Abstract Or Concrete People?

A Stone In Heaven, XII.

Miriam Abrams wonders about Dominic Flandry:

"I owe him much...how much of it done for my father's sake, how much for the abstract people, how much for the sheer game he is always playing? I'll never know. Maybe he doesn't either. He gives away nothing of his inmost self, not to anybody." (p. 161)

Flandry himself is unsure whether he defends the Empire to enjoy its decadence or enjoys defending it but it is abundantly clear that, when he does think of "the people," it is billions of concrete individuals, not any collective abstraction, that he has in mind. He does not want individuals to be burned to death and does want them to live through years of peace to which his efforts can contribute.

I was going to close without giving any relevant quotations but a quick lunch-break has enabled me to find three:

"'...the device every conqueror, yes, every altruistic liberator should be required to wear on his shield...is a little girl and her kitten, at ground zero.'"
-Poul Anderson, A Knight Of Ghosts And Shadows IN Anderson, Sir Dominic Flandry: The Last Knight Of Terra (Riverdale, NY, 2012), pp. 339-606 AT IX, p. 465.

For the second and third quotes, we return to A Stone In Heaven (see the above link):

"'...I'm not optimistic about this period we're in; but it can be made less terrible than it'd otherwise be. And that isn't so little, is it - buying years for billions of beings, that they can live in?'" (VI, p. 75)

"'I'm no sentimentalist, but I've witnessed wars. I don't relish the idea of sentient beings with their skins burnt off and their eyeballs melted, but not yet able to die.'" (VI, p. 91)

There are no abstractions there.