The member states of the United Nations General Assembly in 2005 unanimously adopted the resolution on Responsibility to Protect to save citizens from genocide, war crimes, ethnic cleansing, and crimes against humanity. Since adoption, the norm has been invoked in Libya, South Sudan, Yemen, and Syria, nonetheless, the UN refrains to respond to the genocide committed in the Jammu & Kashmir and triggering a greater sense of anxiety. In this context, the present paper elucidates the factors (...) behind the UN failure. It asks why the UN failed to call R2P despite systematic crimes against humanity in Kashmir. What factors or forces preclude the UN to invoke R2P? The paper argues that the inability of the UN to invoke R2P is a consequence of systemic and domestic factors. The Indo-US strategic partnership, materialism, and New Delhi’s influence in the international system are obstructing the UN’s ability to play a decisive role. Meanwhile, the economic and military potential of India and its regional influence forbid the international community to dissuade India not to commit genocide in Jammu & Kashmir. So the high politics of materialism and national interests override the norm of human rights and humanity. (shrink)

This essay develops a detailed account of the features that make a group susceptible to the harm of genocide. If the members of a group consent to a life in common, if the culture of the group is comprehensive, and if the social structure of the group is such that membership cannot easily be renounced, then the flourishing of the group's culture and social ethos will have profound and far‐reaching effects on the well‐being of its individual members. Systematic destruction (...) of cultural and social institutions under these conditions will eventuate in individuals suffering the harms and deprivations peculiar to the crime of genocide. The later sections of the essay illustrate and further defend the thesis that “social death” is the harm that distinguishes genocide from other forms of political violence. (shrink)

Genocide is a violent process that aims at the liquidation of protected groups. Like individuals, groups can be killed in a variety of ways and for many different reasons. Only the intention of the perpetrator distinguishes genocide from other forms of mass violence. The implications of the account given are striking. Genocide is not in any sense distinctively heinous. Nor is it necessarily immoral. Under certain conditions, settlercolonialism, ethnic cleansing, and forced assimilation will count as (...) instances of the phenomenon. While the argument undermines the orthodox view, it can accommodate the idea that the Holocaust was distinctively heinous. (shrink)

What has compelled Jews in the Ottoman Empire, Turkey, and abroad to promote a positive image of Ottomans and Turks while they deny the Armenian genocide and the existence of anti-Semitism in Turkey? The dominant historical narrative is that Jews expelled from Spain in 1492 were embraced by the Ottoman Empire, and then later, protected from the Nazis during WWII. If we believe that Turks and Jews have lived in harmony for so long, then it is hard for us (...) to accept that the Turks could have committed genocide against the Armenians. In this article, the author confronts these convictions and circumstances to reflect on what moral responsibility the descendants of the victims of one genocide have to the descendants of victims of another. Baer delves into the history of Muslim-Jewish relations in the Ottoman Empire and Turkey to tease out the origin of these many tangled truths. He aims to bring about reconciliation between Jews, Muslims, and Christians, not only to face inconvenient historical facts, but to confront it and come to terms with it. By looking at the complexities of interreligious relations, Holocaust denial, genocide and ethnic cleansing, and confronting some long-standing historical stereotypes, the author sets out to tell a new history that goes against Turkish antisemitism and admits to the Armenian genocide. (shrink)

Rape, traditionally a spoil of war, became a weapon of war in the ethnic cleansing campaign in Bosnia. The ICTY Kunarac court responded by transforming wartime rape from an ignored crime into a crime against humanity. In its judgment, the court argued that the rapists violated the Muslim women’s right to sexual self-determination. Announcing this right to sexual integrity, the court transformed women’s vulnerability from an invitation to abuse into a mark of human dignity. This close reading of (...) the trial, guided by the phenomenological themes of the lived body and ambiguity, feminist critiques of the autonomous subject and the liberal sexual/social contract, critical legal theory assessments of human rights law and institutions, and psychoanalytic analyses of the politics of desire, argues that the court, by validating women’s epistemic authority (their right to establish the meaning of their experience of rape) and affirming the dignity of the vulnerable body (thereby dethroning the autonomous body as the embodiment of dignity), shows us that human rights instruments can be used to combat the epidemic of wartime rape if they are read as de-legitimating the authority of the masculine autonomous subject and the gender codes it anchors. (shrink)

It has been argued, and not without emotional detachment, that the Holocaust is unlike other events in world and Jewish history. Those who offer such arguments also claim that comparisons between events of ethnic cleansing, mass murder and other sorts of criminal behavior are not meant to purvey a kind of moral one-upmanship. The suffering and harm in one instance is as morally repugnant as those in any other instance, whether it is a Jewish child gassed and cremated (...) by the Nazis, a black child lynched in the southern United States, an Armenian child deliberately poisoned in a Turkish hospital, a Ukrainian child starved to death in a Stalinist blockade, a Native American child shot to death by Conquistadors, a Rwandan child hacked to death, or a Bosnian child blown to pieces by a land mine or sniper. (shrink)

The Philosophy of Human Rights brings together an extensive collection of classical and contemporary writings on the topic of human rights, including genocide, ethnic cleansing, minority cultures, gay and lesbian rights, and the environment, providing an exceptionally comprehensive introduction. Sources include authors such as Aristotle, Cicero, Thomas Aquinas, Confucius, Hobbes, Locke, rant. Marx, Gandhi. Hart, Feinberg, Nussbaum, the Dalai Lama, Derrida, Lyocard and Rorty. Ideal for courses in human rights, social theory, ethical theory, and political science, each (...) reading; begins with a brief introduction, and is followed with study questions and suggested further readings. (shrink)

This innovative volume will be welcomed by moral and political philosophers, social scientists, and anyone who reflects seriously on the twentieth century's heavy burden of war, genocide, ethnic cleansing, and other evidence of people's desire to harm one another. María Pía Lara brings together a provocative set of essays that reexamine evil in the context of a "postmetaphysical" world, a world that no longer equates natural and human evil and no longer believes in an omnipotent God. The (...) question of how and why God permits evil events to occur is replaced by the question of how and why humans perform radically evil acts. (shrink)

In the wake of uncivil strife—of genocide, "ethnic cleansing," apartheid— the prospect of forgiveness seems as elusive as the notion itself. In this paper, I seek to assess the complex factors that render forgiveness or social reconciliation such vexed concepts. For Desmond Tutu's pleas for "confession, forgiveness, and reconciliation in the lives of nations" meet with his fellow Nobel Laureate, Wole Soyinka's objection that justice is ill "served by discharging the guilty without evidence of mitigation—or remorse." One (...) may, of course, speak of unspeakable suffering; yet tragedy is never given simply. How we remember the Rwandan genocide, the legacy of apartheid, or the Shoah—whether as morally tragic or merely an unimportant political failure—depends upon how we "see" or imagine evil. To remember such suffering, we must first evoke what is effaced, bring to word the transgressed command. Only then can we speak of social reconciliation, forgiveness, or the fitting measures of retribution and reparation. Imagining, remembering, redressing evil—these, I will argue, comprise distinct, yet finally inseparable elements of social reconciliation, each admitting of no less distinct orders of legal-political, ethical, and religious interpretation. (shrink)

The International Commission on Intervention and State Sovereignty's report, The Responsibility to Protect, argues that when a state is unable or unwilling to uphold its citizens? basic human rights, such as in cases of genocide, ethnic cleansing, and crimes against humanity, the international community has a responsibility to protect these citizens by undertaking humanitarian intervention. An essential issue, however, remains unresolved: which particular agent in the international community has the duty to intervene? In this article, I critically (...) examine four ways of assigning this duty. Although I highlight the benefits of institutionalising the responsibility to protect, I argue that we should adopt, in the short term at least, a consequentialist solution: humanitarian intervention should be the responsibility of the intervener that will be the most effective. (shrink)

Some authors think that humanitarian interventions are always morally wrong. Others think that they are sometimes justified. In this paper, I argue that the international community has a moral duty to humanitarian intervention when it comes to mass murder, mass rape, genocide, ethnic cleansing, and deliberate starvation. It is argued that we all have good reasons to endorse an intervention norm protecting basic rights.

Abstract Building on the authors' previous work regarding the classical Confucian position on the legitimate use of military force as represented by Mencius and Xunzi, this paper probes their understanding of punitive expeditions undertaken against tyrants in particular ? aims, justification, preconditions, and limits. It compares this understanding with contemporary Western models of humanitarian intervention, and argues that the Confucian punitive expedition aligns most closely with the emerging ?responsibility to protect? model in Western discussions, although it also differs from the (...) latter in certain respects. For example, the Confucian expedition explicitly forwards as legitimate aims regime change and the punishment of tyrants, in addition to rescue of an abused population and assistance in rebuilding a decent society. The Confucian understanding also appears to set a lower threshold standard (well short of genocide, ethnic cleansing, or large-scale massacre) for what counts as severe tyranny warranting intervention, and it explicitly speaks of an obligation (beyond mere permissibility) to intervene when that threshold is exceeded. In its concluding section, the paper discusses some possible contemporary implications of the classical Confucian understanding of a punitive expedition against tyrants. (shrink)

Nationalism has been a cause of great misery in the world. In this century alone we have seen a number of hideous forms of nationalism leading to genocide, ethnic cleansing, forced relocations, and civil wars. The violent conflicts between Serbians, Croatians, and Muslims in the former Yugoslavia; the Hutus and the Tutsis in Central Africa; Palestinians and Jews in the Middle East; Afrikaners, Zulus, and Xhosas in Southern Africa; and the Nazis and non-Aryans, are just some of (...) these. (shrink)

Some authors think that humanitarian interventions are always morally wrong. Others think that they are sometimes justified. In this paper, I argue that the international community has a moral duty to humanitarian intervention when it comes to mass murder, mass rape, genocide, ethnic cleansing, and deliberate starvation. It is argued that we all have good reasons to endorse an intervention norm protecting basic rights.

This book analyses the problems of current just war theory, and offers a more stable justificatory framework for non-intervention in international relations. The primary purpose of just war theory is to provide a language and a framework by which decision makers and citizens can organize and articulate arguments about the justice of particular wars. Given that the majority of conflicts that threaten human security are now intra-state conflicts, just war theory is often called on to make judgments about wars of (...) intervention. This book aims to critically examine the tenets of just war theory in light of these changes, and formulate a new theory of intervention and just cause. For Michael Walzer, the leading scholar of just war theory, armed humanitarian intervention is permissible only in cases of genocide, ethnic cleansing, widespread massacres, or enslavement. This book shows why this threshold is too restrictive in light of the progressive shift away from interstate conflict as well as the emerging norms of 'sovereignty as responsibility' and the 'responsibility to protect'. _Justice, Intervention and Force in International Relations_ aims to establish a new, stable foundation for non-intervention and a revised threshold for 'just cause'. In addition, this book demonstrates that over-reliance on the just cause category distorts understanding, analysis, and public discussion of the justice or injustice of resorting to war. This new book will be of much interest to students of ethics, security studies, international relations and international law. Kimberley Hudson is Assistant Professor of Political Science at American International College, and has a Phd in International Relations from Brown University. (shrink)

Nakba is ignored in Western philosophy encyclopedias, and the notion of genocide is rarely explained. In turn, there is much talk about the Holocaust.

The first edition of The Morality of War was one of the most widely-read and successful books ever written on the topic. In this second edition, Brian Orend builds on the substantial strengths of the first, adding important new material on: cyber-warfare; drone attacks; the wrap-up of Iraq and Afghanistan; conflicts in Libya and Syria; and protracted struggles . Updated and streamlined throughout, the book offers new research tools and case studies, while keeping the winning blend of theory and history (...) featured in the first edition. This book remains an engaging and comprehensive examination of the ethics, and practice, of war and peace in today’s world. (shrink)

In this paper, we will critically examine the notion of rationality and the disabling instinct of self-preservation that play out in human relationships. That “man is a rational animal,” as Aristotle declared is usually taken for granted in social studies. But whether humans act rationally all the time, and in all circumstances remains questionable. Here, we shall investigate this concern from a decolonial perspective by engaging some contradictions thrown up in the context of coloniality within which a section of humanity (...) dehumanizes the rest. The question then is, how rational is the intellectual program of coloniality? Taking a cue from conversational thinking that places the notion of relationship at the center of decolonial analysis, we argue that coloniality fractures the inter and intra-racial relationships due mainly to the instinct of self-preservation that overwhelms human rationality. What has emerged today as the superior/inferior divide, racialism, classism, internal colonialism, ethnic cleansing, apartheid, xenophobia, and genocide are some of the consequences of warped and uncritical thinking driven by an extreme form of the instinct of self-preservation. We argue that the promotion of critical (higher-order) thinking in addition to ordinary (lower-order) thinking could be crucial in a decolonial program. (shrink)

In this essay, I analyze the cosmopolitan project for a new international order that Habermas has articulated in recent publications. I argue that his presentation of the project oscillates between two models. The first is a very ambitious model for a future international order geared to fulfill the peace and human rights goals of the UN Charter. The second is a minimalist model, in which the obligation to protect human rights by the international community is circumscribed to the negative duty (...) of preventing wars of aggression and massive human rights violations due to armed conflicts such as ethnic cleansing or genocide. According to this model, any more ambitious goals should be left to a global domestic politics, which would have to come about through negotiated compromises among domesticated major powers at the transnational level. I defend the ambitious model by arguing that there is no basis for drawing a normatively significant distinction between massive human rights violations due to armed conflicts and those due to regulations of the global economic order. I conclude that the cosmopolitan goals of the Habermasian project can only be achieved if the principles of transnational justice recognized by the international community are ambitious enough to cover economic justice. (shrink)

In this essay, I analyze the cosmopolitan project for a new international order that Habermas has articulated in recent publications. I argue that his presentation of the project oscillates between two models. The first is a very ambitious model for a future international order geared to fulfill the peace and human rights goals of the UN Charter. The second is a minimalist model, in which the obligation to protect human rights by the international community is circumscribed to the negative duty (...) of preventing wars of aggression and massive human rights violations due to armed conflicts such as ethnic cleansing or genocide. According to this model, any more ambitious goals should be left to a global domestic politics, which would have to come about through negotiated compromises among domesticated major powers at the transnational level. I defend the ambitious model by arguing that there is no basis for drawing a normatively significant distinction between massive human rights violations due to armed conflicts and those due to regulations of the global economic order. I conclude that the cosmopolitan goals of the Habermasian project can only be achieved if the principles of transnational justice recognized by the international community are ambitious enough to cover economic justice. (shrink)

The first edition of _The Morality of War_ was one of the most widely-read and successful books ever written on the topic. In this second edition, Brian Orend builds on the substantial strengths of the first, adding important new material on: cyber-warfare; drone attacks; the wrap-up of Iraq and Afghanistan; conflicts in Libya and Syria; and protracted struggles. Updated and streamlined throughout, the book offers new research tools and case studies, while keeping the winning blend of theory and history featured (...) in the first edition. This book remains an engaging and comprehensive examination of the ethics, and practice, of war and peace in today’s world. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Diacritics 30.4 (2000) 38-58 [Access article in PDF] Giorgio Agamben and the Politics of the Living Dead Andrew Norris Death is most frightening, since it is a boundary. —Aristotle, Nicomachean EthicsAnd as the same thing there exists in us living and dead and the waking and the sleeping and young and old: for these things having changed round are those, and those having changed round are these. —Heraclitus, Fragment (...) 88 What is politics today? What is its relationship to the tradition from which it emerges? The questions are difficult ones to answer in part because contemporary politics seems so schizophrenic. In affluent Western countries politics is increasingly a matter of spectacle on the one hand and managed economies on the other. Hannah Arendt seems quite confirmed in her claim that the once-glorious public realm of appearance is fundamentally degraded when it is overrun by concerns more appropriate to the private realm, such as household management and gossip. If this "unnatural growth of the natural" [47] inclines us to nostalgia for a time when the two realms were more decisively separated, such nostalgia is likely intensified by the "ethnic cleansing," rape camps, and genocide that we now associate with names such as "Yugoslavia" and "Rwanda." But as improbable as any flight to the past may be, it is even less likely that the politics of that past could help us navigate the treacherous waters of our current technological society. I have in mind not only the familiar claim that the attempted genocides of our time are only made possible by quite modern forms of technology, organization, and experience, 1 but also recent scientific and "medical" advances. Consider just two: first, the corporate driven and controlled development of biotechnologies, in which huge multinationals are acquiring patents to genetic "information" such as "all human blood cells that have come from the umbilical cord of [any] newborn child." If there is any doubt that such developments will lead us to redefine the human being, these may be laid to rest by the case of John Moore, an Alaskan businessman who found his own body parts had been patented, without his knowledge, by the University of California at Los Angeles and licensed to the Sandoz Pharmaceutical Corporation [Rifkin 60-61]. So much for Locke's attempt to ground the institution of private property in the fact that "every Man has a Property in his own Person"! 2 In its place we seem to be moving [End Page 38] toward something more like the "logical synthesis of biology and economy" called for by the National Socialist Institut allemand in Paris in 1942 [Agamben, Homo Sacer 145]. A similar process of redefinition is already underway in the field of death, a phenomenon that scientists and lawyers are having a harder and harder time pinning down. Where once death was defined by the cessation of the movement of the heart and lungs, recent life support technologies have forced scientists to define death in terms of such technologies. Witness Doctor Norman Shumway's defense of the definition of death as brain death: "I'm saying that anyone whose brain is dead is dead. It is the one determinant that would be universally applicable, because the brain is the one organ that can't be transplanted" [163]. By implication, if and when technology is developed that allows for brain transplants, even those whose brains are "dead" will be brought back to some kind of life, perhaps as organ farms for others who are less ambiguously alive.Giorgio Agamben, from whose book Homo Sacer: Sovereign Power and Bare Life I take both this last grisly example and its analysis, argues that, contrary to appearances, such developments do not represent a radical break with the tradition. His analysis both builds upon and corrects Michel Foucault's claim that politics in our time is constituted by disciplines of normalization and subjectification that Foucault labels "bio-power." For Foucault, biopower is fundamentally modern. "What might be called a society's 'threshold of modernity,'" he writes, "has been reached when the life of the species is wagered... (shrink)

This book is a survey of how law, language and translation overlap with concepts, crimes and conflicts. It is a transdisciplinary survey exploring the dynamics of colonialism and the globalization of crime. Concepts and conflicts are used here to mean 'conflicting interpretations' engendering real conflicts. Beginning with theoretical issues and hermeneutics in chapter 2, the study moves on to definitions and applications in chapter 3, introducing cattle stealing as a comparative theme and global case study in chapter 4. Cattle stealing (...) is also known in English as 'rustling, duffing, raiding, stock theft, lifting and predatorial larceny.' Crime and punishment are differently perceived depending on cultures and legal systems: 'Captain Starlight' was a legendary 'duffer'; in India 'lifting' a sacred cow is a sacrilegious act. Following the globalization of crime, chapter 5 deals with human rights, ethnic cleansing and genocide. International treaties in translation set the scene for two world wars. Introducing 'unequal treaties' (e.g. Hong Kong), chapter 6 highlights disasters caused by treaties in translation. Cases feature American Indians (the 'trail of broken treaties'), Maoris (Treaty of Waitangi) and East Africa (Treaty of Wuchale). (shrink)

Barely seventeen years into the twenty-first century, our world continues to be plagued by endless wars and violence. Africa is not immune from these crises. As many countries in Africa celebrate more than fifty years of independence from colonial rule, Africa is still the poorest continent in the world. Religious wars, genocides, ethnic and tribal cleansings have come to define the continent’s contemporary history. Corruption, nepotism, dictatorship, disregard for human life, tribalism, and many social vices are normalized realities in (...) many parts of the continent. Rather than despair, a radical refocusing on Africa’s rich history of hospitality that affirms the flourishing of all life ought to be embraced. This article aims to do exactly this by exploring Africa’s role and place in the history of three Abrahamic religions; Judaism, Christianity, and Islam. While celebrating Africa’s unique role as the gateway for the realization of divine hospitality, this article aims to serve as a witness to an ethic of life that is relevant for the global church’s vision and mission to a pluralistic world and for the mission of the churches of Africa to addressing the social, cultural, and political crises faced by the continent. To achieve these, this work appropriates a comparative theological method that sheds light on the centrality of Africa in these three Abrahamic religions with a bias for the flourishing of life. Keywords: Africa, Hospitality, Life, Christianity, Islam, Judaism. (shrink)

This paper examines the neo-colonial project of Narendra Modi implemented in Kashmir after the revocation of special status on August 5, 2019. The neo-colonial infrastructure supported by the threads of re-classification of legal residents and land designations intends to significantly transform the demography of Muslim majority Kashmir into a Muslim minority, consequently destroying the Muslim identity of the state. The abrogation of Article 370 and enactment of new domicile law has extended the legal and administrative control of New Delhi, making (...) Kashmir indistinguishable from the Indian legal system and leaving no room for the local legislative assembly to make laws beneficial for the state residents. The paper asks how India is implementing the neo-colonial settler agenda in Kashmir. How and to what extent legal and military instruments are employed to disempower Kashmiris from territorial and cultural identity? The paper argues that Prime Minister Narendra Modi is pursuing a neo-colonial settler agenda in Kashmir through ‘destroy and replace,’ which is supported by the neo-liberal agenda, including; new land management policy, new domicile law, spatial planning and development, new settlements of Hindus, authoritative central control, and massive militarization to carry out gross human rights abuses and repression. (shrink)

What will be the future of war? No-one can tell for sure, and so there is much speculation and many contending views. In this article I discuss one of those views, the notion that war of the future will primarily be a protracted form of terrorism, insurgency, and low-intensity conflict within 'failed' states and civilizations, which will sometimes lapse into ethnic cleansing and genocide. It will be 'dirty war'. The antagonists will be rage-filled 'warriors'. War will be (...) fought in the wastelands of the Third World. Wars will occur because of state failure, rather than because of state strength and expansion. They will feature 'irregular' forces rather than the disciplined hierarchical armies that have been the defining characteristic of recent Western military history. Frequently, the military forces of developed societies will be drawn into these conflicts. This is a plausible view of the future, one that is influential in Washington, and a number of serious academics2 subscribe to it. (shrink)

Terrorist violence is often condemned for targeting innocents or non-combatants. There are two objections to this line of argument. First, one may doubt that terrorism is necessarily directed against innocents or non-combatants. However, I will focus on the second objection, according to which there may be exceptions from the prohibition against killing the innocent. In my article I will elaborate whether lethal terrorism against innocents can be justified in a supreme emergency. Starting from a critique of Michael Walzer’s account of (...) supreme emergency, I will argue that the supreme emergency exemption justifies the resort to terrorism against innocents to avert moral disasters such as genocide and ethnic cleansing, provided that the criteria of last resort, proportionality and public declaration are satisfied. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Exclusivity and ParticularityJohn Dominic CrossanSeveral of the authors spoke of the imperial exclusivity so characteristic of Christianity. For José Ignacio Cabezón, “What Buddhists find objectionable is (a) the Christian characterization of the deity whose manifestation Jesus is said to be, and (b) the claim that Jesus is unique in being such a manifestation” (p. 56). For Bokin Kim, “most Christians hold to an exclusive view of Christ that claims (...) his uniqueness” (p. 76). For Rita Gross, “the exclusive claims made on behalf of Jesus by Christians appalled me even as a teenager, and my repugnance for exclusive truth claims on the part of religions—any religion—has not diminished since. Thus, part of my journey is working out both a theory and a praxis of religious pluralism that is neither relativistic nor universalistic, that encourages both commitment to one tradition and appreciation of other traditions” (p. 64). I myself find such exclusivistic claims for Christianity, or any other religion, insulting in theory and lethal in practice, objectionable in history and obscene in theology. They are implicitly genocidal even if political impotence limits the divine ethnic cleansing they imagine. But how, as Gross repeats, does one establish “a position that is neither relativistic nor exclusivistic”? (p. 65). My own answer is particularity, but I must explain that in terms of my understanding of Trinity, divinity, and particularity.Trinity seems a particularly and peculiarly Christian understanding of God, but my proposal is that the structure of the Holy is Trinitarian in all religions that I know about and even in all those I can imagine. I speak very deliberately about the Holy (not about God) as the infinite mystery that surrounds and supports, fascinates and terrifies us. It is that against which we interact as meaning-seeking beings. Be it absolute open meaninglessness or absolute univocal meaning, our interaction with it does not seem to be an option but a necessity. And my point is that the Holy is Trinitarian in structure. It is not just on the one hand that religion is Trinitarian in structure. But it is not on the other hand that the Holy in itself and apart from us is Trinitarian in structure. It is, I propose, that the Holy in itself as seen by us across the spectrum of world religious experience is Trinitarian in structure. That Trinity [End Page 97] involves, first, ultimate metaphor, that foundational image that imagines the Holy as, for example, power, person, state, or order, as nature, god/goddess, nirvana, or mandate of heaven. It involves, second, material manifestation, some physical object in which that metaphorical vision is peculiarly, specially, or even uniquely incarnated, some person, place, or thing, some individual or collectivity, some cave or shrine or temple, some clearing in the forest or tree in the desert where that ultimate referent is encountered and experienced. It involves, finally, preliminary preparation, for there must be at least one believer to begin with and eventually more to end with. But, as there are always nonbelievers as well, some prior affinity must exist, as it were, between this metaphor rather than that, this manifestation rather than that, and this believer rather than that. For me, therefore, all faith and all religion, not just my own Christianity, is Trinitarian in structure and that structure seems to inhere in the Holy itself, at least insofar as we can see it. For me, therefore, Christianity and Buddhism differ most profoundly on their ultimate metaphor for the Holy: it is person (God) for the former but state (nirvana) for the latter. In Christianity, of course, our ultimate metaphor is rather overinvested: it is person; and that person is parent; and that parent is father. But I leave those specifications aside for the moment.Divinity is the term I use for any material manifestation. By calling such manifestations divine I mean precisely that a religion’s ultimate metaphor is experienced by believers as peculiarly, specially, or even uniquely present in that physical phenomenon. In that sense I understand both Christ and the Buddha to be divine in exactly the same way—that is, as incarnations of the Holy but within different ultimate metaphors. Christ did... (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Philosophy and Rhetoric 35.3 (2002) 244-265 [Access article in PDF] Community, Assimilation, and the Unfamiliar Tim Donovan Fellowship We are five friends, one day we came out of the house one after the other, first one came and placed himself beside the gate, then the second came, or rather he glided through the gate like a little ball of quicksilver, and placed himself near the first one, and then (...) came the third, then the fourth, then the fifth. Finally we all stood in a row. People began to notice us, they pointed at us and said: "Those five just came out of that house." Since then we have been living together; it would be a peaceful life if it weren't for the sixth one continually trying to interfere. He doesn't do us any harm, but he annoys us, and that is harm enough; why does he intrude where he is not wanted? We don't know him and don't want him to join us. There was a time, of course, when the five of us did not know one another, either; and it could be said that we still don't know one another, but what is possible and can be tolerated by the five of us is not possible and cannot be tolerated with the sixth one. In any case, we are five and don't want to be six. And what is the point of this continual being together anyhow? It is also pointless for the five of us, but here we are together; a new combination, however, we do not want, just because of our experiences. But how is one to make this clear to the sixth one? Long explanations would almost amount to accepting him in our circle, so we prefer not to explain and not to accept him. No matter how he pouts his lips, we push him away with our elbows, but however much we push him away, back he comes. — Franz Kafka 1. I want to introduce this essay on Edmund Spenser's early modern dialogue View of the Present State of Ireland with a contemporary question influenced by Franz Kafka's epigraph: What are the principles that presuppose an understanding of community? I have purposely stated the question of belonging as "an understanding" rather than "what are the principles that we presuppose as...." After all, who is this we that so easily gathers identity within the common usage? I begin with a question to maintain uncertainty, [End Page 244] which indicates a responsibility to greet the unfamiliar, all the while knowing very clearly that the concept of community naturally presumes some common measure of familiarity. Yet as Kafka's allegory implies: What presupposes the propriety of those familiar experiences we name our own?Spenser's dialogue is undoubtedly challenging, a challenge that has drawn an enormous amount of recent critical analysis from literary critics and historians. Still, a general difficulty persists. Michael Donnelly summarizes the difficulty quite well when he notes that the View is quite "anomalous in the Spenserian oeuvre," a rather strange dialogue that seems uncharacteristic of the poet's humanist image (1). The challenges certainly begin with the troubling difficulties of an argument that concludes with the stark political necessities of enforced famine, massive relocation, and ethnic cleansing. Furthermore, the anxious burden of justifying this dire program expresses itself in a tone that would be thought intemperate even by many of Spenser's contemporaries (McCabe, 116). More important than the dialogue's dire tone of determination, there is a continued resonance of enforced cultural assimilation and genocide that haunts our contemporary world forewarned by arguments of pathology and apartheid. However, a glance at recent political news would indicate that these forewarnings are repeatedly ignored. I believe the challenge that the View evokes dwells in the traditional lineage of the concept of community. Thus, we cannot so easily dismiss Spenser's dialogue as merely an early modern problem; nor can we dismiss it as another diatribe in the long-standing tradition of racial screeds. The political problems that the dialogue engages foreshadow current... (shrink)

This response to Falguni Sheth’s and Ann Murphy’s readings of my book, Contesting the Politics of Genocidal Rape: Affirming the Dignity of the Vulnerable Body, pursues the questions they raise regarding the domestic implications of establishing rape as a crime against humanity, the problematic distinction between genocide and ethnic cleansing, the politics of autonomy, the trafficking in shame, the relationship between violence and vulnerability, and the possibility of an ethics of vulnerability, by focusing on the disruptions created (...) by ICTY Kunarac case. These disruptions blur the distinction between wartime and peacetime rape, challenge the difference between genocide and ethnic cleansing, expose the norms of patriarchal privilege embedded in ontologies of autonomy and invulnerability, reveal the relationship between an ontology and ethics of vulnerability and show how shame, as Pharmakon, can transform the shocked conscience of humanity invoked in contemporary human rights documents into political action. (shrink)

"A wild and exuberant romp through the terrain of the monstrous . . . Oppenheimer's lucid explanations are the perfect antidotes to the sordid scenes he recreates." -American Book Review "A masterly and original study of one of the most frightening topics with which human beings have to struggle." -Literary Review "What is compelling, different and page-turning about this impressive book is that the author analyses evil through the medium of films and literature . . . Cinema buffs will find (...) it a fascinating read." -Evening Standard The notion of evil- does it exist? what forms does it take? -has always fascinated humankind. The evil underlying such atrocities as the Holocaust, Communist China's Tibetan abattoir, and the murderous ethnic cleansing undertaken by the Serbs and Croats seems beyond explanations or analysis. In this powerfully original work, Oppenheimer analyzes the phenomenon of evil in a mental behavior that emerges in particular conditions. Oppenheimer argues that evil contains specific, predictable ingredients. By understanding its nature, we can diagnose its specific manifestations in mass murder, genocide, and serial killings. Utilizing a variety of cinematic and literary genres in developing its evidence, the book considers such familiar films as The Silence of the Lambs and Brazil , and draws upon such literary works as Richard III, Oedipus the King and the Picture of Dorian Gray. Evil and the Demonic takes a bold first step, providing a framework in which to place the horrors of human existence. (shrink)

It's a mistake to endow the Holocaust or any other massive case of crimes against humanity with cosmic significance. We want to do it because we think the moral enormity of the events should be balanced by an equally grand theory. But it's not. The attempt to do so is poignant.Alain FinkielkrautSavage ethnonationalism, dating back to the end of the eighteenth century, and violent ethnic conflict, as ancient as history, are sometimes viewed as if for the first time in (...) the post-Cold War era. Still, it is the case that the end of the discipline imposed by the bipolar international system has permitted temporarily repressed ethnic and nationalist passions to reassert themselves. In response, a vast literature has sprung up discussing what states should do about genocide and ethnic cleansing, the gravest human rights abuses. In what follows I will consider barbarous nationalism in the context of the liberal international order put into place at the end of the Second World War, the roles of politics, law and morality forming a sub text to that discussion. (shrink)

When discussing whether or not our elected governments should intervene to end genocide, war crimes, ethnic cleansing, and crimes against humanity in other countries, the humanitarian intervention debate has largely been assuming that liberal democracies bear no responsibility for the injustice at hand: someone else is committing shameful acts; we are merely considering whether or not we have a positive duty to do something about it. Here I argue that there are important instances in which this dominant (...) third party perspective (TPP) is empirically false and normatively misguided. Much before our positive ?responsibility to protect? potential victims from mass atrocities, we violate our negative duty not to harm these victims. Employing work by Thomas Pogge and Leif Wenar, I argue that this harm currently comes about as our elected governments either buy, or allow our corporations to buy, the world's most precious resources from brutal dictators and warlords, who dominate some of the states that are at the heart of intervention discussions. In these cases, democracies' most immediate duty is not intervention but rather humanitarian disintervention: boycotting severely oppressive regimes, and in particular stopping to recognizing these regimes ? whether dictators or civil warriors ? as possessing legitimate authority to sell their peoples' resources. I begin with a brief survey of the intervention literature, followed by the foundations for the disintervention alternative. I then elaborate the conceptual and practical advantages of disintervention, concluding with thoughts on the reasons for TPP's lasting dominance. (shrink)

On September 9, 2013, diplomats and civil society activists gathered in a ballroom in New York to welcome Jennifer Welsh as the UN Secretary-General's new Special Adviser on the Responsibility to Protect. In her first public appearance in that role, Special Adviser Welsh explained that one of her top priorities would be “to take prevention seriously and to make it meaningful in practice.” “In the context of RtoP,” Welsh added during the discussion, “we are talking about crimes, and crimes have (...) implications in terms of how we deal with them. You'll hear me say that a lot.” Welsh's approach of treating RtoP as a principle that is primarily concerned with prevention and is firmly linked to international crimes neatly captures the evolution of RtoP since its formal acceptance by states at the 2005 UN World Summit. Paragraphs 138 to 140 of the World Summit's Outcome Document not only elevated the element of prevention to a prominent place within the principle of RtoP but also restricted the scope of RtoP to four specific crimes under international law: genocide, war crimes, ethnic cleansing, and crimes against humanity. The crime and prevention–focused version of RtoP has subsequently been defended and promoted by Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon and by UN member states. This article seeks to systematically explore some of the implications of linking RtoP to the concept of international crimes, with a particular focus on the preventive dimension of RtoP, the so-called responsibility to prevent. What, then, are the consequences of approaching the responsibility to prevent as the prevention of international crimes?In order to systematically examine this question, this article turns to literature from criminology. While the criminological perspective has so far been neglected in debates on RtoP, the prominent criminologists John Hagan and Wenona Rymond-Richmond argue vehemently that “criminology is crucially positioned to contribute understanding and direction to what the United Nations has mandated as the ‘Responsibility to Protect’ groups that are threatened with mass atrocities.” For the purpose of this article, the label “criminology” comprises domestic criminology, supranational criminology, and international criminal law. While insights from supranational criminology and international criminal law are directly applicable to international crimes, translating knowledge generated in relation to crimes at the domestic level to atrocity crimes at the international level is, of course, not without challenges. Reasoning by analogy is an important method in this regard, though given the anarchical nature of international society some analogies will inevitably be imperfect. The benefits of such an approach, if carefully employed, however, outweigh the risks. (shrink)

The contemporary world is passing through a very crucial time. According to UN reports, the world is facing its ‘worst humanitarian crisis’ since the end of World War II, with more than 20 million people facing starvation and famine in four countries.. Different regions of the world are marred by wars and conflicts. Unfortunately, attempts to end those so far have come to naught. As a consequence of these wars and conflicts ordinary people continue to suffer from hunger, and diseases. (...) They continue to be victims of ethnic cleansing and genocide. Despite all efforts to stymie poverty, social, economic and gender inequalities, religious conflicts and extremism of all kinds, these continue to increase at an alarming pace. As if these were not enough, people have to deal with the negative impacts of rapid climate change in terms of increased number of floods, wild fires, and global warming. (shrink)

Bashabi Fraser is a poet in her own right. She is also a creative translator. This is a review of her edited volume on the Partition of Bengal. The review highlights our need to read the partition event as a warning for future and ongoing genocides. The review also shows the superiority of literature over history. And finally it has something to say about translation and separately, on P Lal. For instance, this reviewer in many other reviews too insists on (...) the superiority of Fr Mignon SJ over Prof Lal's understanding of translation. (shrink)