This book goes beyond historical and psychological explanations of the Holocaust to directly address the moral responsibility of individuals involved in it. While defending the view that individuals caught up in large-scale historical events like the Holocaust are still responsible for their choices, he provides the philosophical tools needed to assess the responsibility, both negative and positive, of perpetrators, accomplices, bystanders, victims, helpers and rescuers. This book will be an important addition to courses on the Holocaust in social and political (...) philosophy, history, religion, and applied ethics. (shrink)

Freud is often assumed to have given an explanation of how human beings acquire a morality, especially as it is manifested in the phenomenon of moral conscience. Freud himself certainly lends credence to such an interpretation of his theory, as the following passage testifies.

David Houston Jones builds a bridge between practices conventionally understood as forensic, such as crime scene investigation, and the broader field of activity which the forensic now designates, for example performance and installation art, as well as photography. Contemporary work in these areas responds both to forensic evidence, including crime scene photography, and to some of the assumptions underpinning its consumption. It asks how we look, and in whose name, foregrounding and scrutinising the enduring presence of voyeurism in visual media (...) and instituting new forms of ethical engagement. Such work responds to the object-oriented culture associated with the forensic and offers a reassessment of the relationship of human voice and material evidence. It displays an enduring debt to the discursive model of testimony which has so far been insufficiently recognised, and which forms the basis for a new ethical understanding of the forensic. Jones's analysis brings this methodology to bear upon a strand of contemporary visual activity which has the power to significantly redefine our understandings of the production, analysis and deployment of evidence. Artists examined include Forensic Architecture, Simon Norfolk, Melanie Pullen, Angela Strassheim, John Gerrard, Julian Charrière, Trevor Paglen, Laura Poitras and Sophie Ristelhueber. The book will be of interest to scholars working in art history, visual culture, literary studies, modern languages, photography and critical theory. (shrink)

At the very end of this revised edition of his 1976 book, in a discussion of the fear of death, Robert M. Veatch refers to the Judeo-Christian heritage, which includes the belief that humans are to have dominion over the earth and subdue it. He states, "There are two ways that they may have dominion to lessen that fear of death. In some cases it will mean ingeniously using their scientific and technological skills responsibly to challenge particular evil deaths. In (...) other cases it will mean ingeniously using their intellectual and humanistic skills responsibly to decide that death should no longer be challenged. The primary purpose of this book has been to explore this second alternative". Veatch's exploration through nine chapters is thorough, admirably nondogmatic, and reasonable; moreover, there is much that is of great practical value, from detailed discussion of several public policy issues to a model "advance directive". He provides both information on recent court cases and much essential technical medical detail for the interested lay reader, in the course of canvassing a large number of arguments on both sides of the complex ethical issues surrounding death and dying. (shrink)