| A Common Humanity: Thinking about Love and Truth and Justice Contributor(s): Gaita, Raimond (Author) |
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ISBN: 0415241138 ISBN-13: 9780415241137 Publisher: Routledge OUR PRICE: $171.00 Product Type: Hardcover - Other Formats Published: August 2000 Annotation: During the Spanish Civil War, George Orwell was asked why he could not shoot an enemy soldier who was running holding up his trousers. Orwell replied: 'I have come here to shoot at "Fascists"; but a man who is holding up his trousers isn't a "Fascist". A Common Humanity is a clear, profound and arresting book about what predicaments such as Orwell's tell us about humanity. Drawing on a wealth of important but overlooked examples, including the Holocaust, the real meaning of attempts to deny it, the trial of Adolf Eichmann, the taking of children of mixed blood from Aboriginal parents in Australia and the work of Levi, Wittgenstein, Arendt and Weil, Gaita's provocative and beautifully written book shows why it is impossible to draw a dividing line between our humanity and our morality. He urges us to recognize that while many of these horrific examples question the very idea of humanity, it is not the idea of humanity itself that is at fault. It is in our attempts to understand it that we go wrong. We go wrong when we construct elaborate rights and obligations and hope that humanity fits neatly into them. And when it doesn't, we just construct more complex rights or obligations. Gaita shows what is profoundly wrong with looking at ourselves in this way. We have forgotten that before we can share rights and obligations, we are likely to share something more fundamental: that we are capable of grief, hope, guilt, shame, remorse and above all love. As soon as these features depart from our moral vocabulary, so too does our common humanity. They may be difficult to understand and we may worry that they cloud our judgement, but if we try and think about human beings without them, we areno longer thinking of human beings who nonetheless are capable of racism or genocide. We are trying to think about the unthinkable. |
| Additional Information |
| BISAC Categories: - Philosophy | Ethics & Moral Philosophy - Philosophy | History & Surveys - General |
| Dewey: 170 |
| LCCN: 00062740 |
| Physical Information: 0.75" H x 6.14" W x 9.21" (1.40 lbs) 328 pages |
| Descriptions, Reviews, Etc. |
| Publisher Description: The Holocaust and attempts to deny it, racism, murder, the case of Mary Bell. How can we include these and countless other examples of evil within our vision of a common humanity? These painful human incongruities are precisely what Raimond Gaita boldly harmonizes in his powerful new book, A Common Humanity. Hatred with forgiveness, evil with love, suffering with compassion, and the mundane with the precious. Gaita asserts that our conception of humanity cannot be based upon the empty language of individual rights when it is our shared feelings of grief, hope, love, guilt, shame and remorse that offer a more potent foundation for common understanding. Drawing on the work of Hannah Arendt, Simon Weil, Primo Levi, George Orwell, Iris Murdoch and Sigmund Freud, Gaita creates a beautifully written and provocative new picture of our common humanity. |