It is best humans don't destroy each other, because then there is less humanity to them: what might be the missing assumption? It sounds a little Aristotelian, but also fairly reasonable and intuitive, at least intuitive. Does that argument exist in reasons to curb terror, be that political or personal? Just something I was thinking about.
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So "better humans do not" destroy each other? That would presuppose that "less humanity" is a bad thing. By the way, "humanity" as in humankind or as in being humane?– ConifoldCommented Aug 30 at 20:36
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whichever works @Conifold yes the idea was that it entails it– user71399Commented Aug 30 at 20:52
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@Conifold anyway, you are human, and i would suggest not closing your eyes to that, if you want to be rational anyway, and/or not justify terroristic social relations– user71399Commented Aug 30 at 21:03
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i mean, we may say your are not "fully human", in a similar way we might of many tyrants, etc., but i wonder what alternative species being you think you have, what is worth declaiming your own humanity for, given that all you want to do is have some fun @Conifold– user71399Commented Aug 30 at 21:38
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1can you rephrase the title? I'm having a grammar ambiguity: is it "humans who are better do not destroy each other", or "humans, seeing that destroying each other means less humanity, so they realize it's better to not do that", or "humans had better not destroy each other", or what?– KaiaCommented Aug 30 at 21:42
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1 Answer
What is missing is an account how humanity implies necessary and substantive fellow feeling.
John Donne in the 17th Meditation On Emergent Occasions writes the entire thought out thusly:
No man is an island, entire of itself; every man is a piece of the continent, a part of the main. If a clod be washed away by the sea, Europe is the less, as well as if a promontory were, as well as if a manor of thy friend's or of thine own were: any man's death diminishes me, because I am involved in mankind
The missing premise using Donne, is that such binding is necessary to our humanity, and, diminished by human loss of any rank.
Donne located this binding of each of us to each other in a mystical vein, as is the spirit of his muse. This is from the same Meditation:
The church is Catholic, universal, so are all her actions; all that she does belongs to all. When she baptizes a child, that action concerns me; for that child is thereby connected to that body which is my head too, and ingrafted into that body whereof I am a member.
Donne is valuable, but usually needs a friend.
If a second figure is required, Jean-Jacques Rousseau makes a lovely companion to John Donne. Is there a non-mystical way of understanding how I can lose a real piece of my humanity, of my human-ness, at the destruction of others? According to Rousseau human beings are naturally desirous of self-preservation (Amour de soi) but also ruled by compassion (pitié)
Compassion bears witness, for example, that humans are killed in wars and in the normal course of violent nature. Two very different ways in which human life is wasted, yet I do not find myself immediately distinguishing one from the other, as we do in law. Rather, my apparently basic moral reaction, which Rousseau argued is an actual nature, is not of two radically different kinds of life-ending, even though they are very much quite different.
Conclusion? Any loss of human life diminishes me. Donne is on to something and so was Rousseau.
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ha i was thinking of the social contract. what doesn't kill me makes me stronger, i guess– user71399Commented Aug 30 at 22:36
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