Honderich: After the Broadcast

Honderich a conservative? I thought he was one of the foremost proponents of liberal egalitarianism.

So, is Honderich such a great philosopher that I should read him regardless of his political & moral stupidity?

It may be thought better, in view of the allegations of ‘barbarity’ of air attacks, to preserve appearances by formulating milder rules and by still nominally confining bombardment to targets which are strictly military in character …to avoid emphasizing the truth that air warfare has made such restrictions obsolete and impossible. it may be some time until another war occurs and meanwhile the public may become educated as to the meaning of air power.
Rules as to Bombardment by Aircraft, 1921. In Eric Hobsbawm’s The Age of Extremes.

The targeted killing of civilians is one of the hallmarks of modern war.

Are settlers imported from foreign lands civilians? Were the easterners moving into Indian lands in the American west in the 19th century “civilians?” Are the settlers on the West Bank civilians?
Your famous philosopher sounds like a pompous ass, but to think Israel is not a symptom of a general problem of post colonial racism is fucking absurd. England stopped moving Scottish Presbyterians into Ireland a long time ago, but the practice continues elsewhere.

re: assessing Honderich–

what you are seeing now is largely a very old, very cranky, OAP’er. He is how many years post-retirement? At least a dozen.

Fairly clever bloke back a few decades ago–already cantankerous and self-righteous, yes, but not as appalling. All that has been much exacerbated by age.

…why not just accept this and concentrate on removing and not allowing colonial and alien domination?

Because the idea that Radical Islamic violence is driven by anything besides Radical Islam’s own doctrinal primitivism is nonsense. Women aren’t being stoned to death in Iran today because the CIA backed the Shah fifty years ago, but because the current Iranian government is using a playbook written in the Seventh Century.

I was waiting for someone else to respond to Proofrock’s stupidity.
The PLO is not a religious organization, asshole. And the occupation of Poland- oh I’m sorry The West Bank- has gone on for 40 years. People get frustrated.

Will one of you fucking Goyim tell me again why I have a right of return?

I’m sorry, but I’m not sorry. If you think I’m a fucking communist, I’ve got a quarter million dollars in oil rigs, pipelines and shipping that say otherwise. When I’m not following the market I’m buying art from Nazis. The least I can do is shove a little honesty down the throats of you self-absorbed motherfuckers.

It makes my day that every time Josh Marshall is forced to defend Zionism as an ideal and not Israel simply as a fact on the ground, he gets his fucking head handed to him by 80 percent of the commenters at Starbucks. I take some credit for that. I’m given some credit for that.

I don’t defend terrorism any more than I defend “the strategic interests of the United States” I try my damnedest not to give a shit one way or the another. But rank hypocrisy pisses me off.

That, academic philosophy, political ‘science’, libertarianism and a few other things.

I’m bored. I’m drunk. I’m not poor anymore.
goodnight

Honderich is not a conservative. I believe he wrote in his book that in the end all conservative political movements–or perhaps philosophies–boil down to justifications for selfishness.

He also wrote a pretty scathing critical review of Rawls’s A Theory of Justice around when it first came out. See Mind, vol. 84, pp. 63-78, January 1975, the last paragraph of which reads:

“We have seen that the basic proposition is thought to provide an argument, or part of one, for the two principles of justice. It is thought, secondly, to illustrate or make vivid in a unique way the argument for the two principles. It is thought, thirdly, to explain features of the principles, and also to explain our ordinary morality. It fails in each of these things. The conception of an imagined contract remains as otiose as it first was when it arose out of speculations about an actual contract. At bottom, in my view, it is muddle.”

Surely there’s more to be said for A Theory of Justice than that?

btw, he didn’t argue that terror was the only means to achieve political ends, he asserted that it was the only means of resistance available to the Palestinians.

I didn’t see the programme, but this unevidenced assertion is also the major problem with his recent book, Humanity, Terrorism, Terrorist War: Palestine, 9-11, Iraq, 7-7 (as I said in my review).

On the other hand I think qua philosopher Honderich is bracing and very interesting on such matters as consciousness and determinism. Also his book on punishment is rather good.

Honderich qua philosopher? Four years ago he gave a talk in my department on the philosophical justification for the basic ideas behind his defence of terrorism, which as Chris says are straightforwardly consequentialist, i.e. a good end justifies any (effective) means. But the argumentation in the talk was pathetic, something like ‘All desires are for some state of affairs, therefore the right act is always the one that produces the best overall state of affairs — any other view is illogical/flies in the face of the basic nature of human desire and action.’ Even those in the audience sympathetic to consequentialism thought that was feeble. It was like a parody of the worst of 1950s/1960s philosophy.

He has, shall we say, an ego. His recent autobiograpy (I forget the title) is fascinating for the extent of self-delusion it shows.

Women aren’t being stoned to death in Iran today because the CIA backed the Shah fifty years ago

Actually, yes — yes, they are.

Surely the successes of Hezbollah in fighting the IDF and Hamas’ own kidnap of Gideon Shalit provide practical refutation of the idea that they have no alternative to attacking civilians? As far as I can see, Honderich’s underlying assumption is either that the Palestinians are poor little puppy dogs who are not really capable of fighting and so regrettably all they can do is put bombs in nightclubs, or, equally inaccurately, that the IDF is such an incredibly efficient and ruthless killing machine that there is no possibility at all of being able to fight against it.

We now know that the second of these isn’t true, and the first is implausible; of course the Palestinians are capable of fighting against the IDF. The fact that they have historically been too badly organised and politically fragmented to do so surely shouldn’t count for much morally. There’s a sort of analogue of the “Bush incompetence” issue here; if you are going to lead a national independence movement and a guerilla army, then there is a positive duty upon you to be good at it.

The point I’m trying to make here is that there seems to be a confusion between the question of whether the Palestinians have a right to fight a guerrilla war of national independence (which would make them “terrorists”), and whether they have the right to commit war crimes. A lot of the political thinking on this one seems to take it as a fact of nature that the Palestinians are unable to fight against the IDF, rather than a sad indictment of the quality of their commanders (one also has to take seriously the fact that the use of stone-throwing children as the front line of Palestine’s armed forces was a tactical decision and a very bad one, although this of course does not make it OK to shoot them).

two positions: (1) Palestinian terrorism is the moral equivalent of Israeli self-defence (and perhaps other related violent acts). (2) Palestinian terrorism ought to be allowed in a way one might not otherwise license other acts of terrorism. […] I believe that Honderich’s considered view is (1) not (2).

Your (1) doesn’t sound reasonable to me: first – there is no moral equivalence and second – it leads to an endless escalation of violence.

Your (2) is better: special extreme circumstances clearly do exist there.

Abb1 says:

“Your (1) doesn’t sound reasonable to me: first – there is no moral equivalence and second – it leads to an endless escalation of violence.

Your (2) is better: special extreme circumstances clearly do exist there.”

I say:

Well, I don’t know if a principle of ‘fair violence’ leads to escalation but it certainly leads to a tolerance for a certain level of violence. My guess is that, generally speaking, you think we already live in much more just world than Honderich thinks we do. You write as if the Palestinian situation is very extreme, whereas he probably thinks (and I tend to agree), it’s not so extreme in today’s world.

But again, the need for such tolerance of terrorism follows ONLY if we continue to inhabit the current political reality. Honderich’s final advice at the end of the programme is that we should remove the warmongers from office, wherever they may be, which presumably would then create a new level playing field for morally permissible action — which might make terrorism completely intolerable. (Admittedly, he talked about this in terms of ‘civil disobedience’, which probably didn’t help the credibility of his proposal.)

An interesting follow-up t.v. programme could be made focusing on how we manage to make judgements, given these imperfect times and the realistic prospects for political change, that this form of violence is the moral equivalent to that form.

If the Palestinians had been blessed with a Gandhi instead of an Arafat, they would have a viable state today.

It is a clearly established principle that a state can control who it allows to immigrate into the country and become a citizen.

True, but the word ‘state’ in this statement usually implies indigenous population exercising their right to self-determination. And in the case of Israel the word ‘state’ means something else – and this is the whole point of the controversy here.

Q: Is migration into occupied territory a weapon of war?

Q: Has Israel used “civilian populations” as a weapon?

Q: Are the Israeli’s living on the west Bank in armed encampments civilians?

Q: (Harder one) With the population of the refugee camps at over three million, can the three million Russians who’ve immigrated since 1990 be called civilians?
—

I don’t expect much of people. I don’t expect much of criminals. I don’t expect much of their victims. But all things considered, noting the amounts of death and destruction meted out by both sides, is there anything close to a balance? You’re weighing the morality of the actions of an army in support of a state as against the actions of a gang of thugs. In the middle east terrorism began as just war on a budget against a unified enemy. And you give credit to the state because it is a state. as if that were anything other than a linguistic device,

If you want to argue that Hezbollah and Hamas are successful more as a result of their social services than their attacks on civilians I’ll listen. I might even agree. Hezbollah might agree too, since its military operations had been directed against military targets for years until this summer (when they responded in kind to Israeli asaults on just about everything in the south.)

But what we have here is a bunch of men talking about the anger of women; a group of whites worrying about the behavior of blacks: moderate jews and their supporters talking with right wing jews and their supporters about arabs.
The Asshole of the TeeVee is pontificating great moral statements for his own aggrandizement, and the academics discuss among themselves the merits of the great man’s argument.

I asked questions. Were they rude? I thought that was my manner, not the questions themselves. Are you only craftsmen within the limits of your own knowledge? You claim to be more. That’s why it’s political ‘science’ rather than political history or political ethnography. But you talk within the limits of accepted discourse, limited by tropes and taboos. Scientists with slabs of wood inserted their tongues.

What do we call civilians who are used as migrants as tools of war? What is their designation?

No abb1,

The international definition of state is pretty clear. A state is something recognized as such by other states and typically the United Nations. Since Israel is a member of the United Nations and recognized by most countries of the world (including some Arab states), it has the legal right and, in fact, obligation to decide who may become an Israeli citizen. These legal rights predate significantly the legal ideas established in the 20 century about self-determination.

The partition of India was a big mistake, just as arguably the partition of Palestine was a mistake.
Don’t know Gandhi’s responsibility.

Another common comparison is Arafat and Mandela. But the people who insult Arafat with that one probably aren’t thinking through the whole bantustan vs. one man one vote issue.

abb1,

You’re conflating different issues. Israel’s government is perfectly within international law to have a right of return. As was Britain in refusing most Hong Kong British subjects the ability to emigrate to the UK and allowing Irish citizens to gain British citizenship easily. You consider the first unseemly, just as I considered the second unseemly. That doesn’t mean it is against international law.

I’m not trying to win here – I’m just saying that the “right of return” to Israel proper (excluding the Israeli-controlled West Bank) is both perfectly legal and in concordance with international human rights standards.

Is this still a thread about Honderich’s programme? If so:

1. Kudos to Steven Poole for saying something informed about Honderich’s philosophy: he’s done brilliant work on free will, and good work on a number of other problems. The recent ‘principle of humanity’ stuff strikes me as interesting, although I’m not looking to get into a fight with Tom Hurka about it (I will say that judging anyone on one seminar performance is… hasty).

2. I watched the programme, unlike quite a few commenters above. I enjoyed seeing some actual philosophy done on television, even if constrained by time, even if too much interrupted by former libdem shadow cabinet members with not much to say. I’d like to see some criticism of arguments instead of Honderich’s personality (I’ve read his autobiography, too… but since when was being a nice person a requirement for being a good philosopher?). Perhaps we should also note that what Honderich was doing was, roughly, a half-length first-year lecture, and think about how much we’d manage to do with the same brief.

3. Honderich’s central arguments seem to me to have been:

a. that whether or not terrorism is legitimate depends on its goals and on the alternative possibilities available;
b. that moral responsibility does not attach entirely to the person who pulls the trigger, but also attaches, to some extent, to the people who put that person in a position where there are few other options; and

c. that the situation of the Palestinians is such that terrorism is legitimate (because there are no other realistic options); and that the continuing support of George Bush and Tony Blair for what Honderich calls ‘neo-Zionism’ means that they share moral responsibility for that terrorism (because they help maintain the conditions for it).

The factual claim c. may or may not be true – I don’t know. The normative claims a. and b. seem to me worth considering, and I’m glad they’ve been aired in a public forum.

Cheers,

– Sam Clark

“dj: I don’t follow you. Mandela, using the same tactics and luck, might well have got the big win of a single and peaceful unified nation.

Arafat failed to even get a bantustan.”

Er…yeah I wouldn’t emphasise that point too strongly. Part of the reason that Mandela won (apart from his acts of terrorism, of course) was the fact that he fought for, and got, an international sanctions regime, as well as other non-violent methods of protest (e.g. boycott of South African sports teams). My recollection of Euston Manifesto types is that they aren’t too keen on that sort of thing either.

Part of the problem here is that those who argue (rightly in my opinion) against (e.g.) Palestinian attacks on Israeli civilians fail to suggest OTHER, non-violent means by which the Palestinians might achieve statehood. People who talk about Gandhi in this context are generally talking about a cartoon Gandhi who exists only in the minds of liberals. Gandhi didn’t achieve Indian independence by sitting around writing letters to the Guardian: he chose non violent protest that hit the British economy (cf on the issue of salt): hard.

So, one might think that those who most strongly opposed suicide bombings and armed resistance would be the ones who most strongly proposed, for example, economic sanctions on Israel, or Palestinian crippling of the Israeli economy (via strikes, and other means), or a sporting boycott. But they don’t. How strange. It’s almost as if they don’t care if the Palestinians get their own country (back) or not.

ABB1: Had Gandhi offered the British 78% of India, his followers would’ve probably torn him into small pieces right there.

SORU: You are aware India used to be rather bigger than it is now?

gandhi was actually killed by a hindu nationalist who held him responsible for partition. so you can sort of see abb1’s point.

Australia, Canada, New Zealand, and the USA do not meet this definition.

Well, you seem to be substantiating my point, by presenting examples where successful colonization was achieved by a genocide of the indigenous population.

Do you really think that this principle of yours “that a state can control who it allows to immigrate” is so awesome that it should be facilitated by any means including a genocide if necessary? If so, I’ll have to disagree.

This thread has raised an interesting issue, namely what choice do the Palestinians actually have other than terrorism?

As has been suggested above, one would be not deliberately targeting civilians. I understand the Israelis make no distinction whatsoever between attacks on civilians and soldiers, regarding them all as terrorism, but I think a case can be made that hitting purely military targets is much more defensible than suicide bombings in the middle of Tel Aviv.

But another choice would be to actually try and negotiate an outcome. The Palestinians have consistently allowed the world to see the Israelis as the ones prepared to compromise and negotiate while the Palestinians refuse.

I have real doubts that the Israelis would ever have been able to deliver the Barak plan but they didn’t have to. Arafat knocked it back, allowing the world (with some justification) to see Israel prepared to offer a very large chunk of the West Bank and to partition Jerusalem without getting a peace partner in return. I should add this situation this suits quite a lot of Israelis who see retreat to the 1967 borders as too high a price to pay.

Support for this view can be found in Yitzak Shamir’s autobiography which, unlike most terrorist autobiographies (with the exception of the Stern Gang’s attempted alliance with the Nazis) is extremely candid. In it he notes that the Jews would not have accepted the UN partition plan but so confident were they that the Arabs would reject it, the Jews could accept it confident that they would never have to deliver.

There seems to be an emerging consensus that any solution to the Palestinian issue will be along the lines of return more or less to 1967 borders, partition of Jerusalem and no return for the refugees. If the Palestinians make it clear they are prepared to live with this, either they get it or they at least can shed their well deserved mantle for 50 years of being the obstructionist party to peace.

‘There seems to be an emerging consensus that any solution to the Palestinian issue will be along the lines of return more or less to 1967 borders, partition of Jerusalem and no return for the refugees. If the Palestinians make it clear they are prepared to live with this, either they get it or they at least can shed their well deserved mantle for 50 years of being the obstructionist party to peace.’

Yes but the Palestinians havemade their acceptance of these terms clear. For example:

‘1988 – Yasser Arafat announces that the PLO accepts UN Security Council Resolution 242 which recognizes Israel’s right to exist….

1993 – PLO and Israel sign the Oslo declaration of principles, which recognizes the right of Israel to exist…

2005- Mahmud Abbas becomes President of Palestine, and the two-state solution becomes Palestinian policy in fact as well as in name….’

(http://www.mideastweb.org/log/archives/00000347.htm)

Also: “The Israeli daily Haaretz published an exclusive interview on 18th June 2004 with President Yasir Arafat. In which he explicitly expressed his acceptance of the Jewish nature of Israel. The Palestinian National Council, he explained, had officially and publicly agreed upon this position in 1988. This was subsequently re-emphasized in the presence of US President Bill Clinton in 1996. Arafat said the Palestinian refugees “are living in many places, in Jordan, in Egypt, in north Europe, in Germany. They will not return.””

http://www.prc.org.uk/data/aspx/d7/607.aspx

I find it genuinely astonishing that someone is prepared to opine about the Palestinian situation without knowing (or at least recognising) that the Palestinian leadership have long accepted the basics of the the Israeli/Zionist position. Given this one has to ask: why have the Israelis not responded in kind? The only logical answer is (as I pointed out earlier) that they don’t want to, and the reason they don’t want to is because they don’t want to give up the land they have seized (I know this, incidentally, because Israeli colonists (often wrongly termed ‘settlers’ in the West) are succeeding in taking even more land: a strange thing to do if Israel was simply desperate to leave the West Bank and other places).

Which brings us back to the question: how can we make it clear that it is in Israel’s economic and political interests to leave the land they have taken? And this makes it even more that, yes there must be carrots (peace, security, the end of increasing international criticism).

But there must also be a stick.

‘To reach the goal of a 2 state solution, the Palestinian leadership need to use violence, not be used by it. That means demonstrating, as Mandela did, the political capability to control violence, to say ‘it will happen if you don’t agree, and won’t if you do’.’

Eh? But that IS how Hamas (and others) use violence! For example, in the run up to the (most recent) Camp David talks, suicide bombing (etc.)went right down. It only exploded (pun intended) when this process died: i.e. the second intifada. Likewise the current low level of violence is because of the Sharm el-Sheikh Summit and the Israeli withdrawal from Gaza. You act as if Hamas, the Martyr’s Brigade etc. just keep on throwing suicide bombers at Israel regardless but that’s obviously not true. On the contrary there has always been an obvious tit for tat quality about the situation, an incursion by the Israelis leads to Palestinian retaliation which leads to an Israeli response which leads to Palestinian retalation and so forth. It’s true that violence never went down to zero. But essentially, when the Israelis were nice( r) to the Palestinians they got less violence back, and when they were nasty, they got more violence. Or look at Lebanon. When the Israelis invaded they got missiles raining on their heads: when they left, the missiles stopped. Very very simple cause and effect. Israeli governments have always known that if they negotiate Israeli civilians live and if they don’t Israeli civilians die: that Israeli politicans choose not to negotiate regardless of this knowledge says much about their moral qualities (and their ‘deep concern’ for Israeli civilian casualties).

To go back to the earlier posts, the comparison I think you are actually making (as opposed to the comparison you think you are making) is not between the PLO/Hamas and Gandhi but between the PLO/Hamas and the Dalai Lama. The Dalai Lama has pursued (in relation to Tibet) what I take it is the Eustonite and ‘decent’ approach to Palestinian freedom: ie. holding international conferences, letter writing, ‘soft diplomacy’ (i.e. going to parties with rich and important people and telling them how awful things are your country) and so on. All this has got him (and the Tibetans) the total and absolute achievement of fuck all.

Gandhi, despite his pacifism, would never have been so naive. He knew that if you are going to abjure violence this necessarily means you then have to use other forms of coercion (i.e. economic means, mass civil disobedience, sanctions etc.).

Which brings us back to the problem: assuming the Palestinians should abjure violence (which in my opinion they should) what other methods should they use? i.e. assuming they want to avoid the grisly fate of the Tibetans (resulting from their appealing to the Chinese government’s ‘better nature’)?

Incidentally, I should point out that my characterisation of the Free Tibet movement is slightly unfair. It’s true that the Dalai Lama has achieved little, but other groups have fought (more or less succesfully) for the boycotting of goods involved in repression in Tibet, the cancelling of controversial loans for dubious projects, letter writing campaigns to free political prisoners and so forth.

But this just proves my point. If one abjures violence one MUST choose (effective) non-violent methods. That means (for example) the boycott of Israeli goods, arms embargoes, academic and sporting boycotts and so forth (not to mention campaigns to free the thousands of Palestinians in Israeli jails). But the ‘decents’ oppose these moves just as vociferously!

It’s almost as if they question Palestine’s right to exist.

abbi1: ‘torn him into small pieces’

seth: ‘nigger’

where is this coming from? Do you think you can use those words and phrases without them affecting your thoughts?

For example, in the run up to the (most recent) Camp David talks, suicide bombing (etc.)went right down. It only exploded (pun intended) when this process died: i.e. the second intifada.

I’m afraid your cause and effect seems to run backwards in time, which is generally a sign that something is wrong with your logic.

Expressed in forwards time order, first there was relative peace, there there were talks, then there was more violence. Replace _then_ with _then, as a consequence_ and you have the standard Israeli narrative. The Palestinian leadership won’t get anywhere until they can falsify that story.

Not sure where you get the idea I particularly abjure violence in general. Stupid, wasteful and ineffective violence is what I dislike.

‘the immediate catalyst for the violence was the breakdown of the Camp David negotiations on 25 July 2000’

As I said, the consequence of the negotiations, as things worked out, was an increase in violence. Perceived willingness to negotiate increased the incentives applicable to the Palestinian leadership to sponsor violent acts, and they reacted like homo economicus. I’m not sure if you are genuinely unable to understand that point, or merely unwilling to admit it.

In general, the Palestinians should do what they have been doing recently, but more successfully. Unity government, recognise the existence of Israel, stop firing rockets and capturing soldiers, in general try to increase the gap between ‘Palestinians trying to be nice’ and ‘angry Palestinians’.

Moral issues aside, it’s true I can’t think of one that has served to improve the position of the palesitinians.

Which specific violent act do you think the palestinians would be worse off if they had not committed?

Forests/Trees. Israel is in a crisis that can only end in change. It’s a failed state. There are a lot of reasons for this and the pressure on it, external and internal, is taking different forms, but the opposition to the state as it exists is getting stronger and the state weaker.
As the opposition is moderating Israel is radicalizing.
I wish we were discussing how to respond to that simple fact.

I should have come back sooner, Soru. It’s interesting that you think a Palestinian Mandela might have achieved a one-state solution with one man, one vote. I’d like to believe that, but in the real world the Israelis have never shown the slightest interest in such a solution and their American supporters generally treat the very notion as the moral equivalent of advocating a second Holocaust. It’s part of the reason why most people accept something like the Geneva accords as the best achievable solution. More importantly, after decades of mutual atrocities, there’s probably not enough good will or trust on either side to make it work.

Maybe a Palestinian Mandela could have pulled it off at some earlier stage, but it’s hard to imagine. He wouldn’t have had nearly as favorable a press as the real Mandela, and even the real Mandela was regarded as a terrorist by a great many Western conservatives (Dick Cheney being one). A Palestinian Mandela calling for a one man one vote would have been portrayed in the US as a neo-Nazi.