Jonathan Glover

My first non-fiction in a while. It's a very intense book, covering major atrocities of the twentieth century and trying to connect the dots from smaller ones to larger. The idea is to find parallels. Do transitions such as going from allowing a few "accidental" civilian targets in WW2 bombing -> encouraging firebombing of cities -> Hiroshima & Nagasaki mirror the transitions of dehumanizing prisoners -> coming to accept torture as ok? What combinations of fear and intimidation kept people from speaking up and helping under Stalin and Hitler and Mao? And why did some people keep small bites of their humanity while others were liberated to cruelty?

Anyway, a heavy book, but very readable. I enjoyed learning the history more than his philosophy.… (plus d'informations)

The question that I pose for this book is "should an ethicist write history?"

Glover does a good job in setting his parameters early on. The first part essentially sets the terms for the rest of the writing. However, as a historian, I must find some false premises within his writing and histoiriography (method). First, he has a very abridged treatment of Nietzsche. While Nietzsche did indeed leave a wake of amoralism, his writings don't stipulate it as much as Glover leads to belive. Second, and most damning, is the fact that this isn't a moral history at all, Glover treats it more as a discussion of the twentieth century's more morally egregious acts, and prescription according to his analysis. While I don't think that Glover treads on bad logic in his analysis (there is a case for a Leviathan U.N.), I think calling "Humanity" a "moral history" is not so true. This is the domain of cultural historians, anthropologists, political scientists, and sociologists, perhaps not philosophers. For unlike philosophers, social scientists are great at measuring and identifying human morality over time. Yes, this isn't what Glover is doing, but I must still assign demerit for bad marketing if nothing else.

As I have said, left to his own, Glover makes some good scholarship. However, the reader should treat "Humanity" for what it is, not what it is not.… (plus d'informations)

Ollessani töissä Maanpuolustuskorkeakoulun kurssikirjastossa, sain selville että Ihmisyys kuuluu kadettien kurssimateriaaliin. Olin ällistynyt ja iloinen, sillä Ihmisyys ei todellakaan käsittele sotaa glorifioivasti, vaan kertoo sen vaikutuksista ihmisen psyykeeseen. Mielestäni henkilöiden, joiden tuleva ammatti saattaa olla armeijan leivissä, olisi syytä opiskella myös tämänkaltaisia aiheita. Ihmisyys herättää ajattelemaan, järkyttää ja saattaa olla liikaa joillekkin, mutta se on ehdottomasti lukemisen arvoinen kirja.… (plus d'informations)

Humanity: A Moral History of the Twentieth Century
Jonathan Glover
September 19, 2011

Motivated by a comment by a philospher that the job of philosophy was to make sense of the twentieth century, Glover, an ethicist, reviews the horrors of the century past. He starts with the morals of war, reviewing close combat in the first world war, My Lai, HIroshima, and Bosnia. He points out that war becomes a trap for moral responses as it continues. It became easier to kill when it was at a distance. He notes that tribalism remains potent, reviewing Rwanda. He blames Nietzsche for undercutting the foundations of morality, with his will to power and the death of religion, and later in the book explains how the Nazis distorted Nietszche. Other than war, the great problems were ideologies, and the terror at the disposal of the state, leading to the great murderers, Stalin, Mao, and Pol Pot. Ideology is one of reasons ordinary people collaborate in atrocities, others being tribal identity, and being able to regard outsiders as less than human. He talks several times about the "cold joke", the euphenism covering the horror, like the comment that a Gulag prisoner shot was "making fertilizer"

In the end, he is for a world government with serious powers and ability to intervene for humanitarian ends, and for people to be guided by moral imagination, the ability to imagine what the other person is experiencing, and empathizing with them. This seemed to be borne out in the resolution of the Cuban missile crisis. Very good prose

Some notes:
"The chief business of twentieth century philosophy is to reckon with twentieth century history" - R.G. Collingwood

Hobbesian fear - the fear of the power of others. "And from this diffidence of one another, there is no way for any man to secure himself, so reasonable as Anticipation; that is, by force, or wiles, to master the persons of all men he can, so long, till he sees no other power great enough to endanger him" Thomas Hobbes, Leviathan

Regarding the psychosomatic symptoms of Nazis conducting the extermination of the Jews "These symptoms of inner conflict are an extreme case of what Socrates said about how the happiness of those who do immoral things is destroyed."

In the case of Heidegger and his embrace of Nazism. His work on Being is obscure, and a philosopher sent to Auschwitz, Jean Amery, commented on the emptiness of the notion. Also, that the obscure philosopher is in a sense trying to dominate his audience, asking for conclusions to be taken on his own authority

"If only there were evil people somewhere insidiously committing evil deads, and it were necessary only to separate them from the rest of us and destroy them. But the line dividing good and evil cuts through the heart of every human being"
Alexander Solzhenitsyn, The Gulag Archipelago… (plus d'informations)