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     The Christmas ideal of peace among men is as
unattainable as the other ideals with which we furnish our
public and private lives.  We are caught: we cannot live with
them, and we cannot live without them.

     It is a mistake to accept the ideal of peace at face
value; to pretend that it is a state that is attainable; and
to curse one another, or ourselves if we do not attain it.
It is also a mistake to be disdainful of the ideal of peace,
to proceed with our actions as if it did not exist, as if
peace were a matter of indifference.

     The ideal is a concept of a condition which we believe
to be ultimately desirable; yet in this definition also,
language deceives us. Peace is ultimately and absolutely
desirable not intrinsically, but to the extent that its
desirability is integral to its definition. All ideals are
concepts; all concepts exist by virtue of their (logical)
definition, and when unconditional desirability is made
integral to a concept, - well then that concept, that ideal
becomes imperative on account of its definition.

     Paraphrasing Aristotle: only the good is unconditionally
good.  The unconditional good is not subject to experience.
In everything that is subject to experience, the good is a
matter of proportion, a matter of degree, reflected, for
example, in a golden mean.



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Copyright 2005, Ernst Jochen Meyer
