Aristotle didn’t think that these seven factors guarantee civil war in some kind of deterministic formula, and he also had interesting ideas about mitigating them that could be explored in further essays. But surely this astonishing list of familiar spectacles should give us pause.
If Aristotle is right that these are the sorts of things that make civil war more likely, why shouldn’t we be worried? Why aren’t we challenging our cozy assumptions that things couldn’t get worse?
By Steven Skultety • June 26, 2020