What I would tell Pope Francis - philosopher Panych

- Your Holiness! You want to end the conflict between Russia and Ukraine through negotiations. You believe that the parties should stop the violence as soon as possible and start talking to each other.

In other words, you want to reconcile the two states just as you would reconcile two people.

But this is impossible.

You do not take into account that the morality of a political community is a completely different phenomenon than the morality of an individual. Human communities have no individual soul that can be saved. Therefore, human communities can be immoral in a special way that is not characteristic of human individuals.

For example, a gang of hired killers is inherently immoral: they make their living by killing for hire. You cannot reconcile a gang of killers with the rest of humanity as long as it remains a gang of killers.

Similarly, the Russian Empire is inherently immoral: it can only sustain its life and its global competitiveness by devouring its neighboring territories and peoples. Therefore, it has no rational interests that can be reconciled with the interests of an independent Ukraine.

In fact, it is nothing more than a giant gang of killers. That is why, for an independent Ukraine to survive, Russia must cease to exist as an empire. Or, conversely, Ukraine must die so that the Russian Empire can live on.

So please stop trying to settle this political conflict as if it were a conflict between two people. This will not work in a conflict between an empire and its neighbor, which it wants to conquer. And the morality of a peacekeeper who does not take into account, but ignores, the peculiarities of the political community, unnoticed by him, turns into immorality. Let this not happen to you or your peace initiatives.

Source

About the author. Oleksiy Panych, philosopher, member of the Ukrainian Center of PEN International, blogger.

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