Jonathan Glover

My first non-fiction in a while. It's a very intense book, covering major atrocities of the twentieth century and trying to connect the dots from smaller ones to larger. The idea is to find parallels. Do transitions such as going from allowing a few "accidental" civilian targets in WW2 bombing -> encouraging firebombing of cities -> Hiroshima & Nagasaki mirror the transitions of dehumanizing prisoners -> coming to accept torture as ok? What combinations of fear and intimidation kept people show more from speaking up and helping under Stalin and Hitler and Mao? And why did some people keep small bites of their humanity while others were liberated to cruelty?

Anyway, a heavy book, but very readable. I enjoyed learning the history more than his philosophy. show less

The question that I pose for this book is "should an ethicist write history?"

Glover does a good job in setting his parameters early on. The first part essentially sets the terms for the rest of the writing. However, as a historian, I must find some false premises within his writing and histoiriography (method). First, he has a very abridged treatment of Nietzsche. While Nietzsche did indeed leave a wake of amoralism, his writings don't stipulate it as much as Glover leads to belive. Second, show more and most damning, is the fact that this isn't a moral history at all, Glover treats it more as a discussion of the twentieth century's more morally egregious acts, and prescription according to his analysis. While I don't think that Glover treads on bad logic in his analysis (there is a case for a Leviathan U.N.), I think calling "Humanity" a "moral history" is not so true. This is the domain of cultural historians, anthropologists, political scientists, and sociologists, perhaps not philosophers. For unlike philosophers, social scientists are great at measuring and identifying human morality over time. Yes, this isn't what Glover is doing, but I must still assign demerit for bad marketing if nothing else.

As I have said, left to his own, Glover makes some good scholarship. However, the reader should treat "Humanity" for what it is, not what it is not. show less

In Humanity, English ethicist Jonathan Glover begins with the now commonplace observation that the last 100 years were perhaps the most brutal in all history. But the problem wasn't that human nature suddenly took a sharp turn for the worse: "It is a myth that barbarism is unique to the twentieth century: the whole of human history includes wars, massacres, and every kind of torture and cruelty," he writes. Technology has made a huge difference, but psychology has remained the same--and this show more is what Glover seeks to examine, through discussions of Nietzsche, the My Lai atrocity in Vietnam, Hiroshima, tribal genocide in Rwanda, Stalinism, Nazism, and so on.

There is much history here, but Humanity is fundamentally a book of philosophy. In his first chapter, for instance, Glover announces his goal "to replace the thin, mechanical psychology of the Enlightenment with something more complex, something closer to reality." But he also seeks "to defend the Enlightenment hope of a world that is more peaceful and more humane, the hope that by understanding more about ourselves we can do something to create a world with less misery." The result is an odd combination of darkness and light--darkness because the subject matter of the 20th century's moral failings is so bleak, light because of Glover's earnest optimism, which insists that "keeping the past alive may help to prevent atrocities." He cites Stalin's bracing comment, made while signing death warrants: "Who's going to remember all this riff-raff in ten or twenty years' time? No one." At one level, Humanity is a book of remembrance. But it's more than that: it's also an attempt to understand what it is in the human mind that makes moral disaster always loom--and a prayer that this aspect of our psychology might be better controlled. --John J. Miller.

Steven Pinker, New York Times Book Review
"This is an extraordinary book: brilliant, haunting and uniquely important."

This fascinating and profound book is about the psychology that made possible Hiroshima, the Nazi genocide, the Gulag, the Chinese Cultural Revolution, Pol Pot's Cambodia, Rwanda, Bosnia and many other atrocities. The author reveals common patterns - how the distance and fragmented responsibility of technological warfare gave rise to Hiroshima; how the tribalism resulted in mutual fear and hatred in Rwanda and the former Yugoslavia; how the systems of belief made atrocities possible in Stalin's Russia, in Mao's China and in Cambodia; and how the powerful combination of tribalism and belief enabled people to do otherwise unimaginable things in Nazi Germany. The common patterns suggest weak points in our psychology. The resulting picture is used as a guide for the ethics we should create if we hope to overcome them. show less

Glover is a moral philosopher with excellent credentials. This book raises the question, first, whether we can consciously and intentionally create a coherent moral philosophy about killing. In other words, is morality rational? and Is it possible to have a non-contradictory moral philosophy on this question?

Then he discusses how such a philosophy would be grounded. Like, do we object to killing on the basis of "sanctity of life"? on a sense that killing is *always* inherently wrong? on a show more belief that killing is wrong but can be outweighed by other principles (and if so, what would those principles be?) or on the basis of a general principle that it is better to increase happiness in the world? or on other principles?

Then he applies the question to various issues surrounding killing, ranging from: war, assassination, capital punishment, abortion, contraception, infanticide, euthanasia, suicide, you name it.

It is mind blowing. And engaging. And completely accessible. I STRONGLY recommend it. Not because he tells you what to think, not at ALL. He just describes ways of thinking and then tests them for contradictions and for utility.

And these issues are very important. It's true that most of us don't have to come face to face with many of the practical questions he raises, like for instance, I don't have to myself wonder whether I should be a conscientious objector if drafted to serve in a war. On the other hand, we all hold opinions on all of these questions, and it is good for us, as human beings, to think through all of our opinions to see where they lead and how strongly we hold them. show less