You said: "I will go to another land, I will go to another sea.
Another city shall be found, better than this one.
My every effort is a written sentence of condemnation;
and my heart — like a dead man — lies buried.
How long will my mind remain in this desolation?
Wherever I turn my eyes, wherever I look,
I see the black ruins of my life here,
where I have spent so many years — wasted and destroyed."
You will not find new lands, you will not find another sea.
The city will follow you.
You will wander the same streets.
You will grow old in the same neighborhoods;
the same houses will see your hair turn gray.
You will always end up in this city. Do not hope for elsewhere —
there is no ship for you, there is no road.
Just as you have ruined your life here,
in this small corner — so you have destroyed it
everywhere in the world.
— Constantine P. Cavafy, 1910
• • •
Cavafy says: "There is no ship for you, there is no road you will take." Cavafy was saying this to a single person — perhaps to himself. Yet today, this truth must be recalled to all of humanity.
The human being loves to flee. Both from oneself and from one's responsibility. When one tires of a city, one moves to another. When one tires of a country, one moves to another. But Cavafy says: it is futile. Wherever you go, there you are. You carry the streets of your city within you.
Now let us translate this philosophy into the language of the present: Is the bomb that fell in Iran far from you? Does the hand reaching for Cuba's sovereignty not knock upon your door as well? When Greenland is placed upon the table like a chess piece, is your own land truly safe?
Cavafy's answer is unequivocal: no. There is no other city. We are all in the same city.
• • •
The most ancient question of philosophy is this: What is good? The most ancient question of law is: What is just? These two questions have never parted company throughout the history of civilisation. Wherever they have separated, civilisation has collapsed.
Today, these two questions are severed from one another.
A head of state is capable of boasting about civilian deaths. Boasting — mark this well — not feeling shame, not mourning, not rendering account: boasting. This, before being a legal matter, is a philosophical one. For the moment a human being can take pride in the death of another human being, he has annihilated the concept of the Other. He has stripped the Other of humanity. As Levinas wrote: "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 — then, in philosophical terms, you have departed from humanity.
• • •
"If I can, I will."
This sentence appears at first glance to be pragmatism. It is not. This sentence reflects an ontological stance that places power above justice. Thucydides recorded this twenty-four hundred years ago — in the Melian Dialogue, the Athenians tell the people of Melos: "The strong do what they can, and the weak suffer what they must."
Twenty-four hundred years have passed. What has changed?
Clothing has changed. Discourse has changed. The range of bombs has changed. But the philosophy remains the same. The strong still do what they can. And we — as humanity — still cannot produce an adequate response.
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. The powerful states refused to recognise it. Every answer we have constructed has struck the wall of power and rebounded.
Therefore, the question is this: if law is not sufficient, what is?
I say: philosophy.
Law establishes norms. But what sustains those norms, what internalises them, is philosophical consciousness. Kant's categorical imperative — "Act in such a way that the principle of your action could be a universal law" — is not a legal rule. It is a state of consciousness. Can the man who drops the bomb accept the same bomb being dropped upon his own child? Can the power that seizes a country accept, as a universal principle, the seizure of its own?
They cannot. They know they cannot. But they do it. Because power affords the luxury of suspending philosophy — at least temporarily.
I say temporarily. Because Cavafy intervenes precisely here: "You will always end up in this city." Your deeds will find you. History will find you. Conscience — the conscience you have suppressed, silenced, numbed with coffee and screens — will find you.
• • •
But the principal issue is not the perpetrator. The principal issue is the bystander.
Philosophy's most disquieting question is directed not at those who commit evil, but at those who watch it unfold. Jaspers called this "metaphysical guilt": a person who lives in a world where another person is being killed, and who continues to live — even if this does not constitute complicity in the strict sense, it constitutes an existential responsibility.
There is a solidarity among people, simply because they are human, in which each shares the responsibility for every injustice and wrongdoing committed in the world, especially those crimes that occur in their presence or of which they cannot be unaware. If I do not do everything I can to prevent these, I become an accomplice to them. If I have not risked my life to prevent the killing of others, if I have remained silent, I feel guilty in a way that cannot be sufficiently exonerated legally, politically, or morally… Remaining alive after such things have been done becomes a heavy burden of irredeemable guilt upon me. — Karl Jaspers, The Question of German Guilt
In sum, is Jaspers not saying this: "A person cannot easily escape from being the accused of what they have witnessed"? Especially when it concerns a crime against humanity. The paradigm of this reality — which we watch unfold like a film every day — envelops us all.
Each of us is responsible for our time. I do not speak of a worldly responsibility or the notion of "crime" in its positive-law sense.
• • •
This is the meaning of Cavafy's poem today. You are in this city. In this city, children are dying, countries are being threatened, sovereignties are placed upon the bargaining table. And you walk the same streets. You grow old in the same neighbourhood.
You cannot escape. Because there are no other cities.
So what is to be done?
Let us return to Socrates. What did Socrates do? He raised no army; he led no revolution. Socrates asked. He posed questions. And his questions so disturbed Athens that they put him to death.
To ask is the deepest form of resistance. Is this war legitimate? Is this bomb justified? Is this territorial claim lawful? Who authorised it? Which court rendered the decision? Which legal norm permits this?
To pose these questions is not militancy. To pose these questions is humanity. For the human being is the only creature that asks questions. When one ceases to ask, one becomes the figure in Cavafy's poem: imprisoned in one's own city, one's own streets, one's own helplessness.
I believe that humanity cannot escape this city. But it can transform this city.
The path is to refuse surrender to the language of the powerful. The path is to remember our obligations erga omnes — the obligations we owe to all. The path is to see once more, in the face of the Other, the command that Levinas perceived.
And the path is to read Cavafy to the end. The poet says: "Just as you have ruined your life here, in this small corner — so you have destroyed it everywhere in the world."
We must read this in reverse: as you sustain your humanity here, in this small corner — so you sustain it all over the earth.
There is no other city.
But this city is not finished yet.