12 July 2006

Civilization, maybe

35.61. How they answer it depends on how they answer the notoriously difficult question: 'Are foreigners humans?'
35.62. If the answer to this ssecond question is 'yes', the ideal of civility comes into operation as regards our relation to foreigners.
35.63. For civility requires civil demeanour to whatever is recognized as possessing it. If foreigners are human, civility requires that we should treat them civilly; and in proportion as we are civilized the rules of our civilization gice them a right to civility at our hands.
35.64. If the answer is 'no', foreigners are part of the natural world; and are there to be exploited as scientifically as possible.
35.65. It makes no difference whether they share our home or not; in neither case does civilization put us under any obligation to treat them civilly.
35.66. Strangers (i.e. foreigners not sharing our communal home) are in fact often treated with the utmost incivility; often, for example,murdered with impunity and a clear conscience even by people who enjoy a relatively high civilization.
35.67. This happens in spite of a conviction that all human beings ought to be civilly treated; all that is lacking is a conviction that strangers are human beings.
R.G. Collingwood, The New Leviathan, 1942, chapter 35: What 'civilization' means: specifically
(For a reason to read this weighty tome, see the first page of the book.)

Ask this "notoriously difficult question" of a nice extreme Islamist the next time you run across one. As events in the Middle East (or London or Madrid or Mumbai) show, "strangers are in fact often treated with the utmost incivility; often, for example, murdered with impunity and a clear conscience..."

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