follows that the gods, too, had these attributes. If so, and if they were the highest possible authority, earthly relations had to be organized around these same principles. In contrast, a son of God who is born among subject peoples, and teaches humility, charity, and service rather than glory and domination, implies that this divine would favour the weak not the strong. If so, society could not for long be organized in the manner of ancient times; rules, norms, and laws would eventually reflect the new belief system to the extent that it was believed by legislators and lawmakers. And for this reason there arose belief systems which raised the status of the lowly, such as human equality and human rights, which would have been inconceivable among the ancient Romans precisely because it was incommensurable with their metaphysical beliefs. 

During antiquity, there was no single religious truth or holy text. Different peoples had different gods, and connected to them via sacred objects and shrines. A common practice in ancient Rome was to discern the will of gods by examining the flights of birds, or the entrails of slaughtered animals, and one of the functions of priests was to accurately interpret these. In contrast, in the Christian era, priests were learned scholars who studied the classics of ancient Greece and Rome and who attempted to discern God’s will via a philosophical exegesis of texts, or what would later be called theology. This move away from studying God’s will in nature towards doing the same in texts, and the need for a specialized scholarly class to accomplish such an endeavour, led to the establishment of the first universities in Europe which would later become the secular institutions that they are today.

The will of the gods was omnipresent in nature and The Aeneid reveals this in how the ancients anthropomorphized the heavens, seasons, and weather, which were often capitalized to convey willfulness or agency:

                                                                                By now
dank Night had nearly reached her turning-point in the sky
and stretched on the hard thwarts beneath their oars
the crews gave way to a deep, quiet rest, when down
from the starts the God of Sleep came gliding gently
cleaving the dark mists and scattering shadows.

For Christians, in contrast, God was and is a supreme lawgiver who created a mechanistic universe which operates according to lawlike regularity. This gives the sense that for the ancients, nature or natural forces were enchanting and magical, while Christians believe that God may intervene but in the form of miracles or rare events which are in a sense unnatural (hence the term supernatural). The ancients lacked this conceptual separation between the divine and nature, and this too was reflected in their institutions. The emperor, for example, also had the title of pontifex, which translates to bridge, meant here as a function which connects the people and the divine. And in fact some emperors were considered in the literal sense to have divine ancestry and therefore worthy of being worshipped as gods. In the Christian era, of course, these roles were completely institutionally separate; the pope was God’s representative on earth, while the prince, king, or emperor was a lawmaker, and both were mere mortals. It is this institutional separation which made possible the secular societies which would subsequently emerge and which characterize the modern period.