edinburgh university press after the terror sep 2002

After the terror To Ingrid After the terror ted honderich edinburgh university press © Ted Honderich, 2002 Edinburgh University Press Ltd 22 George Square, Edinburgh Typeset in Linotype Palatino by Koinonia, Manchester, and printed and bound in Great Britain by The Bath Press, Bath A CIP record for this book is available from the British Library ISBN 0 7486 1667 5 (hardback) The right of Ted Honderich to be identified as author of this work has been asserted in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988. Contents Acknowledgements vii 1. GOOD LIVES, BAD LIVES Living longer 1 Other great goods 4 Half-lives and under-fives 6 Necessary inquiry 7 Less than half-lives, and a reason 12 Reassuring ourselves 14 Quarter-lives 16 Larger numbers 18 Great goods again 20 More reassurance? 22 Not an omission 24 2. NATURAL AND OTHER MORALITY Natural morality 30 More to natural morality, and its inescapability 34 Worked-out moralities 37 Libertarianism 40 Liberalism 46 The principle of humanity 51 3. DID WE WRONG THEM? DO WE WRONG THEM? Political realism 58 A morality of relationship 61 A general distinction, and a mystery 63 Libertarianism, liberalism, humanity again 69 Acts and omissions 73 Causes and conditions 76 Good intentions 78 Another hope, and a conclusion or two 81 4. THE TWIN TOWERS, AND DEMOCRACY Oneness in extremity 89 Definitions of violence 91 Terrorism defined 97 Why some say September 11 was wrong 100 Democracy 105 Hierarchic democracy 110 Why September 11 was wrong 115 5. OUR RESPONSIBILITY, AND WHAT TO DO Moral confidence 121 Our share in September 11 124 Capitalism 129 Our counter-attack 140 What is to be done 147 Index 155 Contents Acknowledgements Thanks to Shahrar Ali, Michael Berkowitz, Ingrid Coggin Purkiss, James Der Derian, Elizabeth and Thomas Fortescue Hitchins, James Garvey, Mark Geller, Anna Ghonim, Jude Harris, Beland Honderich, Kiaran Honderich, Ruth Honderich Spielbergs, Jackie Jones, Ed Kent, Mark Lovas, William McBride, Saladin Meckled-Garcia, Ada Rapoport-Albert, Steven Rose, Richard Rosen, Mary Warnock and Noam Zohar. None is incriminated by having read the manuscript or a part. None agrees with it all. Do some agree with none of it? This page intentionally left blank 1 1 Good lives, bad lives Living longer W hat is a good life? For a start, a good life is one that goes on long enough. A short life may be good while it lasts, may be a sweet thing in the memory of others. But if it is only half the length it should have been, if it is cut down to that, it is not a good life. A good life might be as long as one you know that comes back to mind, maybe like the life of my father, who departed during his afternoon nap. It might be seventy-five years. Lasting seventy-five years, of course, cannot by itself make a life a good one. If it was filled with disappointments, let alone dragged down by sorrows or defeats, it would not have been a good life. You can do more than wonder if some lives would have been better if they had been shorter, not prolonged. Some are rightly shortened by their owners. Each of us ought in the end to have the right in morality and law of ending our existence. So how long a life goes on does not by itself make it a good one. But is there a mistake in saying that living long enough is one part of a good life? No, living longer is a good thing for almost everyone. This is shown by the fact that a life may not be a good one at all but very likely will be better than nothing to its owner. Whatever thought an aged aunt reveals, maybe that she’s had a full life and a good time and doesn’t mind departing, almost all of us want to go After the terror 2 on in a life. This is, isn’t it, our first and then our constant and then our last desire? Some call it the instinct of self-preservation. Few of us are so unfortunate as ever really to prefer not being alive. Almost all of us want to go on even if things are bad, even terrible. Hardly anyone chooses to be missing. Can we then say that living longer is an intrinsic good for almost everyone – that is, something good in itself rather than as a means to something else? So it seems, certainly if we take living in our ordinary way. It is not just being alive, as a plant is alive. Nor is it just the idea of being conscious, of there being a personal world, although that is essential and important. Rather, the idea we have of living includes some elementary satisfaction having to do with existing rather than just being conscious, maybe the satisfaction of taking things in and watching them change, and conducting small matters of daily life, and having the hope of going on in this way for a while. This is not the different and more ambitious thing we have in mind in ordinarily speaking of wanting the quality of our lives to be good, wanting a better quality of life. Maybe that has to do with getting a summer cottage, or one on a better lake. But just going on living, living longer, is certainly more than desirable. If it does need to be distinguished from much else that we also want, it is indeed for almost all of us an intrinsic good. We want it for itself, whether or not it is a means to anything else. The ancient Greek philosopher Epicurus tells us not to worry about death, because it itself isn’t experienced – where you are, your death isn’t, and where it is, you aren’t. Only impressionable logicians are consoled. Living longer isn’t a small or smaller intrinsic good idea either, like feeling the warm sun on your shoulders or a happy conversa- tion or having something off your mind after a couple of years. It’s a very large thing, so large that you can say this elementary living-of- a-life, in the absence of anything else, can fill a mind, fill a life. We want it a lot. We fight for it, usually quietly. It is not only an intrinsic but a great good. Being rational, at least in this matter, we in a way want something else as much. This is the means to the end, the means to [...]... us, in the United States, the United Kingdom and so on, and all of them in the four African countries or the Islamic countries Some inequalities are between (1) just some of us in each of the fortunate countries together with just some of them in the African and Islamic countries on the one hand, and, on the 23 After the terror other hand, (2) others of us in the fortunate countries and others of them... start with – on us in the United States and so on and on to the African group at the other end of the scale But we and they are not all of the story No one in Chad will think so Let us go on It was said at the beginning that it is because of their societies that people in the two groups have the average lifetimes they do I had in mind that the immediate or proximate cause was the state of each society,... living-time for their children at the cost of shorter lives for themselves? They want more of existence for their children more than they want more of it for themselves You can think this is something to give us some pride in humankind Are there counter-examples to these propositions about the great good of living longer? The killers who flew the airliners into the Twin Towers may come to mind They chose... Do you say that surely they could walk further? That they 21 After the terror are ignorant? Yes, they are ignorant Did they need to be ignorant? Did God arrange that? Other hopeful remarks can be made, some by economists Will someone remark that the equivalent of a dollar goes further in Zambia than it does in Canada? True enough, but not so true as to take the sharp edges off the things we have been... brought on by the shock of September 11, 2001, when all with television sets were present for the killing An evil of another kind – some say moral rather than natural An inquiry, also, into the aftershocks of September 11 One was that the thing seen on the screen was possible, the medieval horror without any of the respectability we attach to our wars, or our side in our wars Also, even more of the same... lot The richest tenth of the population has had 30.5 per cent The sharing-out in the other wealthy countries is similar But to turn to the African group, the figures for the bottom and the top tenths in Sierra Leone are 0.5 per cent and 43.6 per cent The inequalities in this group are a little greater than the inequalities in ours You may therefore note that Sierra Leone, to the extent that it makes... of facts For the moment, remember that popularity is not the aim of an inquiry worth the name, as it is not the aim of a court worth the name The worst-off tenth of population in the four African countries, to repeat, have average lifetimes of about thirty years Thus they live for an average of something like fifty years less than the average of the best-off tenth in the wealthy countries The exact facts... forty years is the average lifetime for the entire populations of the four African countries They may say that the main thing about killing is the shortening of life, and that there is something akin to intentionality on our part, anyway akin to responsibility, in the loss of living-time in the African countries We will be looking at that large matter in due course But now let 19 After the terror us turn... was dead Another aftershock was hearing what was said quietly around the world, and despite the horror and the automatism of our leaders It was said, not just in cosmopolitan London but in Somerset too, that the Americans had it coming, that they were being given some of their own back They would have to learn and change, grow up It was said that it was the treatment of the Palestinians by the Jews in... say that there is a good reason for supposing that the very poor in the four African countries and others are no more short on freedom and power within their societies, and also on respect and self-respect, than the very poor in the United States and the like? It is worth thinking about So is something else As remarked, all of the best-off tenths in all the countries in the table – those where the figures . After the terror To Ingrid After the terror ted honderich edinburgh university press © Ted Honderich, 2002 Edinburgh University Press Ltd 22 George Square, Edinburgh Typeset. humankind. Are there counter-examples to these propositions about the great good of living longer? The killers who flew the airliners into the Twin Towers may come to mind. They chose not only to destroy the lives. facts of several kinds, for the first time in the case of some of us, once again in the case of others. The facts must be all the relevant facts. Of necessity, then, they must include what is said