The article features an analytic protocol for examining controversial criminal cases in critical thinking courses. The rubric has been designed to be useful to busy critical thinking teachers who wish to draw on student interest in true crime. Six guidelines are presented that are intended to provide the instructor with a convenient scheme for quickly and easily framing classroom discussions. Due to their generality, the guidelines can be readily applied to a wide-range of cases, giving educators a high degree of (...) flexibility in the selection of criminal affairs. (shrink)

Perhaps the bleakest fact of all," said Supreme Court Justice William Brennan in 1994, "is that the death penalty is imposed not only in a freakish and discriminatory manner, out. also in some cases upon defendants who are actually innocent.".

This paper gives a semantics for schematic logic, proving soundness and completeness. The argument for soundness is carried out in ontologically innocent fashion, relying only on the existence of formulae which are actually written down in the course of a derivation in the logic. This makes the logic available to a nominalist, even a nominalist who does not wish to rely on modal notions, and who accepts the possibility that the universe may in fact be finite.

This article argues for two theses: first, that Plato’s Apology is not directed to the Athenian public in general, but to an elite audience. Second, that because of this fact, the argument advanced by Vlastos that the Apology must be close to the historical defence of Socrates, because Plato could not present a fictional Socrates to his compatriots, is not compelling. The paper looks at the way Plato’s Socrates responds to the religious charges and concludes that he successfully refutes the (...) charge of atheism but evades the charge of heterodoxy. Although sufficient from a legal point of view and from the perspective of a highly educated audience, Socrates’ defence against the religious charges is actually ineffective from the point of view of the average Athenian. Burnyeat is therefore right to say that the Athenians correctly convicted Socrates of heterodoxy. This fact, along with Ledger’s recent stylometric evidence which places the Apology in 387 BC, effectively making it a middle dialogue, indicates that the work may never have been meant as a reasonably close reiteration of what Socrates said in his trial. On the question of the historicity of the Apology, then, the only reasonable response is to remain agnostic. (shrink)

The United Nations Charter prohibits states to use force against other states except in ‘individual or collective self-defence if an armed attack occurs’.1 In the past, it may have seemed reasonable to insist that permissible defence must await the actual occurrence of an armed attack. Because war is usually disastrous for all concerned and to be avoided if at all possible, and because successful defence has often been at least possible against a military attack, it may not be imprudent (...) for a state threatened with attack by another state to make every effort to avoid war by diplomatic means and thus to defer military action until its adversary actually strikes the first blow. It is also possible to deter the attack by threatening the potential aggressor both with military defeat and with the destruction, if war occurs, of assets that the aggressor values – for example, in the case of a tyrannical regime, military assets on which it depends for control of its own population. (shrink)

Mistakes are a fact of life, and the criminal law is sadly no exception to the rule. Wrongful convictions are rightfully abhorred, and false acquittals can likewise inspire outrage. In these cases, we implicitly draw a distinction between a court’s finding and a defendant’s actual guilt or innocence. These are intuitive concepts, but as this paper aims to show, contemporary use of the reasonable person standard in the law of self-defense muddles them. -/- Ordinarily, we can distinguish between (...) a person's material guilt or innocence and his juridical guilt or innocence. Someone is materially guilty if his actions in fact matched the conduct proscribed by the penal law. Someone is juridically guilty if he is found guilty by a tribunal, i.e., convicted by a judge or jury. When a tribunal convicts a innocent person or acquits a guilty person, the accuracy of its verdicts can be criticized. -/- There are three definitions of the reasonable person extant amongst courts and commentators: the reasonable person is either (1) a hypothetical ordinary, average person; (2) the embodiment of a community ideal; or (3) an embodiment of an objective ethical standard, i.e., ethical principles independent of community opinion. Nonetheless, after observing the circularity, vagueness, and lack of consistency in the definitions, wise courts and commentators have sometimes resorted to identifying the reasonable person with the judgment of the jury. -/- This piece argues that failure to settle on a fixed definition of the "reasonable person" in the criminal law of self-defense effectively conflates material guilt and innocence and juridical guilt and innocence at the doctrinal level. When courts do not clearly and consistently choose between standards one, two, and three, or when they expressly treat the reasonable person as a form of words standing in for the judgment of the jury, they make it conceptually impossible for observers outside the court system to apply a fixed, definite standard to assess the actual guilt of a person apart from the judgments of tribunals. -/- This paper's main purpose is to identify a conceptual knot rather than propose reforms. Still, it recommends two small changes meant to lift the confusion surrounding the reasonable person. First, it urges that courts expressly settle on one of the three definitions canvassed above. Second, it recommends that courts be mindful of the nature of the reasonable person standard and as such, be wary of treating conclusions about reasonableness as ordinary legal precedents, and wield the power of directed verdict aggressively to protect unpopular defendants from abuse by juries. (shrink)

First, I argue that the contestability of the term “terrorism” is insufficient to justify the targeting of those who are innocent noncombatants beyond reasonable doubt; second, that states could be as vicious, if not even more so, than nonstate actors could be in perpetrating acts that might be described as terrorism, and, third, that an adequate definition of international terrorism must focus on the actual victims of such despicable acts.

In my replies to some of my critics I argue that while the practice of terrorism is never justified, I concede that it is rarely but sometimes excused. As result, those who engage in excusable terrorism has a substantial burden of proof. They need to offer a compelling argument to show that the harm caused by their terrorist violence is actually excused by the extenuating circumstances and the goal that they are trying to achieve, so they will not be morally (...) or legally blameworthy for bringing about such harm. I am assuming that they will need to demonstrate that the alleged harm is excusable because it is necessary to accomplish a worthy goal and there is no other reasonable way to obtain such a worthy goal without deliberately harming those who can be reasonably conceived of as impeccably or objectively innocent. That is, those who are innocent beyond reasonable doubt. (shrink)

Along with the Strait of Malacca and the Singapore Straits, the Strait of Hormuz is arguably the most important bottleneck in international navigation because a large part of the global oil production needs to be shipped through this passage, which is only a few kilometers wide. In the context of the dispute about Iran’s nuclear program and new sanctions, Iran has threatened to close the Strait of Hormuz for international shipping, effectively cutting off many Western countries from important oil imports. (...) In this article, the legality of such action as well as the legality of the mere threat to close the Strait of Hormuz are investigated. In addition to the International Law of the Sea, general rules of international law and the international law of armed conflict are taken into consideration. Particular emphasis is put on the sovereignty of other states, which is infringed upon by such threats on the part of the Iranian leadership. First, the question has to be answered whether a passage through these waters would be transit passage through a Strait or normal passage through the coastal state’s territorial sea. The authors of the article conclude that the regime of transit passage applies qua lex specialis, as far as the part of the Strait of Hormuz, which is included in Iran’s territorial waters, is concerned. The next step is to ask the question whether preventing such a passage as well as threatening to prevent such a passage are permissible for Iran. In this context, the potential abuse of otherwise permitted traffic separation schemes is highlighted. Traffic separation schemes are of particular importance in narrow but highly frequented bodies of water, such as the Strait of Hormuz. In addition, the contemporary Iranian state practice has received some attention. One issue to be considered in more detail is the requirement that foreign warships receive authorization from the coastal state prior to entry into the territorial sea. This approach might be incompatible with the right to innocent passage under both the Law of the Sea Convention and customary international law, as there is no clear legal source, which provides for this requirement. Finally, the authors look at the question of the legality of the mere threat to close the Strait of Hormuz as opposed to actually closing the Strait. The sovereignty of other states may be affected to such an extent that such threats already amount to a violation of international law. In light of the historic precedents during the Iran-Iraq War, these threats should not be dismissed lightly. Iran would be well advised to refrain from such rhetoric. (shrink)

At the outset of his instructive and thought-provoking paper, ‘The Nature of Possibility,’ Professor David Armstrong gives a succinct description, in itself almost complete, of his ‘combinatorial theory’ of possibility. He says: ‘Such a view traces the very idea of possibility to the idea of the combinations - allthe combinations which respect certain simple form- of given, actual elements’. We can perhaps start a bit further back than this. In explaining the idea of a ‘possible world,’ some philosophers begin (...) with the idea of ‘things being a certain way’ or ‘the way things are.’ From this idea a leap is made to ‘things might have been a certain other way’ or ‘ways things could have been.’ And here we already have possible worlds, or so some philosophers assure us: David Lewis, for example, says his talk of possible worlds is nothing but a ‘permissible paraphrase’ of this familiar and innocent-sounding locution, ‘ways things could have been.'. (shrink)

E. T. A. Hoffmann is one of the most famous representatives of early German horror literature. He has been both, inspired by its predecessors, as well as having influenced the work of many of his successors, and hence the development of the whole genre. The present article examines a story by E. T. A. Hoffmann, “Vampirismus” from the collection of short stories “Serapions Brüder”. Emphases are, on the one hand, on the mechanisms that cause readers’ fear and uncertainty and, on (...) the other hand, the peculiarity of the vampire or Nachzehrer figure and their function in the story. Firstly, it will be shown that the vampire depicted in the work is not actually a vampire. We find here a ghoul; that is a demon from Arab culture. However, the ghoul has more to do with the monster outlined by Antoine Galland in his translation of the “One Thousand and One Nights” than with traditional folk beliefs. Secondly, the author comes to the conclusion that Hoffmann has functionalized the Horrible. This element does not work by itself, but serves the author as the background of the action. And he is using this background to let the characters reveal all their weaknesses and dark sides. The violation of the order ruling in the world as it is represented engages the reader and at the same time raises his fear. The resulting excited feelings and general alienation are further reinforced for the figure of the Nachzehrer that occurs instead of a formerly innocent, graceful girl. The emergence of the supernatural – the final confirmation of the breach of order – is responsible for the effect just described. (shrink)

Now, as soon as man suspects that he has another side of himself Jenseits] within himself, and that he is not enough in his mere natural state, then he is driven on to divide himself into that which he actually is, and that which he should become. Just as the youth is the future of the boy, and the mature man the future of the innocent child, so that othersider Jenseitiger] is the future man who must be expected on the (...) other side of this present reality. Upon the awakening of that suspicion, man strives after and longs for the second other man of the future, and will not rest until he sees himself before the shape of this man from the other side. This shape fluctuates back and forth within him for a long time; he only feels it as a light in the innermost darkness of himself that would elevate itself, but as yet has no certain contour or fixed form. For a long time, along with other groping and dumb others in that darkness, the artistic genius seeks to express this presentiment. What no other succeeds in doing, he does, he presents the longing, the sought after form, and in finding its shape so creates the - Ideal. For what is then the perfect man, man's proper character, from which all that is seen is but mere appearance if it be not the Ideal Man, the Human Ideal? The artist alone has finally discovered the right word, the right picture, the right expression of that being which all seek. He presents that presentiment - it is the Ideal. 'Yes! that is it! that is the perfect shape, the appearance that we have longed for, the Good News - the Gospel. The one we sent forth so long ago with the question whose answer would satisfy the thirst of our spirit has returned!' So hail the people that creation of genius, and then fall down - in adoration. (shrink)

Such was the innocent mind that first encountered The Problem of Pain and was exposed, for the first time, to the world of philosophical theology. Reading ",.- the book was like eating forbidden fruit; it was exhilarating but also a bit fright- ..„;, ening. For one thing, the book actually contained arguments, even arguments",,-" about God, and more importantly the arguments seemed to make sense! At the ".,'-„. small fundamentalist high school I attended, I had, to be sure, encountered ";!,' (...) arguments before. One of my teachers had argued that, during the last days, the", stars will quite literally fall upon the earth; and when a friend of mine suggested';; that a single star would consume the earth long before striking it, he was se-,'I„. (shrink)

This work elucidates elements of Leibniz's theodicy which are non-teleological. Rather than ignoring the personal dimensions of suffering, as some have charged, Leibniz actually recognizes the threat that the problem of innocent suffering presents for a perfectly good God. His theodicy goes beyond the global greater-good defense of the best possible world argument in several ways. He appeals to personal greater-goods to justify some instances of suffering, but he also invokes deontological principles in his retributive justice arguments, his response to (...) the author of sin problem, and his constraint against damnation of infants. However, an evidential version of the problem of horrible suffering of innocents would still threaten his theodicy. This problem persists due to Leibniz's rejection of theological voluntarism in favor of a unified system of ethics for God and rational creatures. Finally, Leibniz's rejection of quietism provides an important resource for a response to suffering. His theodicy thus implies a moral activism whereby the good for each rational creature is bound up with the general good of others in the amelioration of the world. (shrink)

American jurisprudence currently applies two incompatible validity standards to determine which laws are enforceable. The natural law tradition evaluates validity by an uncertain standard of divine law, and its methodology relies on contradictory views of human reason. Legal positivism, on the other hand, relies on a methodology that commits the analytic fallacy, separates law from its application, and produces an incomplete model of law. These incompatible standards have created a schism in American jurisprudence that impairs the delivery of justice. This (...) dissertation therefore formulates a new standard for legal validity. This new standard rejects the uncertainties and inconsistencies inherent in natural law theory. It also rejects the narrow linguistic methodology of legal positivism. In their stead, this dissertation adopts a pragmatic methodology that develops a standard for legal validity based on actual legal experience. This approach focuses on the operations of law and its effects upon ongoing human activities, and it evaluates legal principles by applying the experimental method to the social consequences they produce. Because legal history provides a long record of past experimentation with legal principles, legal history is an essential feature of this method. This new validity standard contains three principles. The principle of reason requires legal systems to respect every subject as a rational creature with a free will. The principle of reason also requires procedural due process to protect against the punishment of the innocent and the tyranny of the majority. Legal systems that respect their subjects' status as rational creatures with free wills permit their subjects to orient their own behavior. The principle of reason therefore requires substantive due process to ensure that laws provide dependable guideposts to individuals in orienting their behavior. The principle of consent recognizes that the legitimacy of law derives from the consent of those subject to its power. Common law custom, the doctrine of stare decisis, and legislation sanctioned by the subjects' legitimate representatives all evidence consent. The principle of autonomy establishes the authority of law. Laws must wield supremacy over political rulers, and political rulers must be subject to the same laws as other citizens. Political rulers may not arbitrarily alter the law to accord to their will. Legal history demonstrates that, in the absence of a validity standard based on these principles, legal systems will not treat their subjects as ends in themselves. They will inevitably treat their subjects as mere means to other ends. Once laws do this, men have no rest from evil. (shrink)

Consider this scenario: A terrorist just bombed the subway in London, which resulted in the casualties of numerous innocent people. His act can be considered well-planned for he fully knew what consequences his act would bring. If determinism is true, is it possible that the terrorist in question bombed the subway out of free will? An incompatibilist would respond to this question with a resounding “no”. A compatibilist, on the other hand, would answer yes, as long as the terrorist possessed (...) certain psychological characteristics, causal histories, etc. This underlies the basis of disputes between the compatibilists and incompatibilists, who appear to hold opposite views on whether it is possible for someone to act out of free will if determinism is true. However, as I shall discuss in Chapter One, this disagreement is partly a verbal one that stems from the diverse meanings of the term “free will”. This thesis aims to transcend the verbal disagreement and explore where the deeper, more substantial disagreements may lie between compatibilists and incompatibilists. One possible sphere where substantial disagreements between compatibilists and incompatibilists may lie is the content of the ordinary concept of free will, or that of the strongest sense of control condition necessary for securing the ordinary concept of moral responsibility. On this view, the metaphysical question and the conceptual question about free will are inseparable; in order to find out the metaphysical satisfaction conditions of free will, one must first identify the conceptual satisfaction conditions of free will. Further, the latter is reflected in everyday free will/ moral responsibility ascriptions about hypothetical or real scenarios. In Chapter Two, I analyze how the recent experimental philosophy movement bears on this issue. By examining the findings of some current experimental philosophy studies, I argue that neither compatibilism nor incompatibilism can sufficiently capture the ordinary concept of free will or moral responsibility. In the light of my discussions in Chapter Two, I explain in Chapter Three why each of the various traditional accounts of free will cannot independently provide an adequate “package deal” of solutions for the problem of free will. Near the end of the chapter, I propose a pluralistic, agnostic account of free will as an alternative solution. Despite its great instrumental value, experimental philosophy is not widely recognized as a philosophically significant methodology. Hence, Chapter Four is devoted to discussing the actual and potential values of experimental philosophy in the light of its contribution to the free will debate. I conclude that the encounter between the free will debate and the experimental philosophy movement is a fruitful one; the former proves the value of the latter by receiving helpful insights from it. (shrink)

The central problem for normative ethics is the conflict between a consequentialist view--that morality requires promoting the good of all--and a belief that the rights of the individual place significant constraints on what may be done to help others. Standard interpretations see Kant as rejecting all forms of consequentialism, and defending a theory which is fundamentally duty-based and agent-centered. Certain actions, like sacrificing the innocent, are categorically forbidden. In this original and controversial work, Cummiskey argues that there is no defensible (...) basis for this view, that Kant's own arguments actually entail a consequentialist conclusion. But this new form of consequentialism which follows from Kant's theories has a distinctly Kantian tone. The capacity of rational action is prior to the value of happiness; thus providing justification for the view that rational nature is more important than mere pleasures and pains. (shrink)

Mark Twain, the "Father of American Literature," and renowned humorist, satirist, and commentator on humanity and American life, is best known for his classic, Adventures of Huckleberry Finn. Twain's body of work, however, is expansive; from Adventures of Tom Sawyer and A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court to the travelogue The Innocents Abroad and essays on human nature, religion, science, and literature, no aspect of life is left untouched by Twain. His portrayal of American life, ripe with the contradictions (...) of America's ideals and its actual practices, as well as his characters, at once fantastical and completely human, provide a window onto humanity and social life. As the third book in the Great Authors and Philosophy series, Mark Twain and Philosophy reveals deeper issues raised by Twain's work and speaks to his continued relevance as a social commentator interrogating issues fundamental to our lives. From slavery, freedom, and human rights, to science, parapsychology, and religion, this book exposes how Twain's body of work touches every corner of human experience. (shrink)

Time is central to Luhmann’s writings on social systems. Social systems, as systems of meaning, operate within three dimensions: factual, social and temporal. Each of these dimensions entails selections of actualities from potentialities (or contingencies) within horizons. Whilst the factual dimension involves selections based on distinguishing ‘this’ from ‘something else’, and the social distinguishes between alter and ego (asking with respect to any meaning whether another experiences it as I do), the temporal dimension operates with the primary distinction of before (...) and after. In the temporal dimension, everything is ‘ordered only according to the when and not to the who/what/where/how of experience and action’ (Luhmann in Social systems. Stanford University Press, Stanford, 1995, p. 78). In this paper, we explore the connection between the temporal dimension of meaning within the legal system and its connection to justice. We begin by setting out succinctly the role played by justice within the legal system, as presented by Luhmann, particularly in his book Law as a social system (2004). From this beginning, we move on to consider the relationship between law, justice and time, taking two examples. The first is the temporality of judicial decisions. The second concerns the relationship between the temporal meaning of law’s own operations, and the presumption of innocence. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Thus Spake Howard Roark:Nietzschean Ideas in The FountainheadLester H. HuntIThe position I will be taking here will seem very peculiar to many people. I will be treating a novel as a discussion of the work of a philosopher—namely, Friedrich Nietzsche. Worse yet, I will be treating it as a discussion that is philosophically penetrating and deserves to be taken seriously. Still worse, the novel is Ayn Rand's early novel (...) The Fountainhead. I think it is safe to say that her reputation, among academics who discuss the works of philosophers, is very low. If the reader will only bear with me, though, I think I can make a case that Rand opens a line of inquiry about Nietzsche's ideas and values that is not only quite interesting in itself but one that ought to be pursued further by others.There has always been ample reason to associate Nietzsche with The Fountainhead.1 He is after all, the only philosopher who is more or less directly quoted in the book.2 Beyond that, Rand's novel has many other passages that students of Nietzsche instantly recognize as conscious references to him or deliberate echoes of his style. In addition, she revealed, in an introduction written for the twenty-fifth anniversary edition, that the following quotation from Beyond Good and Evil had originally stood at the head of the book when it was still in manuscript:It is not the works, but the belief which is here decisive and determines the order of rank to—employ once more an old religious formula with a new and deeper meaning—it is some fundamental certainty which a noble soul has about itself, something which is not to be sought, is not [End Page 79] to be found, and perhaps, also, is not to be lost—The noble soul has reverence for itself.—3She said, in the same introduction, that she removed the quotation (evidently, immediately before publication) for philosophical reasons, because of her "profound disagreement with the philosophy of its author." Nietzsche, she says, was fundamentally "a mystic and irrationalist," and even in this quotation, chosen for its content, insinuates a philosophical position that she regards as erroneous (namely, determinism). Even her statement of what she likes about this passage is rather constrained: "as a poet [ie., not as a philosopher], he projects at times (not consistently) a magnificent feeling for man's greatness, expressed in emotional, not intellectual terms."4It is of course true enough that Rand does disagree with Nietzsche, and for more or less the reasons that she suggests here, but it is also true that the passage she has quoted expresses some ethical themes—nobility, order of rank, the "pathos of distance," and (most obviously) the idea of self-reverence as a characteristic of the ethically good—which are at least as important in The Fountainhead as they are in Nietzsche's writings. Though Rand's spirited disclaimer serves to remind us of her deep differences with Nietzsche, the quotation itself suggests that there might be an interesting philosophical, not merely literary or emotional, connection between The Fountainhead and Nietzsche's ideas. What I would like to show here is that this connection merits a much closer look than it has ever been given heretofore. Not only is the presence of Nietzschean themes in Rand's novel deep and pervasive, but the book actually contains a very interesting and powerful internal critique of one of Nietzsche's most characteristic ideas, a criticism based in large part on values and assumptions that he shares. Before I can set out this critique, I will need to explore some of the positive thematic and philosophical connections.IIOne evening, rather late in the novel, Gail Wynand, the corrupt newspaper publisher and financier, surprises his wife, Dominique, with a present: he has had an architect design a house for them. The architect, she realizes with shock as she sees the drawings for the house, is her former lover, Howard Roark, a man with whom she is still in love. None of this is known to her husband, who innocently tells her that [End Page 80] Roark... (shrink)

Prior research on the psychology of retribution is complicated by the difficulty of separating retributive and general deterrence motives when studying human offenders . We isolate retribution by investigating judgments about punishing animals, which allows us to remove general deterrence from consideration. Studies 2 and 3 document a “victim identity” effect, such that the greater the perceived loss from a violent animal attack, the greater the belief that the culprit deserves to be killed. Study 3 documents a “targeted punishment” effect, (...) such that the responsive killing of the actual “guilty” culprit is seen as more deserved than the killing of an almost identical yet “innocent” animal from the same species. Studies 4 and 5 extend both effects to participants' acceptance of inflicting pain and suffering on the offending animal at the time of its death, and show that both effects are mediated by measures of retributive sentiment, and not by consequentialist concerns. (shrink)

Soldiers sign contracts to obey lawful orders; they also swear oaths to this end. The enlistment contract for the Armed Forces of the United States combines both elements: -/- '9a. My enlistment is more than an employment agreement. As a member of the Armed Forces of the United States, I will be: (1) Required to obey all lawful orders and perform all assigned duties … (4) Required upon order to serve in combat or other hazardous situations.' -/- We standardly think (...) that these oaths and contracts give soldiers new moral reasons to fight. Many also think that soldiers who are ordered to fight by legitimate states have moral reasons to obey those orders, just in virtue of their provenance. -/- We generate these reasons through our voluntary decisions—to sign the contract or swear the oath; to form the institutions and give the orders. They are therefore additional moral reasons, on top of the reasons that we have prior to those voluntary decisions. Simply because they are additional, these reasons seem limited in force and scope. In particular, they arguably cannot override pre-existing commitments. For example, if I already have a duty not to kill an innocent person, my promising to breach that duty seems irrelevant to whether doing so is permissible. Similarly for orders issued by legitimate states: the citizens of a legitimate state have pre-existing moral reasons not to kill the innocent; by what alchemy could their state's orders allow combatants to override those reasons? If additional reasons could make prohibited acts permissible, as Sidgwick observed, ‘we could evade any moral obligation by promising not to fulfil it, which is clearly absurd’ (Sidgwick 1981). -/- We might conclude that the contracts soldiers sign, the oaths they take and the orders they receive have weight only when they pertain to acts that soldiers are already allowed to do. Perhaps these additional reasons can require actions that would otherwise be merely permissible, but they cannot license otherwise prohibited actions. If this is right, then it radically limits the relevance of contracts, oaths and authority to the ethics of war, since almost all conflicts involve soldiers breaching some pre-existing moral duties. -/- This is obviously true for soldiers fighting on the unjust side in a war, since almost all the killing they do is unjust. But in all actual wars soldiers on the just side also kill at least some innocent victims, whether as part of an unjust subordinate aim, as ‘collateral damage’, or simply because their adversaries are not sufficiently responsible for unjustified threats to be liable to be killed. If additional reasons cannot make otherwise prohibited acts permissible, then they are practically irrelevant to the ethics of killing in war, at least in this sense: if fighting is impermissible without regard to the contract, oath and authority of their state, then fighting is simply impermissible. -/- This is a tempting conclusion. In this paper, however, I argue that even if it is true at the level of objective permissibility, it is false for subjective permissibility. And since subjective permissibility is where (at least some of) the action is in the ethics of war, this is a significant result. I explain first why additional reasons can make otherwise subjectively prohibited acts permissible, then why just war theorists should care more than they seem to about subjective permissibility. Although I focus throughout on the ethics of war, my arguments generalise to all kinds of additional reasons. (shrink)

In this book Uwe Steinhoff describes and explains the basic tenets of just war theory and gives a precise, succinct and highly critical account of its present status and of the most important and controversial current debates surrounding it. Rejecting certain in effect medieval assumptions of traditional just war theory and advancing a liberal outlook, Steinhoff argues that every single individual is a legitimate authority and has under certain circumstances the right to declare war on others or the state. He (...) also argues that the just cause cannot be established independently of the other criteria of jus ad bellum (the justification of entering a war), except for right intention, which he interprets more leniently than the tradition does. Turning to jus in bello (which governs the conduct of a war) he criticizes the Doctrine of Double Effect and concludes that insofar as wars kill innocents, and be it as "collateral damage", they cannot be just but at best justified as the lesser evil. Steinhoff gives particular attention to the question why soldiers, allegedly, are legitimate targets and civilians not. Discussing four approaches to the explanation of the difference he argues that the four principles underlying them all need to be taken into account and outlines how their weighing can proceed if applied to concrete cases. The resulting approach does not square the distinction between legitimate and illegitimate targets with the distinction between soldiers and civilians, which has extremely important consequences for the conduct of war. Finally, Steinhoff analyses the concept of terrorism and argues that some forms of "terrorism" are actually not terrorism at all and that even terrorism proper can under certain circumstances be justified. (shrink)

Though we should probably find it easier to detect immorality in its instances than to determine morality in its essence, we generally take it for granted that to be moral is to be good. On the assumption, I suppose, that morality and goodness are actually equivalent, some have even said that it is goodness alone that is good. And yet in the name of morality men have suppressed their vitality, stifled their generosity, surrendered their reason, and gone like sheep to (...) the slaughter. In the name of morality men have distorted the truth and tormented the innocent. They have cut off heads in the past and they cut off heads in the present. It seems to me that alike with morality and without it, alike without it and with it, human behaviour may display brutality and insanity. Our human society may disintegrate and wither because of moral vacillation and paralysis. But it may be blighted the world over because struck by the lightning of moral frenzy. (shrink)

This article critically engages with the work of Bruno Latour and, in particular, his book We Have Never Been Modern. Looking beyond the wit and brevity of Latour's writing, the article focuses on some of the non-innocent aspects of his vision of a non-modern world. Rather than completely rejecting the `Great Divides' between Nature and Culture, Westerners and non-Westerners, Latour is seen as only interested in erasing these major fault lines of modernity in order to draw them anew. Ultimately, Latour (...) is not asking his readers to doubt the superiority of Western science but only to understand this superiority differently — as contingent and uncertain rather than necessary and secure. Latour is not as alone as he would have us believe in bringing a non-modern world into focus and the article devotes the bulk of its attention to comparing Latour's thoughts with those governing the Euro-American discipline of international relations before and after the end of the Cold War. Latour's particular account of the non-modern condition, it is argued, corresponds well with the shift from realism to neo-realism within international relations and the replacement of bi-polarity by global technological competition as the dominant feature of the international system. Although Latour continues to be regularly attacked in the so-called `Science Wars' as an enemy of Western science, he actually joins forces with leading Euro-American security experts today in contending that the future of both `Science' and the `West' hinges on the careful monitoring and management of hybrid networks of humans and non-humans and not on uncompromising acts of `purification' as has been the strategy in the past. (shrink)

In the Confucian tradition, the ideal government is called "benevolent government" (ren zheng), central to which is the ruler's parental love toward his people who he deems as his children. Hanfeizi criticized this seemingly innocent political idea by pointing out that (1) not only is the state not a family but even within the family parental love is short of making the children orderly and (2) ren as love inevitably results in the ruin of the state because it confuses what (...) is right/meritorious with what is not, thus disrupts the legal system. In this paper, I defend Confucian virtue politics against Hanfeizi's criticisms. I argue that by failing to grasp the complex nature of ren that encompasses both emotion (ren as love) and moral virtue (ren as filiality), Hanfeizi also failed to understand the actual process in which the ruler's parental love is extended to the people. (shrink)

Solomon’s article and Binmore’s response exemplify a standard exchange between the game theorist and those critical of applying game theory to ethics. The critic of game theory lists a number of problems with game theory and the game theorist responds by arguing that the critic’s objections are based on a misrepresentation of the theory. Binmore claims that the game theorist is in the position of the innocent man who, when asked why he beats his wife, must explain that he doesn’t (...) beat his wife at all (Binmore, 2). However, even if we agree that the denial is true, we might still like to know why, if you are not beating your wife, do others consistently accuse you of doing so? Or, to get away from this rather sexist metaphor, why are critics of game theory like Solomon (according to game theorists) consistently getting game theory wrong?While, as I argue in the first section, critics of game theory such as Solomon may misrepresent game theory, this misrepresentation is not entirely their own fault. The way in which game theory is traditionally presented is misleading. For example, students are usually first introduced to game theory through the prisoner’s dilemma. It is compelling drama, but lousy PR for the use of ethics in game theory. (You want to know what to do? Let’s see how two thieves reason.) However, while Binmore is right to argue that game theory neither assumes nor entails the theory of human nature that Solomon finds objectionable, Solomon is also right to argue that game theory is promulgated and applied with what appear to be a robust set of assumptions about human motivation. I argue in the second section, however, that in fact neither these applications of game theory, nor game theory itself, is committed to a particular theory of human motivation. Thus, while game theory is not able to provide a complete ethical theory (assuming that a theory of human motivation is essential to such a theory), it is not contrary to ethics. In the final section I note that Aristotle, rather than being the alternative to using game theory in business ethics, as Solomon suggests, actually points the way to an ethical theory that can combine a discussion of both game theory and “those nagging and controversial questions about what it is that people do and ought to care about” (Solomon, 7). (shrink)

By analyzing the feminist debates on Hans-Georg Gadamer, the author shows that feminist critics point to the need either to supplement or to replace Gadamer's philosophy with a greater sensitivity to the historical implications of women's experience. Thus, they are of the view either that Gadamer's philosophy has yet to come to terms with specific historical situations or that Gadamer's philosophy cannot come to terms with historical situatedness per se. The author contends that Gadamer's femi-nist critics do not locate the (...) source of his residual transcendentalism where it should be located: in the account of aesthetic judgment as a "pure feeling" that underpins his entire philosophy. This has the effect, of appearing to preserve aesthetic judgment as "pure feeling" as an apparently innocent remedy, to which some of his feminist critics actually appeal in opposition to his transcendentalism. The author argues, to the contrary, that aesthetic judgment, as a "pure feeling," is at once too com-plicit in the tradition that feminists seek to engage with, traditionally too insubstantial to make a rich resource for a feminist critique of that tradition, and ultimately too traditionally male-centered to be easily coopted by a feminist philosopher. (shrink)

In the medieval legend, Doctor Faustus strikes a dark deal with the devil; he obtains vast powers for a limited time in exchange for a priceless possession, his eternal soul. The cautionary tale, perhaps more than ever, provides a provocative lens for examining humankind’s condition, notably its indefatigable faith in knowledge and technology and its predilection toward misusing both. A variety of important questions are raised in this meditation including What is the nature of knowledge today and how does it (...) differ from knowledge in prior times? What is its relation to technology and power? What paths are we heading along and which alternative ones are being avoided? Not insignificantly, we also raise the issue of civic ignorance, including that which is intentionally cultivated and that which is simply a lack of knowledge. We also consider the identity of Doctor Faustus in the twenty-first century and in a more material world like ours, what is the soul that he would lose in the bargain, and what damage might be done to Faustus and to innocent bystanders. Finally since people don’t always live up to the terms of agreements they make, what, if anything, could Faustus do to wriggle out of the bargain, to avoid the loss of his all-important soul. Our response is not to disavow knowledge (as the implicit “lesson” of the original myth might suggest) but to shift to another approach to knowledge that is more collective and more responsive to actual needs of our era. This approach which we call civic intelligence is considered as a way to avoid the possible catastrophes that the Faustian bargain we’ve seemingly struck is likely to bring. (shrink)

Sontag is certainly attracted to the aesthetic she describes but not so wholeheartedly as many readers have assumed.1 One of the ironies of her career has been her reputation as an enthusiast for works toward which she actually expresses considerable ambivalence. Many of her essays include overt advocacy, but it is rarely uncomplicated or uncompromised.2 Despite her reputation for partisanship, she more typically begins her essays by recounting an experience of alienation, annoyance, uncertainty, or shock. For example, she describes the (...) "happening" as an event "designed to tease and abuse the audience"3 and speaks of the "profoundly discouraging," even "hopeless," emotions of her first days in North Vietnam. She is, therefore, often motivated by her sense of difference from the event or object she describes. But it is not her wish merely to find ways of assimilating and dominating unpleasant or alien experience; while that is certainly one of the main impulses in her work - to control apparently impossible subjects, to exhilarate in the Nietzschean will to power over the text - her will to power is always countered by a need to credit and honor the text's otherness. Sontag never finally assumes an easy familiarity with her subject but rather draws its difficult and negating otherness ever closer to herself. Her work may be understood, in a way, as a search for a text that is utterly unknowable, a text that will always elude and contradict what we may say about it, a text, in short, that cannot be contaminated by critical rhetoric. That is a quality she has recently attributed to Artaud's work: "Like Sade and Reich, Artaud is relevant and understandable, a cultural monument, as long as one mainly refers to his ideas without reading much of his work. For anyone who reads Artaud through, he remains fiercely out of reach, an unassimilable voice and presence."4 · 1. There is, to be sure, an atmosphere of iconoclasm and intellectual challenge about Sontag's criticism, but it is not especially self-congratulatory. She is only interested in difficult topics or in topics whose difficulties have been repressed, partly because that context energizes her mind and partly, as she has written of Diane Arbus, because she wants "to violate her own innocence, to undermine her sense of being privileged" · 2. The exception is some of the early reviews included in Against Interpretation, where the polemical requirements of the occasion distinguish those brief judgments from her more careful and extended pieces.· 3. Sontag, Against Interpretation , p. 267.· 4. Sontag, "Artaud," Antonin Artaud: Selected Writings , p. lix. Cary Nelson teaches critical theory at the University of Illinois. He is the author of The Incarnate Word: Literature as Verbal Space and Our Last First Poets: Vision and History in Contemporary American Poetry and Reading Criticism: The Literary Status of Critical Discourse. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Reviewed by:Evil in Modern Thought: An Alternative History of PhilosophyPaul S. MiklowitzSusan Neiman. Evil in Modern Thought: An Alternative History of Philosophy. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2002. Pp. xii + 358. Cloth, $29.95.Contemporary philosophy in America tends to regard epistemological questions as the most fundamental of the discipline, but Susan Neiman's Evil in Modern Thought sets itself against this assumption in an attempt to sketch "an alternative history of (...) philosophy." "It's possible to begin to worry about the difference between appearance and reality because... a dream is so vivid that you want to grasp one of its objects for a moment or two of sleepy half-consciousness," Neiman writes, but then "you wake up in your bed, slap your face if you have to... " (5). The problem of evil, in stark contrast to such skeptical speculations, is far more urgent and trenchant; it is "the place where philosophy begins, and threatens to stop" (ibid.). Moreover, the problem of evil, far from being merely a theological quandary, actually forms a link between metaphysics and epistemology by starkly posing questions about the intelligibility of the world: Why are things like that? wants the answer Because it's best that way. For the early modern period, these questions centered on the "theodicy" debates focused by the catastrophic Lisbon earthquake of 1755, while for us the holocaust threatens to explode all our hopes and expectations for the possibility of a world that is as it should be. Thus, Lisbon and Auschwitz frame for Neiman the historical topoi that ground discussion of the relation between natural and moral evils, the evolving philosophical understanding of which defines "who we have become in the three centuries that separate us from the early Enlightenment" (10).The problem of theodicy is introduced through the figure of Alfonso X, king of Castille in 1252, and "the first Enlightenment hero" (14), according to Neiman. Having studied astronomy under the guidance of learned Jews from Toledo, Alfonso scandalously remarked "If I had been of God's counsel at the Creation, many things would have been ordered better" (15). Serving as a paradigm of blasphemy for half a millennium, Alfonso's boast also expresses the inevitable dismay that must accompany the delighted wonder at natural order exploited by the argument from design: while Creation is surely miraculous in its manifestation of seemingly intelligent structure, it is just as surely astonishing that so much of that structure seems so wantonly destructive. Can this really be the best of all possible worlds if innocent lives are cut short by cruel diseases or natural disasters while vicious villains prosper into comfortable old age?! Alfonso's remark serves Neiman as a leitmotif around which she orders central figures in the canon of western philosophy into two camps: those who struggled to reconcile natural evil with God's goodness or with reason (Leibniz, Pope, Rousseau, Kant, Hegel and Marx), and those who skeptically condemned reason by appealing to "brute appearances" (Bayle, Voltaire, Hume, Sade and Schopenhauer). Because the very categories of natural and moral evil tend to break down as a result of the development of psychology as a "science of nature" (to the extent that human motives are regarded as natural processes subject to empirical explanation, they cease to manifest a unique ontology), Nietzsche and Freud fall outside the philosophical canon thus construed—although Neiman's discussion of these two thinkers is perhaps the most compelling of the book.No new interpretive ground is broken in the resulting exegesis of western philosophical history, but Neiman's treatment of each of these figures is intelligent and skillful. In discussing Kant, for example, a deep paradox at the center of his moral thought is brilliantly harnessed to the book's argument. Whereas theodicies from Leibniz onward had focused on attempts to show that Providence ultimately guaranteed a connection between virtue and happiness despite obvious evidence to the contrary, Kant took exactly the opposite tack. As Neiman puts it, "Solving the problem of evil is not only impossible but immoral. For knowing the connections between moral and natural evils would undermine the possibility of morality" (69). If we could be sure that good deeds... (shrink)

Mereological entities often seem to violate ‘ordinary’ ideas of what a concrete object can be like, behaving more like sets than like Aristotelian substances. However, the mereological notions of ‘part’, ‘composition’, and ‘sum’ or ‘fusion’ appear to find concrete realisation in the actual semantics of mass nouns. Quine notes that ‘any sum of parts which are water is water’; and the wine from a single barrel can be distributed around the globe without affecting its identity. Is there here, as (...) some have claimed, a ‘natural’ or ‘innocent’ form of mereology? The claim rests on the assumption that what a mass noun such as ‘wine’ denotes — the wine from a single barrel, for example — is indeed a unit of a special type, the sum or fusion of its many ‘parts’. The assumption is, however, open to question on semantic grounds. (shrink)

While it is well recognized that many everyday consumer behaviors, such as purchases of sweatshop goods, come at a cost to the global poor, it has proven difficult to argue that even knowing, repeat contributors are somehow morally complicit in those outcomes. Some recent approaches contend that marginal contributions to distant harms are consequences that consumers straightforwardly should have born in mind, which would make consumers seem reckless or negligent. Critics reasonably reply that the bad luck that my innocent purchase (...) contributes distantly to harm provides insufficient grounds for moral blame; moreover, such distant and seemingly inevitable collective effects are not by themselves obvious reasons for agents to refrain from acting. Granting these criticisms, I argue that the harm that agents do through knowing contributions to distant collective harm actually builds on the morally sparse agential phenomenology of everyday purchases and decisions: contributors who knowingly disregard distant harms, rather than being reckless or negligent about consequences they should have foreseen, very directly perpetuate the moral invisibility and the lack of recognition from which the global poor generally suffer. This provides agents with clearer moral reasons to refrain from knowing participation in unstructured collective harms, and clearer reason to bear them in mind in acting. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Joseph Margolis THE OPTIONS OF CONTEMPORARY ETHICAL THEORY It may be said, with some prospect ofbeing not altogether idiotic, that the global philosophical question ofour age concerns the possibility of legitimating the conceptual grounds for legitimating claims about anything. The formulation has no interest in the abstract. It merely registers the possibility of an infinite regress; and in that form it has been with us forever. But our own (...) world has inexorably subverted all the standard forms of confidence regarding legitimation—not so much perhaps by intellectual confrontation as, more indirectly, by coming to believe the deep contingencies of human history, by discovering again and again the astounding diversity of actual human societies, by reflecting on the incompletely managed self-manipulation of our immense technology, by the natural fear entailed in the growing chaos of the entire terrestrial world we mean to put into serviceable order. These considerations are certainly local to moral theorizing. But since they have a general currency as well, they lead us to suppose that speculations about legitimizing moral claims cannot be more satisfactory than those of philosophy in general, though they may be weaker. This, in its turn, encourages us to imagine that a reduced assessment of the larger claims of philosophy may conveniendy justify a greater respect for the inherendy modest prospects ofmoral theorizing. Furthermore, the characteristic triple thinking of our age, always incipient in any reflexive appraisal of cognitive powers, has been raised to a particularly fine art — if that is the right term. It is quite impossible nowadays, unless by a confidence or innocence bordering on the Martian, simply to proclaim the principles or grounds or foundations of moral judgment and moral commitment. Nevertheless, what one cannot help noticing is that wher37 38Philosophy and Literature ever theorists are morally serious — and they seem never more serious than when they are theorizing about morality— they are understandably inclined to believe that they absolutely must give some sense of the accessibility of reliable and valid grounds for judgments and commitments of the most important sorts. In yielding to that touching obligation to serve others in the capacity of philosopher, however, they usually yield as well in the direction ofinsinuating— ifnot openly announcing— what their own sense of professional history would otherwise have readily shown to be in desperate need of a smidgen of support. Notably in the last generation, the retreat from older forms of confidence, in moral philosophy, in philosophy in general, and in all those intellectual disciplines either pleased or displeased to be linked to the fate of philosophy, has decidedly accelerated. There is no resisting the current, though that is hardly to say we understand its implications or are obliged to subscribe to its madder exemplars. But when, to take a counter-specimen from the Anglo-American tradition of the last decade, a moral philosopher like Alan Donagan attempts to restore something like the Kantian moral system, we sense its unlikely and alien body even before we prepare our instruments for the required dissection. Thus, Donagan, who can hardly be accused of failing to sustain a most humane document, speaks at the beginning of The Theory ofMorality of his having been persuaded — by George Orwell and others — "that any acceptable form of social order, whether socialist or not, must rest on moral foundations, which are in principle ascertainable at any period, and permanendy valid."1 Donagan had hoped to recover in a compelling way the "common morality" of mankind, the rationally accessible portion of the Biblical tradition, presumably congruent with the classical tradition, ordered in a conceptually convincing way for the first time by Immanuel Kant reflecting, apparently, on his own Pietist upbringing. Donagan is, of course, among other things, a careful student of R. G. Collingwood's work, and here may be thought to exhibit Collingwood's confidence that the historian is capable, under favorable conditions, of "reenacting" at any period the motivating thought of effective historical agents of the past.2 At any rate, Donagan is quite explicit that: (a) social orders must have moral foundations or first principles; (b) social orders do have such moral foundations; (c) those foundations are ascertainable; (d) they are ascertainable in principle at... (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Conversion and Religious Identity in Buddhism and ChristianityJohn D'Arcy MayA Benedictine abbey that has been involved in exchanges with Buddhist monks since 1979 was an appropriate setting for serious discussion of double identity and change of identity between Buddhists and Christians. The European Network holds its conferences every two years, and after experiencing the Benedictine hospitality of St.Ottilien once again it was decided that every second conference should be (...) held here in the future, with the intervening ones in different centers throughout Europe. Br.Josef Götz OSB introduced the conference by telling the story of the intermonastic encounters with monks of the Soto, Rinzai, and Shingon traditions over the last twenty-five years at St. Ottilien. Participants in these agreed that they had never learned so much about their own traditions as when they were engaged in dialogue at a spiritual and experiential level with their monastic "others." One Zen monk told the Benedictines, "Working with your carpenter, I understand Christianity," and another asked for baptism in order to participate more fully in the liturgy.The situation in the Buddhist countries of Asia, however, is not necessarily so harmonious, as reports by Fr. Thomas Timpte OSB from Korea and Dr. Elizabeth Harris from Sri Lanka made clear. Just to hear about the religious situation in South Korea, the "great unknown" of East Asian Buddhism, was worthwhile. Though four traditions—Shamanism, Buddhism with elements of Daoism, Confucianism, and Christianity—coexist largely peacefully, the advent of Christianity caused tensions arising from both persecutions and conversions. Though many Koreans would find no contradiction in being both Confucianist (at least in a cultural sense) and Christian, Buddhism itself is coming to be seen as a cultural phenomenon, and those earnestly seeking peace of heart turn to Christianity. Almost half the members of [End Page 189] parliament are either Catholic or Protestant, though there is little evidence of Christian ethics in political practice. Nevertheless, Buddhism is now the fastest-growing religion, as Catholics in particular find themselves attracted to the temple environment, which is experienced as "a kind of homecoming." "Christian in the head, Shamanist in the belly, Buddhist in the heart," though a simplification, sums up the situation.In Sri Lanka, on the other hand, things are considerably more fraught, and with the passage of anticonversion legislation the conference theme of conversion and identity is a charged topic. Elizabeth Harris illustrated the lengths to which certain Christians are prepared to go to win converts, such as working the camps of tsunami survivors. Though British evangelical missionaries had originally been afforded remarkable hospitality by the Buddhists—even being invited to preach in temples —their insistence that if Christianity is right, Buddhism must be wrong polarized relations, and the great public debate of 1815 still sets a precedent. Thus even for contemporary Christian inheritors of the fusion of the European Enlightenment with evangelical Christianity, both the conviction of sin and rational argument assure the superiority of Christianity. In the ethnic conflict presently raging, the religions are "not innocent," with Tamils and Christians being conflated into the "other" against which Sinhalese antipathy is directed. This is all the more tragic in that most Sri Lankan Buddhists accept the traditional ethic of tolerance.Jørgen Skov Sørensen and Kajsa Ahlstrand illuminated the religious situation in Scandinavia from different perspectives. Sørensen reflected on the "soft boundaries" that actually exist in many pluralistic societies, something that puzzled both civil servants and missionaries even in colonial India. There is a danger that contemporary Christians will try to impose the same unambiguous boundaries on postmodern Europe as they did in their former colonies. Ahlstrand's report on an empirical study done in Sweden showed how unrealistic this is. Dual identity as both Buddhist and Christian was more common than complete identification with either, and 42 percent of those who identified completely with Christianity said they did not believe in God!The centerpiece of the conference was a vigorous debate between Paul Williams, a prominent British Buddhist and professor of Indian and Tibetan philosophy who announced his conversion to Catholicism in a provocative book, The Unexpected Way, and two protagonists who disagreed with his reasoning from... (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Nonplaces:An Anecdoted Topography of Contemporary French TheoryBruno Bosteels (bio)In its juridical sense, a non-lieu is a judgment that suspends, annuls, or withdraws a case without bringing it to trial. It is thus a judgment that announces or enunciates that there will be no judgment as to guilt or innocence, a finding that there is no place to judge. It therefore renders justice by refusing to render it under (...) the law, which it does when it pronounces or enunciates the non-lieu.—Peggy Kamuf, "Béance"1Inside the Spatial TurnIf modernity will always be remembered as an era dominated by questions of time and history, then perhaps the steady waning of modern ideals invites us to think of the entry into something called the postmodern as a passage dominated by questions of space and geography. As Michel Foucault once famously observed in a 1967 conference paper, first published two decades ago: "Perhaps we might say that some of the ideological conflicts that animate today's polemics oppose the pious descendants of time and the willful inhabitants of space" ["Of Other Spaces" 22]. This conflict over time and space presupposes a much larger argument that is not only historical but also methodological in nature. What is at stake is both a question of the passage, or transition, from modernity to postmodernity, if that is indeed what we decide to name modernity's aftermath, and a question of the theoretical consequences that follow from giving precedence to space over time in treating this very transition. With regard to this second question, too, Foucault's work stands as exemplary insofar as he was able to show the degree to which a vital emphasis on space, geography, and territoriality [End Page 117] forces us to take leave of the modern paradigm of consciousness—typically associated with the category of time and its unfolding in the mind or spirit—in favor of a situated understanding of knowledge, subjectivity, and power. "Metaphorizing the transformations of discourse in a vocabulary of time necessarily leads to the utilisation of the model of individual consciousness with its intrinsic temporality," Foucault observes in an interview with the editors of the French journal of geography Hérodote, and he continues: "Endeavouring on the other hand to decipher discourse through the use of spatial, strategic metaphors enables one to grasp precisely the points at which discourses are transformed in, through and on the basis of relations of power" ["Questions on Geography" 69–70]. Whether real or metaphorical, a willful displacement of our categorial apparatus from time to space thus might enable one to avoid the idealist temptation inherent in a strictly discursive or textual model, by inscribing all discourses and practices in the geopolitics of power relations.My aim in the following pages is not to go over the much-discussed shift from time to space once more, even as I take advantage of several of its methodological principles along the way. Instead, I want to map out a momentous change of perspective that has been taking place over the past few decades within the parameters of the so-called spatial turn itself. In fact, if and when modernity is coming to an end, both in the sense of completing itself and of revealing its character as a finite historical entity, not only does whatever shape critical thought takes in the face of this turnabout need to be securely fastened onto specific places and spaces but, if we are to believe a growing number of authors, particularly but by no means exclusively in France, the study of art, literature, politics, philosophy, and even anthropology would also require a thorough consideration of so-called "nonplaces" as a rigorous category for critical thinking today [for a brief discussion of the use of "nonplace" in Anglo-American anthropology, including Melvin M. Webber's notion of "nonplace urban realm" from the mid-1960s, see Weiner]. In the end, these proponents of the nonplace confront us with one disarmingly simple question: how can critical thinking in the present time respond to the task of having to work through whatever lies outside of the order that is actually in place?The Exhaustion of... (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Community of “Neighbors”:A Baptist-Buddhist Reflects on the Common Ground of LoveJan WillisToday we are all aware that the concept of “race” is a mere construction. There is only one “race”: the human race; to think otherwise is like still believing that the earth is flat. But “racism” is a different matter. It exists as a system of beliefs and prejudices that people differ along biological and genetic lines and (...) that one’s own group is superior to another group. When these beliefs and prejudices are coupled with power—especially the power to negatively affect the lives of those perceived to be inferior—we have a serious problem. And no one should downplay or underestimate the harm that such an ideology inflicts upon everyone who participates in it. According to one African American professor of social work, “America’s history is inextricably bound to this racist ideology. From the codifying of slavery, to the belief in ‘Manifest Destiny,’ to the treatment of ‘illegal immigrants,’ many of America’s actions continue to conflict with its creed that ‘All men are created equal.’”1Over the past decade or so, I have written a number of pieces that focus upon racism in America and racism in so-called American Buddhism.2 Being African American myself, my reasons for this focus may perhaps be clear though not necessarily inevitable. I have written on a number of other topics: Buddhist philosophical discourses and life stories of Buddhist “saints,” for example. In my writings on racism, I have tried to communicate something of the emotional and psychic toll it takes to live in this country as a person of color. In a number of these writings, I have called myself a “Baptist-Buddhist,” and thus this is also one of my “dual belongings,” one of my “multiple identities.”When I speak of racism, I am not concerned with garnering pity, or playing the “race card” of guilt, or telling you, from some assumed position of superiority on the matter, that there is simply no way for you to understand this toll. I certainly cannot speak for all African Americans, or even for most of them. Early on in the process of writing this paper, I emailed Jung and Paul to say that I found the title of the panel both much too broad and much too narrow. “Too broad” because one person cannot possibly channel and/or verbalize the countless instances of suffering endured by African Americans (and more broadly, by persons of color) throughout space and over centuries in this country owing to slavery and its aftermath. And “too narrow” [End Page 97] because, ultimately, we want to do more than just rehash our many sufferings. We don’t want to wallow in victimhood. We want to move on—from the recognition of that immense suffering, seen and unseen—and to go out into the world and act to bring about social, economic, and ecological justice. That’s what we are called upon to do: to form a new community wherein there is compassion and caring for one another, where there is love and peace, nonviolence, reconciliation, and justice.So, even though I am quite frankly tired—as are so many people of color—of being the “token” African American who can add visible “diversity” to a group in order to show that it is now more “inclusive” than before, nevertheless, in this so-called postracial society where we have a black president and the demographic of “person of color” now comprises an actual majority of the United States’ population, I must still rise to say that, sadly, racism is not dead in this country! Its painful vestiges exist, and those vestiges are far from being either innocent or unharmful.I truly believe that—for African Americans, in particular—it is the trauma and the legacy of slavery that haunts us in the deepest recesses of our souls. It is hard to imagine what having been bartered and sold as though mere property does to a human being, what being dehumanized, infanticized, and divested of all rights and liberties does to one’s sense of self-worth and well-being. As... (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Bayle, Saint-Evremond, and Fideism:A Reply to Thomas M. LennonGianluca MoriIn a recent article published in this journal Thomas M. Lennon returns to the controversial question of Bayle's attitude towards religion. The point he debates is the particular use that, in expounding his conception of the relationship between faith and reason, Bayle makes of a passage from Saint-Evremond. In Lennon's view the correct interpretation of this point would show that (...) Bayle's fideism is to be "taken at face value" without any hint of irony and with no suspicion of dissimulation or insincerity.1 This would cast doubt on and greatly weaken the interpretation I proposed in my Bayle philosophe.2 My aim here is to respond briefly to Lennon's arguments and to clarify even more briefly what in my opinion is the right perspective in which to consider Bayle's position on this topic.The context in which Bayle quotes Saint-Evremond is to be found in the Eclaircissements he added to the second edition of his Dictionnaire historique et critique (1702) to counter the Dutch religious authorities' harsh criticism of the first edition. In particular the Walloon Consistory accused Bayle of taking a skeptical position that undermined the most important dogmas of Christian faith. In response Bayle wrote the Eclaircissement sur les Pyrrhoniens, a clumsy mosaic of quotations from the Scriptures and from patristic and profane texts, with which he sought to show that his skeptical fideism was not in the least heterodox but indeed the position that most closely reflected true Christianity. The quotation from Saint-Evremond, almost at the end of this text, is taken [End Page 323] from the Conversation du Maréchal d'Hocquincourt et du Père Canaye (written in about 1654).3 The final passage gives a clear idea of the general tone: after having disputed with a churchman the need to subject one's intellect to the yoke of faith, the marshal concludes by saying that he is ready to be crucified "without knowing why." Father Canaye replies: "No reason! That is the true religion. No reason! God has granted you a fine grace, mylord." So, and here Lennon obviously agrees (229), Saint-Evremond's is a text with no shadow of mystical inspiration, indeed strongly tending in the libertine direction, as is clear from the blatant way it pours scorn on the fideist approach.In my interpretation Bayle's use of this quotation does not at all demonstrate his atheism or unbelief, for in my view that question is undecidable. However, the quotation from Saint-Evremond is sufficient—and this is the onlyreason I mentioned it4 —to show that Bayle's approach to fideism is in no way innocent and naive as is sometimes claimed. On the contrary, his texts on this subject contain what amounts to provocations aimed at orthodox readers (to which they immediately reacted). This, together with other more important reasons, leads me to believe that Bayle's professions of Christian faith, though frequent, are generally far from being above suspicion: indeed, almost every line of them raises questions about their actual significance.The provocation contained in the quotation from Saint-Evremond appears in all its rhetorical weight if we associate this text with three other passages from Bayle's works. The first is from the Nouvelles de la république des lettres of December 1686, in which Bayle stresses the unedifying nature of the religious maxims contained in Saint-Evremond's Conversation (which, incidentally, he himself had just had printed in the collection Le Retour des pièces choisies).5 The second is taken from a letter by Jean d'Oulès to Bayle, written in 1696, in which the author deals with exactly the same passage from the Conversation that was later to be reproduced in the Eclaircissement. In this letter d'Oulès quotes the full passage which he considers to be a "naughty text" deliberately written to throw ridicule on the fanatical fideism of Pierre Jurieu.6 The third passage is from Bayle's Continuation des pensées diverses of 1704 in which, shortly after the death of Saint-Evremond, he publicly reveals the poet... (shrink)

This Article presents a theory whereby criminal punishments are routinely distributed in proportion to the weight of the evidence mounted against the defendant. According to this theory, the law relaxes the stringent decision threshold in criminal trials—beyond a reasonable doubt—by creating easy-to-prove evidentiary offenses. These offenses, in turn, are associated with less severe sanctions, thus creating a de-facto proportional liability regime. Against that backdrop, the Article examines the legal duty to report criminal activity to the authorities. As the analysis shows, (...) while legal scholars analyzing such duties have focused on the paradigmatic case in which an innocent bystander, friend or family member is unwittingly exposed to information about a crime, in practice these duties are rarely used in such cases. Rather, reporting duties are used to prosecute suspected accomplices whose involvement in the commission of the actual crime is difficult to prove beyond a reasonable doubt. Thus, offenses imposing a reporting duty on criminal activity turn out to be part of the general framework of accomplice liability, and are used to apply less severe sanctions in cases of evidentiary uncertainty. (shrink)

One popular sort of argument for the death penalty depends on the idea of possibly saving innocent lives through added deterrent value. Defenders of such arguments generally concede that: a) we do not know whether or not the death penalty actually adds marginal deterrent value beyond life in prison, and b) any actual death penalty regime is likely to include the execution of some innocent people. Use of the death penalty might save some innocent people, but it is also (...) likely that it will lead us to kill some innocent people. In the present paper, I attempt to give consideration to both sorts of innocents. I argue that it is morally more serious to intentionally kill people who are innocent than it is to fail to save innocent people whose death is in no way intended. Thus, in the absence of compelling evidence that our use of the death penalty would save significantly more innocent people than it would kill, we should err on the side of not using the death penalty as a means to try to achieve added deterrent value. (shrink)

Don't tell terrible stories—everyone here has enough of their own. Everyone here has a whole bloody sack of terrible stories, and at the bottom of the sack is a hammer the narrator uses to pound you on the skull the instant you dare not believe your ears. Or to pound you when you do believe. Not long ago I saw a tomboyish girl on Khreshchatyk Street demand money of an elderly woman, threatening to bite her and infect her with syphilis. (...) Don't stroll through Volodymyr Hill Park, don't stroll around the botanical garden, and especially don't stroll on Kontraktova Square. Don't stroll anywhere. Don't go to the pavilion with the Golgotha panorama near St. Alexander's Church. Not even the twelve-meter-tall crucified Christ will save you. Don't go outside when it's dark and people turn into shadows a shade darker than dark. Also don't go where you can be seen from far away. Not to imply that people used to be like a bunch of lilies, but now they stink like a cellar of cabbage.The city, which earlier might have had some fun, is now going crazy. It's like a fish in warm water: it doesn't react to anything, swims slowly like it doesn't care if it swallows a hook or not. The excitement and exaltation pass into oppression, just as our necks have sunk into our shoulders, our shoulders into our lumbars, our lumbars into our nether regions. The holiday turns into a funeral, the parades into explosions, depression into mania. Winter passes into summer, people turn into beasts, the hours into ages, and the ages into hours. It's worth simply walking around the city to see a soldier from an unknown army taking a piss near the opera. Farther on is a row of identical old widows selling ball gowns and candelabra. Then there are the aristocrats and manufacturers who throw so much at the prostitutes that they'll soon be richer than their wives.I returned late through the Kyryliv Wood, not heeding all the warnings that I myself have given here. It really is dangerous—the place is famous for it. There's a madhouse nearby, caves where criminals and the sick can hide out. Also, once upon a time, as they say in fairy tales, the great dragon Zmei Gorynich lived here beside the Puchai River. The stench in these places drives away the most committed misanthropes and even one type of philanthrope—that is, perverts. It sounds dumb, but the stench is cleansing. I don't know where it comes from. After the operating theaters and the rooms with amputees, the stench no longer repelled or attracted me; it just was. And this was a great place to think. As I walked, I considered an incident with our patient.The patient, a respectable individual whose name carries too much weight for me to state it directly, one day began to assault people. He nearly strangled a merchant who he believed asked too much for a beaver coat. He likewise wanted to kill his business partner when he didn't say hello loudly enough. But the worst was, he lost all shame of his own nakedness. At first it was the police who took care of it. When our future patient slipped off his pants and undergarments, he was taken to Kyrylivska, which has had means for dealing with such cases dating back to the day when unhinged Cossacks and composers from Kyiv Mohyla Academy were taken there.During the examination we determined that the patient was experiencing a severe breakdown. His wife added that lately, more than once, he had allowed himself strong words in front of the children and often suffered from ennui. Furthermore, she said, the patient had been undergoing treatment for “the French disease” for some years—which was, obviously, where we needed to start.“Syphilis!” Skorsky spat out the matchstick he was chewing on. He was a specialist on the psychological aspects of diseases related to the venereal. “Tertiary syphilis! When poorly treated, over time ‘the French disease’ can destroy the central nervous system. Hence the patient's chicanery. Such theater!”Skorsky and I had not spoken since the incident at Bilinsky's. Meanwhile, something significant had happened to him. The most boring person on earth, Skorsky had simply caught fire. He said hello and kibitzed. I even heard the doctor got drunk alone in his office, then wandered through the forest. Could he be using narcotic substances?“Cocaine!” was the doctor's second proclamation. It was his favorite treatment for the psychological complications of syphilis. Skorsky himself never took what he called “the universal drug”—good for alcoholism and toothaches, neuroses and morphine dependency—though he had read in an article by a respectable Viennese physician, who used cocaine as a panacea, that it was not addictive. That doctor subsequently recanted, but Skorsky paid no attention. He believed the retraction was made under pressure from pharmacologists who had no incentive to cease production of the medications that cocaine might supplant. Their representatives either paid or threatened the Viennese to repent.As the patient was escorted to his room, he assaulted the orderly, Alevtyna. They tried pulling him off her, but, though he released his fingers from her neck, he buried his teeth in her leg. The poor orderly, who had not until then been attacked by a psychotic, nearly died of fear. Later, panic set in over Skorsky's diagnosis. He told her about the consequences of syphilis: grotesque patterns on one's face due to infection of the skin, mucous membranes, cartilage, and bones. He went on about the devastation to the central nervous system, which they had just observed in real life: “The face starts to look like lace some mangy dogs fought over before rolling in the mud.”Alevtyna, who had not yet regained her faculty of speech, straightened up. Ignoring the slavering male orderlies, she bared her leg to get a better look at the wound. She then ran down the hall and out into the garden, where she fell on the ground to rip up grass and small bunches of daisies. Alevtyna ate them along with the soil in their roots.“Minor hysteria. She needs fifteen milligrams of cocaine.”Skorsky took a snuff box out of his pocket and scooped up some white powder with a toothpick made from a goose feather. He gave the order to close Alevtyna's mouth and one of her nostrils, forcing her to snort the medication.We fretted over her so long that evening fell. I decided to walk down, along the ravine, behind the church.It was unlikely there were any large beasts there, but something was rustling. The pits and mounds, ravines, paths, graves of witches whose living sisters flew in the treetops from time to time, the whispers of the forest spirits, the spirits of the nutcases who died in the hospital, the spirits of the monks from the St. Cyril Monastery, Zmei Gorynich and the bogatyrs who wanted to defeat him. The city would be calmer without this forest. I saw the gaps between the trees and went off in the direction of the tram tracks.As I was coming out of the forest, there was a patch of Amanita muscaria that had been trampled into porridge. A bit farther on, the body of Professor Bilinsky lay killed in the blackberry bushes. The way he was lying it looked as though he had not struggled before death. I quickly examined his body but saw nothing out of the ordinary. There were no wounds, no dirt under the fingernails. Animals had not yet smelled the carrion, but swarms of various insects covered him. Oh, why did I have to find the putrid body?The best thing would be to take the tram to his house to inform his relatives. The doors closed, and I noticed my own calm. This death had not evoked any emotions in me other than a feeling of responsibility, the need to tell the family. But also—some alarm at the thought of who the murderer could be. I knew that it was murder.“Your nose is bleeding.” A woman as round as an onion, carrying two baskets full of strawberries, offered me an ironed and starched handkerchief.“Have I dirtied my shirt?”“No, it's as neat as a pin. It's just your nose that's dirty. Wipe it now before you spray blood on my strawberries.”“No one will see the red on red.”“Ah, but it's salty!”“You know why it's not sweet? We'd drink it like syrup.”“Those with Christ in their heart do not talk that way.”“Are your strawberries expensive?”“Why? What?”“I'm checking to see if you have God in your heart.”“Child, if you knew how I have to work for this berry! I have to weed it a hundred times. In a week, the quitch grass grows as high as a horse. And I water it with water I carry from the stream, it kills my arms... ”“How much are the berries?”“They're not for sale. Anyway, soon money won't mean a thing. Soon all money, all these papers made from the skins of sinners on their satanic presses will be annulled. What matters is how we treat each other.”“So if I try your strawberries for free, my ‘thank you’ will be enough?”“Hands off!” she said and thwacked my fingers.I heard loud laughter behind me—same laughter as from the café near the Continental. There was no one sitting near Alina. (This is what fate looks like, remember.) Without asking, I sat next to her, away from the old lady.“Excuse me, but the night before last didn't you, yes, didn't you intrude on my privacy?” She started right away.“I saw it a little differently. Who was that young man with the mustache who paid me for you?”“Are you checking to see if you can flirt?”The tram stopped. People got on and off.“Are you coming back from the hospital?” she asked. “Don't be shocked. My uncle works there. He's told me all about you.”“An uncle by the name of Skorsky?”(Remember: this is what fate looks like.)“Yes. Skorsky's been strange recently—says things that make me wonder if he hasn't lost his mind. Have you noticed anything?”“I don't know.”“You know perfectly well.”“Where are you going?” I tried to change the subject.“I have to send something to my theater friends in Odesa. By the way, they'll be putting on Oedipus Rex soon in Kyiv—in Ukrainian.”“Greek tragedy in Ukrainian! That's a first.”“Exactly. The troupe is rehearsing now in Odesa. The theater where they will perform this fall is being remodeled.”“Wait. Now I remember where I've seen you before—it was at a performance! Vynnychenko's Black Panther and White Bear, at the Bergonier on Fundukleivska.“The same director is doing the Oedipus. He's my friend.”“He's your friend in what sense?”“Again with that tired subject. By the way, I've been thinking about you.”“And I about you.”“That's good. I was thinking not about you, to be precise, but about that elevator you invited me on.”“Who was that man with you?”“Like a broken record! Even if he had been my fiancé, I'm not bought or inherited. I'm not a brooch or a hundred acres of land, and I'm not a house in Kaniv!... Who was with you when you saw Black Panther?“Ah, so.”“Answer!”“That was my mother. She looks very young. She is coming to Kyiv the day after tomorrow. I can introduce you.”“Oh, this is my stop.”I looked out the window and realized that I had long since passed the stop for Bilinsky's.“Can we see each other again?”“We can. But you have only one chance.”Alina the anarchist wrote something on a scrap of paper and handed it to me.Morning, not morning but a thick porridge (I hate porridge). Dew, thick spit, crushed fruits, urine, all on the sparkling cobblestones. The sun, just barely having made its appearance, is already scorching. The human masses scurry and grumble like poorly digested food inside a stomach.I walked diagonally across St. Sofia's Square, then along the perimeter, then one edge, then again diagonally across. I went underground. The basement café of the Continental Hotel was practically empty. I again asked the server to bring the cloth with the embroidered portrait, but I couldn't remember the musician's last name, only that it ended with -sky. The server said that -sky was currently in the southern cities of Yalta and Odesa. I added that Kurbas, the director, Alina's friend, was also in Odesa, rehearsing Oedipus Rex, and that he'd previously put on Black Panther.I was bored, so I walked along Khreshchatyk and then headed down, calling to mind all the Kyiv churches of Podil: there's Birth of Christ, St. Nicholas on the Shore, Intercession, Pyrohoshcha, Holy Presentation, St. Dymytrii Rostovsky, St. Illia's. And also the Epiphany Brotherhood Monastery, Ascension Convent, and St. Katherine's, all these whipped-cream churches on the waffles of our streets. A few of them reminded me of themselves by appearing suddenly out of nowhere.The smells on Kontraktova Plaza where commerce buzzed were like multicolored light bulbs turning on one after another. Here you could catch the aroma of Balabukha jam, which blended with the next smell, English shoe polish at the Raiskys’ shop. Then the crunchy-smelling cabbage from old women standing in a row like herons and spitting out the shells of sunflower seeds. Farther on, the stench of a good-sized rat that crawled under Mrs. Shevchuk's shop where she sells broadcloth. Oh, she can't scream: no, she'll quietly dig that rat out herself so as to not scare off her clients.I bought a paper and two pairs of underwear. I asked two laughing young chambermaids who were secretly puffing in a grape-filled yard for a smoke. I wandered around Podil until evening when I came across a sawmill near the Dnipro that surprisingly smelled pleasantly of mazut fuel oil. The weather was dry, yet in the middle of the road was an enormous puddle, a deep dark black. A forty-year-old woman in a pale pink dress stood near it. The theatricality of it all provoked me to pose her a question,“Ma'am, what should I do?”But she paid me no attention. I shouted,“What should I do?”“What to do, what to do?” she said in Polish. “Jump in the water and swim so far away that you cannot return.”I quickly crossed a section of the forest. The wind brought a mixture of unpleasant air, like a stinky handkerchief held under one's nose. Passing the trees, I saw light in the spaces between them and exited at the hospital.Outside the windows, two orderlies lay in chairs with their heads thrown back. Two others—fools—ran around the yard in different directions, peering out at... something. The lights on the first floor of the hospital were on, and the staff milled about.“You're just in time!” said Ivan, a tall, young orderly.“For what?”“Your patient ran away! We went into his room and he wasn't there.”“What patient?”“The one who bit Alevtyna,” said Danylo, the other orderly, short and middle-aged.“That's Skorsky's patient, not mine.”I had no intention of helping them. This was all history—like my family, Kyiv, and my previous life. I had no intention of thinking about it. I wanted to go to my office, pack up my field surgery kit, and get out. So what? Their psychotic syphilitic ran away—it happened.Of course, that patient could have something to do with Bilinsky's murder. But that was no longer my problem.“What a strange coincidence!” the doctor on duty said. “Comrade doctor, the other one responsible for this patient was just here.”“And where is he now?”“He took off toward the church to look for the patient.”“Didn't the patient escape earlier?”“Don't know.”“How do you not know? You had better call the police, moron, before he kills someone. And get those sleeping orderlies to look for him.”“They can't... ”“Why not? Should I go wake them?”“They're on morphine.”“And you, I can see, have lost your mind. Go, catch your psycho! If it turns out that he killed Bilinsky—and on your watch—you can't imagine what's in store for you.”I adjusted my homburg and set off in the direction of St. Cyril's, that unwelcoming monolithic cube. I glanced around—what if our escaped syphilitic were to jump out of the bushes and bite or strangle me. I looked around because I wasn't sure of my actions, wasn't sure of my choices. Tripping over a clump of clover, I reached the open doors of the church. I couldn't stop myself from going in.The walls and ceiling were covered with frescoes. There was what used to be an angel rolling up the sky on the southern column of the narthex. But also graffiti: people scratched their names on it so as not to be forgotten—their idea of eternity. Prince Volodymyr the Great compared this activity to the desecration of graves. The vandals paid a fine and were beaten with canes. During the raids of Batu Khan, the church was deserted and cracks appeared all over it. Wild martens and feral dogs sought shelter here; insects swarmed under the ceiling with its red mosaics. Birches grew in its midst. Water seeped in the cracks, the water became ice, the ice widened the cracks, more water seeped in the cracks, becoming more ice that further widened the cracks, the wall split and nearly fell over, and then the wall fell over. Yet the angel is still rolling up the sky... When I reached the exit, I heard a rustling behind me. I turned after I stepped outside: in the depths of the church, like a stick in a pot of tar, stood a man with a large bag thrown over his shoulder and a revolver pointed right at me.“Is that you, Doctor?“Don't move!”“What's... Skorsky, what's with you?”“Don't move, I say!”“What are you doing here?”And finally I understood... Skorsky was himself the psycho! (Really, I had known for a while.)“You are the murderer! I knew it! But—why?”“Shut up.”“It was you. You! The stolen cigarettes, the strange behavior, Bilinsky. If I shout, everybody will come running. They've already called the police!”There was heavy breathing behind me. And then a gun rang out.The city is overgrown with new buildings. They encircle everything that was once on the periphery. Kyiv has become an old lady that can no longer restrain herself in the face of pastries. The city climbs farther. It steps over the swamps, turns the old rivers into a series of lakes; the other bodies of water it drives into canals. The grain that falls from the wild wheat is black. When the sun heats it, the grain melts and trickles into the earth. St. Cyril's stands indestructible. No one spackles the small cracks in its walls with either expensive putty or glues, nor with cheap cement and whitewash. One day a small fox appears in the doorway. It runs inside and along the floor of simple gray tiles. The gods watch from the walls, watch and fall into ruin. The fox runs to the iconostasis. Before it is a time-darkened Virgin Mother and Child in oil on sheets of zinc. The fox runs the metal steps that wind up to the second floor. The fox runs past all the vaults, naves, all the frescoes. A buckthorn seed flies in through a broken window. It will be the first. Soon the buckthorn will grow everywhere. A dumb hare will make its nest in the buckthorn bushes and nightingales will settle in the upper branches to sing until the end of the world. The fox runs between the thick rays that penetrate the windows. It catches one of the rays, squints its eyes, and warms itself in the sun.The shot rang out, but I did not fall. I looked around—and on the church threshold was our syphilis patient bearing a rod. His head lay on the rocks by the doorway.“If only he'd been at the stage of nose deformity! Just imagine: a hole instead of a nose plus a hole from the bullet—like an extra pair of eyes!” Skorsky laughed at the corpse.“We need to call the orderlies.”“They heard the shot. They'll run here on their own. You see, Professor Bilinsky believed it would take two or three years to wrap up this patient's case,” Skorsky told me. “But I took care of it much faster!”“Excuse me, but I'm going crazy in this city. I thought that you were Bilinsky's murderer.”“Just so. Why not? I am Bilinsky's murderer.”“Don't tease. You've changed a lot recently, so... ”“Yes, I've started killing people. You might term such a change significant.”“You have the right to irony.”“I am not being ironic.”“Let's call it sarcasm.”“It's the honest-to-God truth.”“And yes, you have the right to mock me.”“Well then, let's be done. To the horses!”“What horses?”“Alina's waiting!”Alina, her uncle Skorsky, a few others I didn't know, and I rode like the wind that ripped off my homburg and carried it back to Kyiv.“There's a fresco in the choir loft at St. Cyril's where Vrubel painted himself and patients from the hospital as the apostles. When I came across it by accident, I really believed they were saints,” Alina said.“I've never been up there. I've only seen the church from below.”“Remember the way back so you can see it sometime.”“The Puchai River used to flow here. You shouldn't trust the landscape,” Skorsky said, reaching for something, perhaps his bag, just when we left the darkness of the trees and saw the endless steppe ahead of us.We rode all night without stopping. Though no one was chasing us. Though we had nowhere to be. We rode like beasts released from a cage. The promises of the horizon turned what we'd left behind into a cage fit for those from whom freedom had been severed, like an anomaly, at birth.The pre-morning sky looked at first like a sack of turnips—filled with something heavy. But with each verst, the sky became lighter. When it was finally light enough to see clearly, we arrived at a knoll at the foot of a stone wall that from a distance had appeared to be a gigantic piece of halva. The exterior ruins of the castle gave no hint of how it was when all was fine here, when people defended themselves successfully from the nomads’ raids. From far off, the wreckage looked like a natural agglomeration of stones—a rocky elevation, no more: a cluster of cliffs. It would rain a few hundred more times, a few hundred more winds from a few hundred directions would blow on this heap, and it would collapse as though nothing had ever been here.A few stalks of wheat grew from one of the rocks. Someone had probably cast a handful of grain here for some birds that forgot to eat it.“Who could this castle belong to?” I asked Skorsky.“I reckon the Swan Princess,” the doctor rejoined, hoping to sound knowledgeable.From behind one of the piles of gray sandstone emerged a young man in a black reptilian coat and a white papakha as lush, bright, and out of place as a dahlia. His name was Artem. The heat was melting our brains, but he was dressed like that, in rooster fashion, which was popular among the otamans. Artem helped Alina dismount her horse and tried to kiss her on the lips, but she offered him a cheek instead.Had she been racing to see this clown?We entered the yard—the ruins had fashioned an internal space that was more or less protected, at least from strangers’ eyes. It turned out that there were even places where it was possible to hide from the rain, and from there the ruins didn't look half bad.In the center of the court was a table, and on it a wooden bucket with pink gladiolas. How romantic! It all looked like it came from outer space. Where on earth, in the middle of the steppe, far from any village or town, did this table, this simple table, come from? And the gladiolas? The steppe hadn't been plowed in so long that any cultivars would have gone wild, degenerated, dried up completely.A campfire crackled nearby—a little preview of what we would soon do to the houses, villages, and cities. Artem the otaman brought over a cezve from the fire and poured the first portion into a small, copper cup for Alina. He also got out a porcelain cup with images of rosy cherubim—but how...?“Who else would like coffee?”Only Skorsky and I responded. The question excited me, even distracted me from the thought of the kiss I had recently witnessed and the Kyiv I had recently left.“It's obvious who the professors here are; cultured people drink coffee. Are you both doctors?”“Uh-huh.”“For wolves of the steppe, like us, doctors are gold, even more precious than gold. Actually, a Hippocrates like you should eat more, because those in your profession will soon be worth your weight in gold. Work on your figures, both of you.”“Who will take pity on the horses that have to carry us?”“We'll find the horses. And very large doctors can be transported on machine-gun carts. We'll need to seat the otamans near you. Only a fool would shoot at a doctor.”“I think we'll find quite enough fools here.”“With your beard, Doctor, you look like Tsar Nicholas II. But even so you won't be shot. You might even be canonized!”“We've only just arrived and you're going on about executions,” Skorsky grumbled and checked to make sure that he still had his bag.“Apologies, apologies, pardonnez-moi. But you are not merely a doctor. A venereologist! Skorsky, you're a specialist! A venereologist is the most important person in wartime. The most valuable! You are the botanists of war. You can't imagine what varieties of flowers grow here, and these beds have long awaited a proper gardener. Or even just a man with a scythe!”“Bite your tongue,” Alina said. “I don't need to listen to this.”“Yes, yes, of course. Excuse me, my r—. ” He almost said “rose.”We rested all day. We went down to a surprisingly close river overgrown with lilies. We rowed the boats left by fishermen. I talked to Skorsky. He took his bag everywhere, refusing even to swim so he wouldn't have to part with it. I asked him what he had in it, but he said it wasn't my damned business.Alina rowed with the otaman to the middle of the river. They were having a loud discussion. She was waving her hands. The current carried their boat downstream slowly and smoothly. What a nuisance, that current!I tried to meet with Alina one-on-one, but she was avoiding me. In the morning I was confused, by lunch I was sad, and after lunch I got angry.In the evening, I lay on the hot grass and drank another cup (I have no idea where they got such good coffee), which had no effect at all on my sleep. I watched the Perseids. Every year, the Earth passes through the tail of Comet Swift-Tuttle. People can see the meteor shower and make a wish. I wished. I counted forty-seven falling stars. All forty-seven of my wishes were for the same thing.Around the campfire, they were sitting, talking. I saw how he tickled her face with a piece of grass and she brushed him off in annoyance. Then they were screaming at each other. Later they again spoke kindly, after which they again quarreled. My joy grew after each tiny mistake that Artem made. I wanted him to show the worst he was capable of.They were screaming at each other, but all I could hear was beautiful opera singing. The stars fell to the sound of their screaming. The stars blessed my joy.Then this happened: Alina kicked the fire, scattered burnt kindling, and burned some of the grass. Artem grabbed her by the arm, but she broke away from him and ran off to the horses.“Go then! I guarantee you'll get to Katerynoslav and return with your tail between your legs.”“I'm going to Huliai-Pole! To Father Makhno!”I jumped up and ran after her.“Where do you think you're going?” Artem shouted.Really—where was I going? I was going after her: to Huliai-Pole, to Katerynoslav, to Rome, to Washington, to Istanbul, to Montevideo... “Go to sleep,” he said. “Come morning, this coquette will be here, right as rain. We've already been through this show. Tomorrow she'll be right here next to my boot!”... No, she won't.In some sort of shape we entered some town. There were some buildings that were some colors, some trees, some streets, some roads, and some signs. Posts, flustered birds’ nests, echoes, colors, shapes—each of some kind. A wedding procession was coming toward us. If you want to make orange, you need to add yellow to red, and then bam—it's black. If you want to salt the soup, shake in a little, and then bam—two handfuls. You want to say a kind word, and then bam—a punch in the face. I was rocked around like a watermelon on a boat and threw up my breakfast straight into the horse's fluffy mane. Sanko found this hilarious, but I said I'd pulverize him. So Sanko sped ahead.No one knew anything about Alina. The daytime sky was like a poorly washed bowl. The sun was a squashed, rotten apricot. The night sky looked like the sole of a boot to me. The moon was a dirty cheap copper coin that had gotten stuck to the sole. Everything seemed spoiled to me, irrelevant, unnecessary. Without her, this journey was a waste of time.“You'd better stay away from everyone,” Artem said. “You'll infect us with your pining, and pining is worse than the clap.”The wedding procession was before us. The young couple, still utter children, walked so calmly it was as if they didn't see us. As if we were made of a light breeze—our bodies, clothes, our horses and their iron shoes—of the lightest gasses. As if we were visible only to ourselves and the coal-black dog that barked, panting and gasping.The wedding was headed straight for us. We were in the middle of the road, and so were they. We approached each other slowly, a wave going toward a wave. Some ten meters before their indifferent faces, I noticed the color of the bride's eyes. And the coral-colored tulips that fell on the road before her. Round goose eggs on meaty stems, the flowers were falling and falling before her. The bride's eyes were almond shaped.“Hey there,” Artem shouted at me. “Wake up!”I came to and saw the whole village, everyone there, not realizing my group had turned left onto a side street away from the procession. The tulips disappeared—where'd they get tulips in the fall? I was sitting alone on my horse in the middle of the road, and the entire wedding procession came to a stop. I moved to the side, and the throng marched on, cutting off our escape route. We rode a few more meters and came across the synagogue.“You know what, you're right,” said the otaman.“Who is?”“Oleksii is the only one here who's right.”“About what?”Artem turned his horse and raced back. Everyone stood still while he ran his horse into the crowd and began firing his revolver. People scattered in all directions. Artem trotted, cackling like an imbecile. The horse kicked an old guy in the mouth. The man fell, spitting out his gold teeth. We rode up to the commotion and formed ranks, but none of us wanted to join the otaman.The bride stopped in the middle of the street. On both sides were buildings and trees, as well as dust, sky, and sun. She stood still, beautiful, as if nothing had happened. Then she adjusted her garland and walked calmly on.“Well, should we get some sugar now?” Artem laughed, looking at the bride, and off he went toward the sugar factory.It was then I noticed that all of the houses had shutters—fuchsia, blue, ocher—and that all the shutters were closed.We flew toward the dirty building, whistling and shouting. If there had been aesthetes among the otamans, they would certainly have razed the abomination in this field after seizing it. They would have spread soil on top and sown buckwheat. Long live buckwheat!, that wonderful crop. Like hunting dogs hot on the trail, we raced to our defenseless victim, with the baying of hundreds of hounds behind us. The field shook beneath us. We became an artist's canvas, evolving from Realism to Romanticism, Romanticism to Expressionism, Expressionism to Suprematism. If we had been painted in black and white, we would have been splotches (until the ink ran, annihilating all remaining patches of white).Two men stood near the gate—unarmed and undressed, in nothing but their undershirts and boots. Our fervor, our kinship with the elements, our entirety, were all for naught.“Jesus Christ! What bores!” Artem exclaimed. “How boring you are!”“Maybe boring for us, but fireworks for them,” Sanko said, dismounting his horse.“The fear of death engenders creativity,” our otaman—a distinguished philosopher of the early twentieth century, that demonic breed—prophesied.He went on, “Excuse me, but with all due respect, we are not going to search you. Just show us right away where the money is. Why are there so few of you? Don't say there's not much money. I want piles and piles of money! If you don't show it to us, we'll print our own on your skin. Believe me, we will.”We entered the factory grounds. There were no workers, only an enormous mountain of sugar beets that looked like a pile of coal from a distance and a pile of dead rats from up close.“So, did you have a good year?” Artem asked a man in an undershirt.“Not really—too dry.”“Nah, that's fine. You wouldn't have been able to gather most of the harvest this year anyway. There's a fire burning across all of Ukraine, all of Russia. The whole world!”While Artem tossed thoughts like well-chewed sunflower seeds into the crowd, the two men quietly stepped aside and then ran fast ahead to the factory's main hall. The gigantic door slammed shut. The gate was locked behind us! The windows were smashed! The factory roared from inside like a cumbersome machine starting up. Bullets whirred through every window.“Bastards! It's a trap! Quick, after me!”Still on horseback, Artem bounded over to a vast window, low to the ground, and smashed it mercilessly. He broke the frame and jumped inside on his horse. I and a few others followed. We broke into their lair, threw open the doors, and let the other warriors inside.Iron vats of hot sugar were steaming, pipes were clattering; machinery groaned.“Parasites!” Artem gritted his teeth. “I'll get you. I'll get you red sons of bitches. Painted whores!”At the word “painted,” his horse fell to the ground. Lying prone, Artem continued fighting, but the red soldiers wouldn't let him stand. Fighting nearby, I rode over to assist but did not know where to aim. Artem got up, ran forward, and brought his sword down on the head of the closest soldier, all the way to the middle of his skull, to the bridge of his nose. It was like butchering a pig. Artem thrust the sword into the buttock of another who was fleeing and cut off his leg at the bend in the knee.“I'll cut off every last one of your asses! Cut off your asses!” Artem bellowed.A half hour later, the dead were lying, the captured sitting, and the victors doing anything they pleased.“Skorsky, are there a lot of casualties?” I asked the doctor, whose hour it was. I hoped not, because I was too tired to help him.“Just a few. The dead are already dead, and the wounded are not ours.”Though Skorsky rarely asked my help, and though I'd become an ordinary soldier, the doctor in me was still present in the most unpleasant attribute—knowledge. Others saw an eviscerated man, pieces of dusty flesh smeared with clay, soil, sand, and straw. I saw a perfectly formed kidney hanging perfectly from the rest of its body like a child's mitten from its coat. You could try this death on for size. Wear it like a sanbenito of the Inquisition.Artem counted the money and then lay on the floor alongside the gigantic sugar mountain in the middle of the room. From time to time, the crystals rustled as they fell.“I didn't think you'd be such a fighter!” the otaman said without turning toward me. “I thought you'd be healing us. You'd keep to the rear and we'd hide you like a girl. But here you are, in the vanguard, like a lion!”“I got excited,” I told him, choosing not to react to the “girl” part.“’Cause Alina said there was no sense counting on you to fight.”“Really?”“Does that sting?”“Why would it? I'm a doctor—not everyone is. It requires a brain. Unlike waving a sword.”“Yeah, yeah. I gave her gladiolas. We were lying in the boat near that castle, doing all manner of things, and she told me all about you. How you met.”“You were lying in that boat talking about me?”“It was the day before you left Kyiv. You agreed to go with the anarchists so quickly!”“Were you surprised? Doctors make fast decisions.”“But you probably had great prospects. Your parents are rich, right?”“And who are your parents?”“Probably all your relatives fled abroad—bourgeois. Why did you stay?”“What the hell's your point?”“Alina, by the way, died a while ago. Probably.”“Don't jinx her.”“Listen here,” he said, staring at the ceiling. “And listen good. If you have designs on her—dead or alive—it's best you castrate yourself now.”“After you.”“If I want to kill somebody, you know, I just do it.”At last he looked at me. I was lying on the floor nearby and looking in his direction, sweaty and relaxed, my appearance complemented by my disdain for his opinion, his authority, his stupid hat. His everything.Artem raised his arm above his head, stuck a finger in the sugar mountain, and licked it. We both got up. Had I anticipated this turn of events, I would have readied a gift for him. Artem held his revolver. Under my hand I found a knife the workers used for gathering beets: it was a deliberately sharpened arc they sank into the swollen brassicas. I jumped up and quickly stepped around the sugar mountain.Artem's bullet hit a pane and broke the glass.“Not man enough for hand-to-hand?”The otaman shot again.“You should've challenged me to a duel, you romantic!”Encrusted with white crystals, I charged Artem from the sugar mountain. We fell in, and the sugar stuck in our hair, mustaches, nostrils, armpits.The gang ran in to get us apart, then backed off because it had nothing to do with them. By now the sugar mountain had burst its banks. Of the once perfect pyramid, a deformed mound remained.Wounded, Artem fell on the sugar mound, turning the white red.I stood before the gang sugar-coated and holding a bloody hook. The old otaman was drawing his last breath. Blood trickled from the corner of Artem's mouth and streamed from the left side of his breast.“What's the commotion?” Old Roman had just come in.“Be quiet,” the boys told him. And a good thing they did.“You killed him? You killed the otaman!”“Shut your mouth,” the boys told him.“You... ”I slugged Roman's stinky herring mouth. How did that son of a bitch find pickled herring in a sugar factory? My fist was now bigger and stronger than ever before, a steel anvil that could split nails and shatter memorial plaques. The unfortunate man's jaw twisted like an upper millstone that had gone off track from the lower.“Let's get out of here and go to Makhno's camp,” I gave my first order.We galloped so fast the grass burned beneath us. The birds and bugs had no time to fly out of the way; hooves trampled the burrows of rodents who didn't dare crawl out of their holes for a long time after. We raced like no one had ever raced before.The steppe, that sly fox, pretended to be an innocent fool. The steppe said, “I'm like Adam: I don't even know my own name.” But its grass harbored the tracks of thousands of armies and the heels of Herodotus, the crunch of Trypillia vessels, and the smell of Scythian hemp, Roman coins, clay figures of wolf people, the chevrons of Denikin's army, glass from the Chekists’ ruby stars, traces of uranium from flying saucers. I threatened it: “Steppe, show me your layers, or I will burn you, plow you under, flood you.” But it just replied: “I'm like Adam: I don't yet know my name.”I lost geography as if it were a silver coin. It fell out of my pocket and rolled through the feather grass that blanketed the steppe in white foam. The open space ahead was so endless that the whole world might as well have been steppe. If people ended up here from somewhere else, they would conclude they were on another planet. The coin fell and became an argentum, became one with the ring on the hand of the princess who had one green eye and one blue, with the twisted candlestick at the monastery on the other side of the steppe, with melted ingots. It broke down into simpler elements, simpler and simpler yet. The horse carried me spreading the seeds of northern plants to the south, just as southern riders had once brought flowers and weeds to the north. And then I turned back. Just as I had no geography, I had no time. Every night I fell asleep with the thought that the next day I would again race. Through all spacelessness, all timelessness. I exchanged one horse for another, got on a train, on a boat, traversed forty versts on foot—in rain that brought the river up to the road, in heat that overturned cattle. The earth I walked on became mine. Mine was the water in the lakes and springs, clean water, dirty water, enlightened water, contaminated with oil, stinking of algae, of fish that died in wells, stinking of the memory of atrocities, water as clean as broken bread. The water did not become Alina.I was doing this for her: I got the basturma out from under my saddle, sodden with the horse's sweat, sliced the throat of a rich man whose daughter I had danced with at a ball, climbed into a vat of beet juice and took a sugar bath, carried out the expropriation of the savings banks, wiped the sweat from my face with my shirt—and the cloth turned red; I didn't know from what. If it was someone else's blood, I didn't care; if it was my own, even less.We mostly came across Reds. We scraped them up like old red paint on a door in order to repaint the boards black. Black looked better. Red is tasteless, but black has style. Healthy men died before us of myocardial rupture like bunnies found in the nest. The ones whose hearts were sewn of steel wire envied the deceased. Seizing estates, banks, distilleries, and prisons reminded us of gathering in the harvest. If you're too lazy to pick an apple, you can shake the tree; some of the fruit gets bruised when it falls. We seized buildings like we were shaking apple trees. No one picked the fruits, we just shook: shook under the beds, under the tables, behind the curtains. No, there was no picking. We just shook until the red juice spurted from the apples.Near the Khorol River with Father Makhno and me in charge, we captured sixteen machine guns and four cannons, as well as five hundred prisoners who immediately came over to our side. The villagers voluntarily gave us bread and cheese, chickens and kvas. People joined us. The front of the machine-gun cart said “You can't run,” and “You won't catch us” at the back. We took factory after factory. Millions of karbovantsi, thousands of poods of sugar, weapons. We smashed the telephone exchanges and captured the telegraphs. We made alliances with some and then with others. Lenin, Wrangel, Frunze, the Germans, Chinese, Australians, Kaiser Wilhelm II, Cleopatra, Maria Theresa Walburga Amalia Christina. We ran the steppe. There were a hundred thousand of us. There were three hundred thousand of them. There were three hundred thousand of us. There were a million of them. There were two million of them. We were all of humanity. We were so many that we were none.The nobles’ estates were long ago forsaken. In the people's deepest trunks lay silks and guipure laces that were once perhaps used only to cover a table. Five steps from the barn in the direction of the pear tree, some silver candlesticks are buried; there's a plaster figure of an angel in the chicken coop, covered with shit and feathers.I was reluctant to be going to my home, but I didn't see any way out. Fate intended me to be a different being from the one I was before.Here my grandfathers and great-grandfathers were born. Here the ones who caused my grandfathers and great-grandfathers to flee had stopped. When we were still far off I noticed that someone was in the house. It was our men—Skorsky had brought them here, about twenty in all. I asked Sanko, whom I had walked with side by side more than once, where the doctor was now. All the men answered that he was around somewhere, but I didn't see him that evening.In 1918, the spirit of my great-grandfather Stepan, along with my mother and uncle, had gotten into a britzka and scrambled off to Paris, to Napoleon, against whom my great-grandfather had fought with the Cossacks, to whom the Russians promised to return self-rule. Following him in the cart went the soul of Grandpa Oleh, who lost a finger when he cut down the old linden near the house; his second finger was blown off by a cannonball near Balaklava, and later his entire hand was cut off by some Turk. Next went the spirit of my father, also Stepan, who did not take part in any war but died of measles at the age of forty. They all got the hell out of here. First, they went to Kyiv, led by my mother, Tamara Makarivna, in order to collect Uncle's family and me, their son. And their son, it turns out, has now come back to rob his own home (I didn't drive my war buddies away, did I?). It's a shame that I didn't know where the bathtub was, or whatever they bathed me in when I was small. It would have been good to walk through the ranks of anarchists with that basin and tell them all to spit into it.Remembering every room, I carried Alina upstairs to my mother's bedchamber. There was no longer furniture or pictures, only bare walls. The bed and mattress remained, but that was enough. Mother hated noise, so she set up her room far away from the running in the halls and the creaks on the stairs. I adjusted the mattress; in a gap, looking like a stalk of wheat, there lay a gold bracelet that she lost in the haste and that the thieves could not find in the mayhem. I tucked it into my pocket.The place could still be saved. It was strong, built under the leadership of my grandfather, who knew how to do it right. He built a sawmill, a gristmill, a dress factory (today it's probably been ransacked, maybe even by our own men).Alina had a complete, displaced break in her right fibula. We needed water first. I went downstairs—the guys were dragging out the piano like an old cow to the slaughter.“What are you doing with that?”“Taking it out.”“Why?”“What's it to you? We want to have fun.”“Can you play?”“We're not your bourgeois lily-handed bitches.”They couldn't play, but they were famous at destruction. “Noise is the music of the new time,” one of the smarter among them might have said. “But noise is the opposite of music. Just as a rose is the opposite of your ugly mugs,” I'd have responded if there was anyone to say it to. I could also have said that this was a Bosendorfer grand piano, that it was very valuable—but do the guys not deserve such a luxury?“Why are you so boring? We're relaxing.”“Then let me play a little first.”“Go ahead, but fast. One-two.”So I played. As before. My fingers ran up and down the black and white keys, which weren't simply keys of these, the simplest, colors. These were the keys that remembered my fingers specifically—achieved by that slovenly German Katerina, our governess. She knew a bundle of languages, could play the piano, and was interested in the latest scientific discoveries. But she had not an ounce of sympathy for anyone who couldn't master anything on the first try. More than once she hit my pinkie against the black key that remembered every one of its four thousand touches. She would pound it on the key and shout, “Si bémol! Si bémol,” and later bang my fingers and translate, “B flach! B flach!”I played. I could not expose myself, so the only thing I could do was believe in miracles. What if these coarse men saw value in this bit of furniture so unintelligible to them? And what if they didn't destroy it, this emblem of my childhood, my land, my air, which I could protect in no other way? My air. My water.“Shchedryk, shchedryk, shchedrivochka,” one of them who recognized the tune began to sing along.“Look at you.” They did not expect music from me, who had until recently been drinking blood like water.They said, “Again, again!”A group of curious men gathered around me. They were ordinary farmers, thieves, and recidivists, peasants and workers, everyone except for Skorsky. They needed this music as they needed baths. The music cleansed them from the inside, perhaps. They had not heard anything besides the whistle of a bullet, the neighing of a horse, or the knocking of a chisel and the whirring of a saw, amputating limbs, for a long time.But it could not go on long. I did not close the piano lid, just stood and went to fetch water for Alina, leaving the unfinished song for later. The well was to the north—that is, at the “Head.” My father once promised to give me a compass if I could learn to identify the ends of the earth by means of the sun. And to make it easier to remember, I gave each one of them a name: the east where the day begins was “Right” (my right hand), the west “Left,” the north “Head,” and the south “Feet.” Back when I could still do whatever I wanted all day long, I would wake in the morning and say: I'm going to the Feet. The mound was at the Feet, Left had the river, Right had the forest. It was only to the Head that I rarely went, because a village was located there. When the villagers saw me, they would speak in whispers and avoid the master's son.... I wiped her brow and her burning, sunken cheeks. I lay down next to her to feel the heat of her skin.When the fire in Alina calmed slightly, I went out into our orchard. My father had once been given a gift from Japan—a tulip tree that blossomed with yellow-green flowers. It had to have grown in the time that I was away. It would have been fatal had it been cut down. I again took the stairs down into the drawing room and came across nobody—they had all disappeared in search of food or were hidden away in their burrows. In the middle of the hall, like an opened rib cage, was the piano, irreparably shattered.B Flach! B Flach!Translation © Ali Kinsella 2022. (shrink)

In this paper I will briefly discuss flourishing and freedom, relating them to health and disease; discuss the tensions between flourishing and freedom; and exemplify how those discussions are relevant to chronic disease suffering. The concept of freedom has significant connections with the concepts of health, disability and disease. Understanding disease and disability in terms of the loss of aspects of freedom may help our understanding of the suffering that arises from chronic disease. On the other hand, flourishing may require (...) a degree of adversity. Therefore disability and disease may be conducive to flourishing. Flourishing may be understood as subordinated to freedom, as a path to freedom, or as transcending freedom. It is suggested that freedom and flourishing are expressed as mutually enhancing cycles, actualized according to the personal circumstances that will ground their expression. In a distant horizon of innocent spontaneous self-expression, flourishing and freedom may become coincident. Regarding chronic disease as a constraint on ‘species-typical’ abilities to fulfill one’s significant life interests, as well as an unwanted intrusion into the patient’s life, presents chronic disease suffering as a loss of both positive and negative freedom. The conceptual relation between flourishing and freedom will thus organise the possibilities the sufferer sees as open to their self. (shrink)

Adversarial relations between science and religion have recurred throughout Western History. Archaeologists figure prominently in a recent incarnation of this debate as members of a hegemonic scientific elite. Postmodern debates situate disagreements in cosmological differences between innocent, traditional, native peoples and insensitive, career-mad, colonialist scientists. This simplistic dichotomy patronizes both First Peoples and archaeologists, pitting two economically marginal groups in a political struggle that neither can win. Although a few scholars have discussed the tyrannical nature of anthropological models of tradition (...) and culture, little consideration has been given to the fact that archaeology as a scientific discipline is drastically under-funded, with little research support and few jobs. Reconsideration of which political and economic groups actually benefit from the dramatization of a dichotomy between traditional and academic perspectives indicates some interesting patterns. The search for common ground is shown to have ethical implications for both the futures of First Peoples and the future of archaeology. (shrink)

This book argues that the risk of harm in armed conflict should be divided equally between combatants and enemy non-combatants. International law requires that combatants in war take 'all feasible precautions' to minimise damage to civilian objects, injury to civilians, and incidental loss of civilian life. However, there is no clear explanation of what 'feasible precautions' means in this context, or what would count as sufficiently minimised incidental harm. As a result, it is difficult to judge whether a particular war (...) or offensive actually satisfies this requirement. Just war theorists often consider it common sense that merely not intending to harm innocent civilians is not sufficient, but there is little clarity in the literature regarding what this means. One crucial question that is almost always overlooked is that of what the appropriate baseline distribution of risk should be. This book defends the Minimal Harm Requirement, which states that combatants should make an effort to reduce merely foreseen harm to enemy non-combatants to the lowest reasonable level. In order to assess which risk impositions are reasonable, and which are not, an egalitarian baseline should be adopted, suggesting that other things being equal risk of harm should be distributed equally between just combatants and unjust non-combatants. This book will be of much interest to students of just war theory, ethics, security studies, and international relations. (shrink)

This essay is focused on a difficult passage in Varrò, rust. 2,5,3-4, which is quoted, explained and partially corrected by Columella. Both passages are for us a valuable source of information about the capital sentence inflicted, in a very early age, on the person who caused the death of the ploughing ox. However, a contradiction or apory can be observed in the attitude of the two authors. On the one hand - as admirers of the mos maiorum - they seem (...) to praise the innocence and the restraint of the ancients, who showed so much respect for so beneficent an animal. On the other hand, in their roles as instructors of the most efficient farming techniques, they are keen on the profits assured by the raising of farm animals, and discuss without embarrassment the slaughter of oxen and the eating of beef. In Greece, the Attic Bouphonia, with all their functional ambiguities, marked the transition from the age of the bloodless sacrifice - praised and placed forever in the archives of history - to the "modern" age of slaughter; on the contrary, Roman culture lacked a similar rite that could somehow reconcile the two antithetical ideas, the ancient taboo about the slaying of domestic animals and the actual killing as performed in historical times. (shrink)

The “beyond a reasonable doubt” standard of proof, currently used in criminal trials, is notoriously vague and undermotivated. This paper discusses two popular strategies for justifying our choice of a particular precise interpretation of the standard: the “ratio-to-standard strategy” identifies a desired ratio of trial outcomes and then argues that a certain standard is the one that we can expect to produce our desired ratio, while the “utilities-to-standard strategy” identifies utilities for trial outcomes and then argues that a certain standard (...) maximizes expected utility. I argue that both strategies fail on their own terms, by requiring us to perform calculations that we simply cannot perform. No version of either strategy can be performed by jurors or legislators in our actual epistemic position, in which, since we do not know which of the defendants in our trial system are genuinely innocent and which are genuinely guilty, we cannot determine the extent to which our trial system tends to produce evidence that misleadingly incriminates the innocent or misleadingly exonerates the guilty. But we would need to determine this in order to perform the calculations required by any possible version of the ratio-to-standard or utilities-to-standard strategies. I then suggest some empirical reasons to be pessimistic about the evidence produced by our actual trial system. The upshot is that the “beyond a reasonable doubt” standard lacks a clear interpretation and rationale, nor do we have a promising way to identify an alternative. This is the trouble with standards of proof. (shrink)

The way communicable diseases do spread from one person to another, depending upon the specific disease or causative infectious agent. Out of these diseases, some are incurable and the health care workers during their practice or otherwise acquire such infections and transmit them further to innocent patients who are unaware of about the health status of health care workers. The rights of an infected health care worker and patients are protected by many laws but in case of conflict of interests (...) between the individual right of the health care worker and life of a patient, then obviously by the principle of natural justice, saving the life of a person from such incurable infection gets the privilege. Therefore, there is a lot of ethical and professional dilemma, arising out, in such a type of scenario, irrespective of concealed or disclosed health status and the question mark is raised on whether clinical practice may be allowed in such cases. Some of the studies show the actual but very little risk of transmission from infected health care workers to patients. Therefore, in the current scenario, many western countries such as USA and UK are following different guidelines in this regard but the same is lacking in India. So, this article critically analyses the various issues arising out of it and thereby justifies the need to have a uniform infection control policy in this regard apart from legal and ethical binding on infected health care workers. (shrink)

Even among those who find lethal defense against non-responsible threats, innocent aggressors, or justified aggressors justified even in one to one cases, there is a debate as to what the best explanation of this permissibility is. The contenders in this debate are the liability account, which holds that the non-responsible or justified human targets of the defensive measures are liable to attack, and the justified infringement account, which claims that the targets retain their right not to be attacked but may (...) be attacked anyway, even in one to one situations. Given that we normally think that rights are trumps, this latter claim is counter-intuitive and rather surprising, and therefore in need of justification and explanation. So far only Jonathan Quong has actually tried to provide an explanation; however, I will argue that his explanation fails and that Quong’s own account of liability is misguided. I then address Helen Frowe’s critique of the liability account. She makes the important concession that the tactical bomber has to compensate his victims, but she tries to block the conclusion that he must therefore be liable. I will demonstrate that her attempt to explain away liability fails once that concession is made. (shrink)

Researchers and technologists involved in the development of weapon systems can take their work to such extremes as to cause unplanned injury or death to others and lasting damage to the environment, reviewed here. In some cases innocent human casualties and ecological harm may actually be programmed and achieved. An analysis is proffered, attributing blame, and indicating efforts to correct the situation. The ethics involved are “complexified”, moral boundaries are exceeded, and humanity is transgressed as it develops solutions to the (...) problem. The license to make mistakes becomes more limited with the passing of the years.. (shrink)