Showing papers on "Cruelty published in 2008"

A Talk to Teachers

Abstract: “Let’s begin by saying that we are living through a very dangerous time....So any citizen of this country who figures himself as responsible – and particularly those of you who deal with the minds and hearts of young people – must be prepared to ‘go for broke.’ Or to put it another way, you must understand that in the attempt to correct so many generations of bad faith and cruelty, when it is operating not only in the classroom but in society, you will meet the most fantastic, the most brutal, and the most determined resistance. There is no point in pretending that this won’t happen.”

Reality TV, or the secret theater of neoliberalism

Abstract: Every system of cruelty requires its own theater. 1 By “system” I mean an organization of objects, people and opportunities that is both regular and open to public view. There are of course many fo...

Reality TV, or The Secret Theater of Neoliberalism

Abstract: Every system of cruelty requires its own theater. 1 By “system” I mean an organization of objects, people and opportunities that is both regular and open to public view. There are of course many fo...

A culture of harm: Taming the dynamics of cruelty in supermax prisons.

Abstract: This article examines the heightened risk of prisoner abuse that is created in supermax prison settings. It suggests that a combination of powerful contextual forces to which correctional officers are exposed can influence and affect them in ways that may engender a culture of mistreatment or harm. Those forces include a problematic set of ideological beliefs, a surrounding environment or ecology that is structured in such a way as to encourage cruelty, and a particularly intense—even desperate—set of interpersonal dynamics created between prisoners and guards. The importance of taking this heightened potential for abuse into account when discussing the negative effects of supermax and proposals for its reform is discussed.

The International Handbook of Animal Abuse and Cruelty: Theory, Research, and Application

Abstract: While philosophers have been interested in animals since ancient times, in the last few decades the subject of animal minds has emerged as a major topic in philosophy. The Routledge Handbook of Philosophy of Animal Minds is an outstanding reference source to the key topics, problems, and debates in this exciting subject and is the first collection of its kind. Comprising nearly fifty chapters by a team of international contributors, the Handbook is divided into eight parts: Mental representation Reasoning and metacognition Consciousness Mindreading Communication Social cognition and culture Association, simplicity, and modeling Ethics. Within these sections, central issues, debates, and problems are examined, including: whether and how animals represent and reason about the world; how animal cognition differs from human cognition; whether animals are conscious; whether animals represent their own mental states or those of others; how animals communicate; the extent to which animals have cultures; how to choose among competing models and explanations of

Standard Operating Procedure: A War Story

Abstract: "Standard Operating Procedure" is the story of the infamous Abu Ghraib photographs of prisoner abuse, as seen through the eyes and told through the voices of the soldiers who took them and appeared in them. It is the story of how those soldiers were at once the instruments and victims of a great injustice. Drawing on more than two hundred hours of Errol Morris' startlingly frank and intimate interviews with the soldier-photographers who gave us what have become iconic images of the Iraq War. 'A compelling meditation on a descent into cruelty' - "Daily Telegraph". 'An extraordinary book ...Although Gourevitch lets the soldiers speak for themselves, his few analytical forays are invaluable' - "Guardian".

The Freedoms of Religion and Culture under the South African Constitution: Do Traditional African Religions Enjoy Equal Treatment?

Abstract: On Sunday, January 20, 2007, Tony Yengeni, former Chief Whip of South Africa's governing party, the African National Congress (ANC), celebrated his early release from a four-year prison sentence by slaughtering a bull at his father's house in the Cape Town township of Gugulethu. This time-honored African ritual was performed in order to appease the Yengeni family ancestors. Animal rights activists, however, decried the sacrifice as an act of unnecessary cruelty to the bull, and a public outcry ensued. Leading figures in government circles, including the Minister of Arts and Culture, Pallo Jordan, entered the fray, calling for a proper understanding of African cultural practices. Jody Kollapen, the Chair of the Human Rights Commission, said: “the slaughter of animals by cultures in South Africa was an issue that needed to be dealt with in context. Cultural liberty is an important right. …”That the sacrifice was defended on the ground of African culture was to be expected. More surprising was the way in which everyone involved in the affair ignored what could have been regarded as an event of religious significance. Admittedly, it is far from easy to separate the concepts of religion and culture, and, in certain societies, notably those of pre-colonial Africa, this distinction was unknown. Today in South Africa, however, it is clearly necessary to make such a distinction for human rights litigation, partly because the Constitution specifies religion and culture as two separate rights and partly because it seems that those working under the influence of modern human rights seem to take religion more seriously than culture.

The Relationship between Childhood Cruelty to Animals and Psychological Adjustment: A Malaysian Study

Abstract: In Western research, cruelty to animals in childhood has been associated with comorbid conduct problems and with interpersonal violence in later life. However, there is little understanding of the etiology of cruelty to animals, and what in the child's life may require attention if the chain linking animal cruelty and later violence is to be broken. The study reported in this paper investigated the association between parent-reported cruelty to animals, and parent- and self-reported psychological strengths and weaknesses in a sample of 379 elementary school children in an Eastern context, Malaysia. No gender differences were found in relation to cruelty to animals or psychological problems, as assessed with the Strengths and Difficulties Questionnaire (SDQ). However, there were different predictors of cruelty to animals for boys and girls. Regression analyses found that for boys, parent-reported hyperactivity was a unique predictor of Malicious and Total Cruelty to animals. For girls, self-reporte...

Torture and Taboo : An Essay Comparing Paradigms of Organized Cruelty

Abstract: This essay addresses some common misunderstandings about torture also perpetuated in the ongoing debates concerning “rescue” or “necessity torture” and introduces, in a comparative perspective, the structural properties of the different historical and current paradigms of organized state cruelty. Regarding “modern torture” the essay deconstructs its exceptionalism which is based on claims of a specific relationship to law and the rescue motive. The comparative remarks are followed by a brief look at some practical legal problems arising from the concept of “rescue torture” and some strategic and semantic moves to camouflage or deny violations of the torture taboo.

By Sword and Fire: Cruelty and Atrocity in Medieval Warfare

Abstract: A vivid and original account of warfare in the Middle Ages and the cruelty and atrocity that accompanied it. Sean McGlynn investigates the reality of medieval warfare. For all the talk of chivalry, medieval warfare routinely involved acts which we would consider war crimes. Lands laid waste, civilians slaughtered, prisoners massacred: this was standard fare justified by tradition and practical military necessity. It was unbelievably barbaric, but seldom uncontrolled. Such acts of atrocity were calculated, hideous cruelties inflicted in order to achieve a specific end. Sean McGlynn examines the battles of Acre and Agincourt, sieges like Beziers, Lincoln, Jerusalem and Limoges as well as the infamous chevauchees of the Hundred Years War that devastated great swathes of France. He reveals how these grisly affairs form the origin of accepted 'rules of war', codes of conduct that are today being enforced in the International Court of Justice in the Hague.

La sevicia en las masacres de la guerra colombiana

Abstract: Starting from a description of the massacres in the region of Uraba between 1988 and 2002, this text formulates as a hypothesis that the appearance of saevitia (excessive cruelty) depends on factors such as war space/time, representations of the enemy, military asymmetry and insufficient use of political approaches. According to the author, the characteristics of saevitia in the massacres during the recent decades in the Colombian conflict contrasts with the period known as The Violence (1946-1965), which not only reflects a change in the phenomenology of terror but in the nature of contemporary political violence.

The Trouble with `Never Again!': Rereading Levinas for Genocide Prevention and Critical International Theory

Abstract: After the Holocaust, the world said `Never again!' That declaration has since been repeated often, to no avail The insufficiency of this declaration is symptomatic of a problem with redemptive politics: They might spur us into action to deliver the world from violence, cruelty and injustice, but they might also overwhelm us with paralysing responsibility and provoke a retreat into bad faith Emmanuel Levinas offers a more sober, but also more promising, view of politics that resists redemptive aspirations Critical international theorists have explored the resources that Levinas offers for thinking about world politics, but they have underestimated those resources because they have attributed to him a redemptive account of politics From this perspective, they have criticised his infamous response to the massacres at Sabra and Chatila during Israel's war with Lebanon Reconsidering his comments about that event, I defend Levinas and suggest that the charges against him stem from that misunderstanding of

Why is it a Crime to Stomp on a Goldfish? - Harm, Victimhood and the Structure of Anti-Cruelty Offenses

Abstract: In the article it is argued that, contrary to what prominent animal law scholars such as Gary Francione claim, we have decided to criminalize harm to animals primarily because we are concerned about the wellbeing of such creatures, not because doing so furthers some other human interest. I do so in four parts. Part I provides a brief historical analysis of animal cruelty laws that will show that, although many of these statutes were originally enacted as a way to protect private property, there has been a marked trend, specially in recent times, to punish animal cruelty regardless, and some-times despite, the property interests involved. In Part II, the notions of harm, victimhood and consent will be explored in order to lay the groundwork for the claims that will be put forth in the remainder of the article. In light of the issues that animal cruelty statutes raise, particular attention will be paid to discussing John Stuart Mill's and H.L.A. Hart's conception of the harm principle. Part III examines five different theories that might be advanced in order to explain the interest that we seek to promote by punishing acts that are harmful to animals, namely: (1) protection of property, (2) protection against the infliction of emotional harm to those who have ties to the injured animal, (3) prevention of future harm to humans, (4) enforcement of a moral principle, and (5) protection of the animals themselves. In Part IV, I will try to explain why it is not necessarily the case, as many animal law scholars have argued, that because animal cruelty statutes allow for the infliction of harm to animals as a result of hunting, scientific and farming activities, the interest primarily sought to be protected by these laws is something other than the protection of animals. This argument is ultimately flawed because it is premised on a misunderstanding of the structure of criminal offenses in general and of anti-cruelty statutes in particular. Properly understood, the existence of privileges that allow people to infringe the prima facie norm against harming animals merely reveals that society (rightly or wrongly) believes that there are countervailing reasons that justify harming the interest sought to be protected by the offense, not that the prohibitory norm was not really designed to protect animals in the first place.

The Shadow of Death: Literature, Romanticism, and the Subject of Punishment

Abstract: THE SHADOW OF DEATH: LITERATURE, ROMANTICISM, AND THE SUBJECT OF PUNISHMENT. By Mark Canuel. Princeton and Oxford: Princeton University Press, 2007. Pp. xii + 206. ISBN 0-691-12961-4. £ 19.95. Writing to his friend James Boswell in 1785, Sir Joshua Reynolds thanked him 'for carrying me yesterday to see the execution at Newgate', and expressed his view that 'it is a vulgar error, the opinion that it is so terrible a spectacle, or that it any way implies a hardness of heart or cruelty of disposition [] I consider it is natural to desire to see such sights, and, if I may venture, to take delight in them'. Reynolds' remarks could serve as an epigraph to Mark Canuel's provocative and wide-ranging new book, for they exemplify the attitudes against which the Romanticperiod authors on whom Canuel focuses were fighting as they struggled to articulate a new ethics, aesthetics and politics of punishment. Canuel's thesis is that 'the Romantic opposition to the death penalty', while unarguably 'a species of humanitarian reform', was more significant for its endeavour 'to redefine the relationship between political subjects and legal structures, and thus to redefine the very meaning of punishment more generally'. This meaning, he argues, cannot be reduced to a single doctrine but rather takes the form of an ongoing negotiation or debate between conflicting but mutually necessary imperatives: on the one hand 'lenience and economy', the utilitarian notion that punishment should 'economise on suffering' and aim to be 'useful to those who are subjected to it'; on the other hand 'severity and rigour', the retributive principle that punishment should be systematically proportioned to offences, with the punishment of death the ultimate sanction. Exploring the implications of this fundamental conflict in the work of Byron, Wordsworth, Austen, Shelley and others, Canuel is particularly attentive to these writers' emphasis on the imagination as a faculty which mediates between the visible operations of the law as a system of sanctions and the subjectivities of those it is designed to affect, punished and spectator alike. Whether the imagination is engaged in the form of horror at the spectacle of suffering or a haunted or chastising conscience, what Canuel calls 'the imaginative involvement between the subject and penal sanctions' is central to his analysis of the Romantic discourse of punishment and its persistence to the present day. The Shadow of Death is structured as a series of case studies of the complex ways in which specific authors confronted - directly or obliquely - the death penalty and the more intractable question of the aims of punishment. In a superb opening chapter on Romilly, Bentham and the reformist project, Canuel provides a lucid and nuanced account of the conflicting rationales of reform and the efforts of its proponents to establish an imaginative connection between the law and 'the manners and feelings of the British people'. Here he also explains how his work departs from the emphasis in Foucault's work - most notably Discipline and Punish - on the internalisation of 'habits of order and obedience' under a disciplinary regime. For Canuel, it is the very 'exteriority' of punishment that accounts for 'its profound engagement with moral-political subjects. The systems of penalties that are foreign to the self are also intimate to its deliberations and decisions' - a point on which he elaborates in the extended reading of Austen's Mansfield Park in the fourth chapter. From Romilly, Canuel moves in his second chapter to Hannah More, whose call for acquiescence to providential authority produces a 'divided vantage point on a system of rational rewards and punishments', ultimately - albeit never completely - 'evacuating' the authority of secular institutions and laws and their validity in the regulation of conduct. Canuel's discussion of the tension (or, at times, confusion) between secular/reformist and providential/anti-reformist strains in More's writing is subtle and suggestive, although to my mind only loosely tied to the book's ostensible subject, largely because More has nothing to say about the death penalty itself. …

Foul Play : What's Wrong with Sport

Abstract: Common wisdom decrees that sport has an overwhelmingly positive influence on our civilisation. It's good for your health, builds character, unites nations and generates peace and love and understanding across the globe...Or so we are told by sporting evangelists who spread the word on the back - and now increasingly the front - pages of our newspapers. But are we being sold a lie? "Foul Play" shows how our belief in the value of sport is misplaced.Tracing the history of organised game-playing, it argues that sport is a last refuge for sexism, racism, homophobia and animal cruelty. It cites neglected research in psychology, showing how playing sport tends to impinge negatively on your morals. And it asks why sports fans are so judgemental about what is, after all, only a game."Foul Play" is for anyone who believes that their head is not just for keepie-uppies.

Why is it a Crime to Stomp on a Goldfish? - Harm, Victimhood and the Structure of Anti-Cruelty Offenses

Abstract: In the article it is argued that, contrary to what prominent animal law scholars such as Gary Francione claim, we have decided to criminalize harm to animals primarily because we are concerned about the wellbeing of such creatures, not because doing so furthers some other human interest. I do so in four parts. Part I provides a brief historical analysis of animal cruelty laws that will show that, although many of these statutes were originally enacted as a way to protect private property, there has been a marked trend, specially in recent times, to punish animal cruelty regardless, and some-times despite, the property interests involved. In Part II, the notions of harm, victimhood and consent will be explored in order to lay the groundwork for the claims that will be put forth in the remainder of the article. In light of the issues that animal cruelty statutes raise, particular attention will be paid to discussing John Stuart Mill's and H.L.A. Hart's conception of the harm principle. Part III examines five different theories that might be advanced in order to explain the interest that we seek to promote by punishing acts that are harmful to animals, namely: (1) protection of property, (2) protection against the infliction of emotional harm to those who have ties to the injured animal, (3) prevention of future harm to humans, (4) enforcement of a moral principle, and (5) protection of the animals themselves. In Part IV, I will try to explain why it is not necessarily the case, as many animal law scholars have argued, that because animal cruelty statutes allow for the infliction of harm to animals as a result of hunting, scientific and farming activities, the interest primarily sought to be protected by these laws is something other than the protection of animals. This argument is ultimately flawed because it is premised on a misunderstanding of the structure of criminal offenses in general and of anti-cruelty statutes in particular. Properly understood, the existence of privileges that allow people to infringe the prima facie norm against harming animals merely reveals that society (rightly or wrongly) believes that there are countervailing reasons that justify harming the interest sought to be protected by the offense, not that the prohibitory norm was not really designed to protect animals in the first place.

How Should Animals Be Treated

Abstract: Tom Regan's four explanations of animal rights are examined and rejected as inadequate. A superior interest based account of animal rights is proposed. This derives an animal's right to freedom from harm from interests that are implicit in the conscious life of the animal. According to Tom Regan, there are four possible accounts for dealing with the issue of how animals should be treated: (1) the ‘Kantian account’; (2) the ‘cruelty account’; (3) the ‘utilitarian account’; and (4) the ‘animal rights account’ (Regan, 2001, pp. 41–55). In this paper I propose to briefly survey these four accounts and argue for a fifth view, the ‘interests account’, which I believe is the most reasonable of the five accounts.

On the hazards of being a stranger to oneself

Abstract: This paper traces out the socio-political consequences of self-ignorance and self-deception. These consequences were clearly recognized more than 2,000 years ago by early Greek philosophers, in part along the lines of ‘a conceit of wisdom’. The consequences were more recently spelled out in striking ways by Carl Jung in his psychoanalytic analyses of ‘mass-minded man’ who, through self-ignorance and self-deception, wreaks havoc and cruelty on others. The paper also points up the challenge of attaining self-knowledge and possible paths to its attainment that bolster or augment classic psychotherapeutic approaches. Copyright © 2008 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

Family Structure and Family Violence

Abstract: The term ‘family violence’ encompasses a wide range of adverse dynamics perpetrated by a range of family members, referring most commonly to abuse or violence between husbands and wives, or parental abuse toward children. Family violence is characterized by a pattern of control and intent to coerce or harm, and takes many forms, from psychological abuse to physical cruelty to sexual exploitation. The study of family violence is a relatively new field, only a few decades old. Even in this short period it has become evident that family violence – more specifically, violence against women and children – is a deeply entrenched and worldwide practice. That work in this area is so recent reflects the fact that for most of recorded history until recent times parental violence against children and men’s violence against their wives were condoned – and out of the realm of discourse about justice and human rights. In the West, the traditions of wife and child abuse have only recently been challenged in law and policies of enforcement.

The Gender of Terror: War as (Im) Moral Institution in Kleist's Hermannsschlacht and Penthesilea

Abstract: This article argues that the notion of warfare as a sublime endeavor does not originate in WWI literature but dates back to the eighteenth century. Alongside the debate on eternal peace, there existed a lively discourse, evidenced in texts by Wilhelm von Humboldt, Immanuel Kant, Friedrich Schlegel and others, that considered war a moral and culturally productive institution and lavished praise on its ennobling features. Secondly, the article suggests that Kleist's Hermannsschlacht and Penthesilea contain a critique of such recuperative war discourses. In Kleist's texts, the concept of terror emerges as the dark “Other” of the nexus of war and the sublime. Similarly, representations of savagery and inhuman cruelty are employed to deconstruct the notion of war as a rational, political act. Finally, the article claims that, in spite of these insights, Kleist's texts cannot be read as pacifist manifestos since the critique of war is undercut and confounded by the representation of gender.

A Modest Proposal for Advancing Animal Rights

Abstract: I. INTRODUCTION Animal rights activists are often called nut jobs, wackos, and extremists--and that is by our friends and family members. Too often our cause is splintered by polarizing views. Instead of focusing on the positions that divide us, we must pursue matters on which we agree. Few would object to the fact that animals feel pain. It may not be to the same extent as we do, but they feel it. As each new year dawns, the promise of the next year suggests the time may have come to recognize that sentience and finally abolish the continued legal classification of animals as property. The law must change to recognize that companion animals and other animals are sentient creatures deserving of greater protection. In any discussion concerning animal rights, the question often arises as to the need to distinguish companion animals, like dogs and cats, from other animals. Clearly, it is an easier argument to limit animal rights to our companion animals who occupy our homes and are near and dear to us. However, such a distinction is too great a strain on science and compassion for us to promote without exploring the issue a bit deeper. Although it would be easy to give into the distinction between companion animals and other animals, to do so ignores the fact that noncompanion animals, like chimpanzees, have a genetic make-up very similar to ours. (1) They also have the capacity to experience great pain. (2) So to suggest that Rover or Kitty have rights and value beyond property, but a chimp does not, leads to an absurd conclusion: chimps can be seen as mere objects. Chimps can experience a broad array of emotions like joy, grief, and sadness. (3) They are extremely intelligent and often serve as helpers to the disabled. (4) Their genetic make-up is nearly identical to ours. (5) So why should this living, breathing, and thinking being--sometimes thinking even more than we do according to Japanese researchers (6)--be relegated to the equivalent of the chair we sit on? Cruelty and humane treatment of animals aside, tort law, contract law, wills and trusts law, and family law all deal with issues regarding companion animals (with the exception of actions for damages to livestock where the law actually grants more protection to the animals so long as it is part of one's livelihood). (7) While some environmental and constitutional laws (such as the Endangered Species Act (8) and the Marine Mammal Protection Act) (9) do address the rights of noncompanion animals, the continued property classification of animals affects--and hurts-companion animals more than it does our nondomesticated friends. Therefore, while some animal welfare groups have done a good job raising the awareness of the plight of the giant panda and the previously endangered bald eagle, the greatest strides yet to be made involve companion animals and their often horrid treatment in our United States. There are three issues in animal law of which there should be little debate: (1) banning animal fighting as a spectator sport by increasing the penalties for those that attend; (2) providing for bequests for the care of our pets after our death; and (3) prohibiting the hunting of domesticated animals on private game preserves or over the Internet. II. ANIMAL FIGHTING AS A SPECTATOR SPORT Michael Vick was indicted on some of the most egregious, wanton acts of inhumanity toward animals ever reported. (10) The evidence and his resulting plea left most with little doubt about the horrific nature of their offenses. All of us condemn issues that shock us, but actions must follow our words. More often those opposed to animal cruelty and who are in support of animal rights need to speak with a unified voice to reform this country's unacceptable treatment of animals. Dog fighting is illegal in every state in the United States and a felony in forty-eight of them. (11) Nevertheless, some people continue to engage in this cruel and reprehensible practice for gambling and depraved amusement. …

Lycanthropic frenetism in Pétrus Borel’s “Don Andréa Vésalius: L’Anatomiste”

Abstract: Petrus Borel’s collection of short stories, Champavert: Contes immoraux, is perhaps the best example of frenetisme, a subgenre of Romanticism characterized by energy, violence, and cruelty. Like the other ecrivains frenetiques, Borel advocated social and political change, precepts that the self‐proclaimed lycanthrope incorporated in his literary creations. A close reading of “Don Andrea Vesalius: L’Anatomiste,” one of the Contes immoraux, reveals the extent to which the politics of 1830s France influenced Borel’s avant‐garde art.

Sloth: The Besetting Sin of the Age?

Abstract: IN A REVIEW of J. F. Powers's Prince of Darkness and Other Stories (1947), Evelyn Waugh observed: "Prince of Darkness" is a magnificent study of sloth--a sin which has not attracted much attention of late and which, perhaps, is the besetting sin of the age. Catholic novelists have dealt at length with lust, blasphemy, cruelty and greed--these provide obvious dramatic possibilities. We have been inclined to wink at sloth; even, in a world of go-getters, almost to praise it. An imaginative writer has advantages over the preacher and Mr. Powers exposes this almost forgotten, widely practiced, capital sin, in a way which brought an alarming whiff of brimstone to the nostrils of at least one reader. (1) The deadly sin, or capital vice, of sloth--what the medievals called acedia--remains as obscure for us today as it did sixty years ago when Waugh penned this review. We usually don't go further than the common association of sloth with laziness and procrastination, with the result that sloth does not seem to have much place in our hyperactive "world of go-getters." Nonetheless, Waugh conjectures that sloth is, not merely a deadly sin, or a pervasive sin, but the besetting sin of the age. This leads us to wonder about the true nature of this most elusive of capital vices, as well as the character of the present age, which, perhaps more now than sixty years ago, makes it so vulnerable to sloth. Waugh did not pursue these questions in his review of Powers's book. He did return to the subject of sloth, however, some years later. In 1962, Ian Fleming, author of the James Bond novels and member of the editorial board of the London Sunday Times, invited Waugh to contribute an essay to a Sunday Times series on the seven deadly sins. (2) Joining the likes of Edith Sitwell, writing on pride, and W. H. Auden, writing on anger, Waugh contributed a marvelous essay on sloth. Still, it is not so much in this essay, which is very brief, but in Waugh's novels that we find the argument for his claim that sloth is the besetting sin of the modern world. For one way to read the dramatic arc of his oeuvre is to see it as an extended reflection on the nature of sloth and the way in which the moral, political, and spiritual conditions of modernity make us particularly prone to it. To say this is to assume that we can find in Waugh's novels a moral argument at all, as opposed to mere dramatic illustration. Do works of narrative fiction make arguments? Does not an inquiry into the nature of sloth and its relation to modernity better belong to revealed theology, philosophy, sociology, or some combination of the three? (3) Works of narrative fiction do make arguments, not of course demonstratively, but in what we might call a dialectical mode. For the images that such works place before us are images that combine "poetical" form with philosophical or theological content. A successful plot places such complex images in conflict, setting up a dialectical debate that proceeds toward the story's ultimate crisis, climax, and resolution. In constructing this debate the writer of fiction attempts to show the incoherence of one or more of the contending images, which is to say the incoherence of a given philosophical or theological outlook, espoused more or less reflectively by one or more of the characters. At times, as in Shakespeare's Hamlet or Hemingway's The Sun Also Rises, writers end their stories with this incoherence, leaving the reader to infer how what is defective in the thoughts and desires embodied by the characters and their situations might be made whole. At other times, as in Jane Austen's Emma or in Waugh's own Brideshead Revisited, writers present an image that emerges as a clear victor in the dialectic of the plot, thus showing how what is incoherent in the defective images is made coherent. In either case, the debate proceeds in and through images, never merely by way of philosophical or theological claims. …

On 'Waterboarding': Legal Interpretation and the Continuing Struggle for Human Rights

Abstract: While some aspects of the "waterboarding" debate are largely political, the practice also implicates deeply normative underpinnings of human rights and law. Attorney General Michael Mukasey has steadfastly declined to declare waterboarding illegal or to launch an investigation into past waterboarding. His equivocations have generated anguished controversy because they raise a fundamental question: should we balance "heinousness and cruelty" against information that we "might get"? Mr. Mukasey's approach appears to be careful lawyering. However, it portends a radical and dangerous departure from a fundamental premise of human rights law: the inherent dignity of each person. Although there is some lack of clarity about the precise definition of torture, all is not vagueness, or reliance on "circumstances," and post hoc judgments. We have clear enough standards to conclude that waterboarding is and was illegal. Official legal equivocation about waterboarding preserves the potential imprimatur of legality for torture. It substitutes a dangerously fluid utilitarian balancing test for the hard-won respect for human dignity at the base of our centuries-old revulsion about torture. That is precisely what the rule of law (and the best lawyers) ought not to do.

Rethinking the Moral Agenda within American Foreign Policy: Lessons from Niebuhr, Huntington, and the Japanese Experience

Abstract: Introduction: Dissonance and American Foreign Policy When Commodore Matthew Perry sailed into Tokyo Bay in 1853, the Japanese people suffered a cultural shock that was roughly the equivalent of the shock that the American people suffered on 9/11. (1) Of course, there are dramatic and significant differences. The events of 9/11 were much more violent, more sudden, and certainly more tragic. Nevertheless, both events signaled a profound change in the sociopolitical, economic, and philosophical environment of each nation. In each case, from the perspective of those who lived through the events, the entire global scene was thrown out of balance, and they were faced with a landscape that was unfamiliar and threatening. The noted political theorist, Thomas Barnett, has identified this experience with a single phrase. He calls it a system perturbation, that is, an event that, in an instant, destroys the old paradigm and replaces it with one that embodies a newer and more accurate representation of global reality. (2) One of the key difficulties with any new global paradigm is that it appears to make no sense. Unlike the clear-cut rule set that was evident before the event (in the case of the Japanese people that would have been the feudal reign of the Tokugawa regime and for the Americans it was the paradigm of the Cold War), the New World Order seems to consist of situations and events that are as frightening and confusing as they are strange and unpredictable. For the Japanese people it meant facing foreign invaders with technology, financial resources, and military power that far outstripped anything they had ever witnessed before. In the case of the Americans, it meant facing a world filled with shadowy groups of violent terrorists, old allies who suddenly appeared as enemies, a foreign policy dedicated to preventative war rather than diplomacy, and an uneasy sense that things were spiraling out of control. The goal of this paper is to invite debate on how to reformulate American foreign policy and return it to a coherent and productive path that will support its allies, revitalize its military, and reassure its own citizenry. A Statement of the Problem The problem is easy to state: American foreign policy suffers from a sharp disconnect between rhetoric (what policy makers say they are doing) and action (what those policy makers and their agents actually do). This schizophrenic disconnect manifests itself in bizarre behavior that is remarkably inconsistent with American ideals. Thus, on the one hand, we have an American president arguing that the United States overthrew the government of Iraq to rid that nation of a repressive regime that terrorized its own citizens, while, on the other hand, we witness alleged incidents of brutality and cruelty on the part of the American forces sworn to protect those same citizens. How did this disconnect emerge? The root of the problem can be found in the history of American foreign policy. Since the end of the First World War, the strategy of the United States in global affairs has undergone several leaps. Nevertheless, for the last 100 years, beginning with the international vision of Woodrow Wilson and culminating in the present neoconservative agenda, the grand strategy of American foreign policy has been grounded in a single constant: the American belief in universal moral values that apply to all people at all times under all circumstances. (3) These universal values include (1) a belief that each individual has innate worth; (2) a dedication to the idea that human beings must be free to pursue their destinies; (3) a contention that the best way to preserve those rights is through a democratic process, and (4) a conviction that those who have benefited from the democratic process have a duty to see that other people have the opportunity to enjoy that process as well. To express this problem another way, for 100 years American foreign policy has been guided not by common sense or by national self-interest, but by morality. …