Abstract
The relation between terror and civilization has been seriously misconstrued in the history of the West. Two contradictory theories have flourished side by side—the naïve and the cynical. Interestingly both have their roots in biblical religion. The naïve view is simpleminded and dualistic. It assumes that terror and civilization are opposites. It assumes that the function of civilization is to impose order on chaos, to conquer the bestial and barbaric, to civilize the savage races, to bring the wicked to their knees, and to smoke the terrorists out of their caves. On this simplistic view, terror and civilization are deadly enemies that stand in stark opposition to one another.
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Notes
Reinhold Niebuhr, Christianity and Power Politics (New York: Archon Books, 1940).
Mathew Arnold, “Hellenism and Hebraism,” in Culture and Anarchy, J. Dover Wilson, ed. (Cambridge, England: University of Cambridge Press, 1957). See bibliography for details.
See Iaroslav Pelikan, Mary Through the Centuries: Her Place in the History of Culture (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1996).
See the debate over this in John Stuart Mill, Utilitarianism, with Critical Essays Samuel Gorovitz, ed. (New York: The Bobbs-Merrill Co., Inc., 1971).
John Rawls, A Theory of Justice (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1971), Secs. 5, 6, and 84.
John Rawls, “Two Concepts of Rules,” in The Philosophical Review Vol. 64 (January, 1955), pp. 3–32.
J. J. C. Smart and Bernard Williams, Utilitarianism For and Against (London: Cambridge University Press, 1973). This is an excellent example of the debate.
Mark Twain, Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, 1884 (New York: Random House, 1996).
See David Hume, A Treatise of Human Nature, 2nd ed. (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1978);
Adam Smith, The Theory of Moral Sentiments (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1976). For modern examples of this view, see
Annette Baier, A Progress of Sentiments (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1991); and
Lawrence A. Blum, Moral Perception and Particularity (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1994).
Jean Jacques Rousseau also appeals to sentiment. But his view is ambiguous. See Margaret Ogrodnick, Instinct and Intimacy: Political Philosophy and Autobiography in Rousseau (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1999), esp. “Conscience and Instinct,” pp. 151–61. Ogrodnick finds evidence that Rousseau thinks that natural human empathy is destroyed by civilized society. She also thinks that for Rousseau conscience is the product of society. But instead of harnessing natural human empathy, it destroys it. Conscience makes people feel guilty, and this in turn leads them to rationalize and justify their conduct in a desperate effort to find inner peace. Ogrodnick shows how Rousseau silenced his own conscience by providing a rational justification for abandoning his children to the orphanage.
Thomas E. Hill Jr., “Four Conceptions of Conscience,” in Ian Shapiro and Robert Adams, eds., Integrity and Conscience, Nomos, XL (New York: New York University Press, 1998). See also essays by Nomi Maya Stolzenberg, Elizabeth Kiss, and George Kateb, in the same volume.
For an account of relativist theories, see William Frankena, Ethics (Englewood Cliffs, N.J.: Prentice-Hall, 1973).
Joseph Butler, Five Sermons (Indianapolis, Ind.: Hackett Publishing Co., 1983).
John Stuart Mill, Considerations on Representative Government, 1861 ch. III, in Collected Works of John Stuart Mill (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1963), Vol. xix, pp. 406 ff.
Samuel Huntington, The Clash of Civilizations and the Remaking of World Order (New York: Simon & Schuster, 1996).
For a more complete analysis and criticism of neoconservatism, see Shadia B. Drury, Leo Strauss and the American Right (New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1997).
See Edmund Morgan, The Puritan Family (New York: Harper and Row, 1944).
Maurice Yacowar, The Bold Testament (Calgary, Alberta: Bayeux Arts Incorporated, 1999). See bibliography for more details.
Michel Foucault, Power/Knowledge: Selected Interviews and Other Writings 1972–1977, Colin Gordon, trans. (New York: Pantheon Books, 1980).
For the best and most penetrating critique of global capitalism, see Linda Mcquaig, All You Can Eat: Greed, Lust and the New Capitalism (Toronto, Ontario: Penguin Books, 2001).
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© 2004 Shadia B. Drury
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Drury, S.B. (2004). Terror, Ideals, and Civilization. In: Terror and Civilization. Palgrave Macmillan, New York. https://doi.org/10.1057/9781403982629_5
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1057/9781403982629_5
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