An anthropological investigation of cruelty and its contrasts

Sage Journals: Philosophy and Social Criticism (forthcoming)
  Copy   BIBTEX

Abstract

Philosophy & Social Criticism, Ahead of Print. In liberal political philosophy, from Michel de Montaigne to Judith Shklar, cruelty – the wilful inflicting of pain on another in order to cause anguish and fear – has been singled out as ‘the most evil of all evils’ and as unjustifiable: the ultimate vice. An unconditional rejection and negation of cruelty is taken to be programmatic within a liberal paradigm. In this contribution, two anthropologists triangulate cruelty as a concept with torture and with love. Treating the capability to practise cruelty and the liability to suffer from cruelty as universal aspects of a human condition, Stade and Rapport aim to instantiate the precise enactment of cruelty, firstly, and secondly, to propose a process of its social negation. CIA training manuals and quotidian practice within the British National Health Service are employed as illustrative materials.

Links

PhilArchive



    Upload a copy of this work     Papers currently archived: 93,867

External links

Setup an account with your affiliations in order to access resources via your University's proxy server

Through your library

Similar books and articles

An anthropological investigation of cruelty and its contrasts.Ronald Stade & Nigel Rapport - forthcoming - Sage Publications Ltd: Philosophy and Social Criticism.
Cruelty, Injustice, and the Liberalism of Fear.Robin Douglass - 2023 - Political Theory 51 (5):790-813.
How Cruel Is Disease?Antonio Casado da Rocha - 2005 - Appraisal: A Journal of Constructive and Post-Critical Philosophy and Interdisciplinary Studies 5 (3):141-143.
Naturalizing cruelty.G. Randolph Mayes - 2009 - Biology and Philosophy 24 (1):21–34.

Analytics

Added to PP
2022-08-02

Downloads
2 (#1,823,102)

6 months
1 (#1,721,226)

Historical graph of downloads
How can I increase my downloads?

Citations of this work

No citations found.

Add more citations

References found in this work

No references found.

Add more references