The Inescapable City: Kavafis' Timeless Truths

You cannot find another country,

you cannot find another sea.

This city will come after you.

You will wander the same streets again.

You will grow old in the same neighborhood;

the same houses will see your hair fall.

You will eventually return to this city.

Do not hope for anything else -

there is no ship you will board, no road you will take.

However you have consumed your life here, in this little corner,

you have consumed it the same way all over the earth.

Constantinos Kavafis (1863 - 1933)

Kavafis says: 'There is no ship you will board, no road you will take.'

Kavafis was perhaps speaking this to a single person, maybe to himself. However, today this truth should be reminded to all humanity.

Humans love to escape. Both from themselves and their responsibilities. When one gets tired of a city, they go to another city. When one gets tired of a country, they go to another country. But Kavafis says: it is futile. No matter where you go, you are there. You carry the streets of your city with you.

Now let’s translate this philosophy: Is the bomb that fell in Iran far from you? Does the hand reaching out to Cuba not knock on your door as well? When Greenland is placed on the table like a chess piece, is your land safe?

Kavafis's answer is clear: no. There are no other cities. We are all in the same city.

The oldest question of philosophy is this: what is good? The oldest question of law is: what is just? These two questions have not been separated throughout human history. Where they have separated, civilization has collapsed.

Today, these two questions are disconnected.

A head of state can boast about civilian deaths. To boast — mind you — is not to be ashamed, not to be saddened, not to be held accountable: to boast. This is a philosophical issue before it is a legal one. Because the moment a person can boast about the death of another person, they have eliminated the concept of the other. They have stripped the other of their humanity. As Levinas said: 'The face of the other says to you, 'You shall not kill.'' If you do not see that face, if you do not hear that voice — philosophically, you have ceased to be human.

'If I can do it, I will do it.'

At first glance, this sentence seems like pragmatism. It is not. This sentence is an ontological stance that places power in place of right. Thucydides wrote this two thousand four hundred years ago — in the Melian Dialogue, the Athenians say to the people of Melos: 'The strong do what they can, the weak suffer what they must.'

Two thousand four hundred years have passed. What has changed?

Clothes have changed. Discourse has changed. The range of bombs has changed. But philosophy remains the same. The strong still do what they can. And we — as humanity — still cannot produce an answer to this.

Nuremberg was an answer. It was short-lived. The United Nations was an answer. It was crippled by the veto power. The International Criminal Court was an answer. Powerful states did not recognize it. Every answer we have hit the wall of power and bounced back.

So the question is: if law is not enough, what is?

I say: philosophy.

Law sets norms. But it is philosophical consciousness that enlivens and internalizes those norms. Kant's categorical imperative — 'Act only according to that maxim whereby you can, at the same time, will that it should become a universal law' — is not a legal rule. It is a state of consciousness. Can the person who drops the bomb accept that the same bomb could be dropped on their own child? Can the power that seizes a country accept the seizure of its own country as a universal principle?

They cannot. They know they cannot. But they do it. Because power gives the luxury of suspending philosophy — at least temporarily.

I say temporarily. Because Kavafis comes into play here: 'You will eventually return to this city.' What you have done will find you. History will find you. Conscience — the conscience you have suppressed, silenced, and dulled with coffee and screens — will find you.

But the main issue is not the doer. The main issue is the observer.

The most disturbing question of philosophy is directed not at the one who does evil, but at the one who watches evil. Jaspers called this metaphysical guilt: a person lives in a world where another person is killed and continues to live — this is an existential responsibility, if not a complicity in crime.

This is the meaning of Kavafis's poem today. You are in this city. In this city, children are dying, countries are being threatened, sovereignties are being put on the negotiating table. And you walk the same streets. You grow old in the same neighborhood.

You cannot escape. Because there are no other cities.

So what should be done?

Let’s turn to Socrates. What did Socrates do? He neither raised an army nor led a revolution. Socrates asked. He asked questions. And his questions disturbed Athens so much that they killed him.

To ask is the deepest form of resistance. Is this war legitimate? Is this bomb justified? Is this land claim legal? Who authorized it? Which court ruled on it? Which legal norm permits this?

Asking these questions is not militancy. Asking these questions is humanity. Because humans are the only beings that ask questions. When one stops asking questions, they revert to the person in Kavafis's poem: they become trapped in their own city, on their own streets, in their own helplessness.

I believe that humanity cannot escape this city. But it can change this city.

The way to do this is not to submit to the language of the powerful. The way is to remember our obligations — erga omnes — that we owe to everyone. The way is to see again the command that Levinas saw in the face of the other.

And the way is to read Kavafis to the end. The poet says: 'However you have consumed your life here, in this little corner, you have consumed it the same way all over the earth.'

We must read this in reverse: how you live your humanity here, in this little corner — you live it the same way all over the earth.

There are no other cities.

But this city is not finished yet.

Source: SeaNews Türkiye