Social Research articles from March 1995

Social Research archives from March 1995

The obligation to rescue. (part 1)(Rescue: The Paradoxes of Virtue)(Transcript)
March 22, 1995... I must confess to you when I came in tonight I did not have a clear idea about how to approach this subject, how to get my arms around it. I have spent my working life trying to move our government to be more responsive to crises in the black...

The obligation to rescue. (part 2)(Rescue: The Paradoxes of Virtue)(Transcript)
March 22, 1995... For the last five years, as was said in the introduction, I have been involved in human-rights work--the human-rights movement in Rwanda--along with Alison [DesForges]. When I began in this movement, I myself had not experienced fear--I had...

Rescuing endangered peoples: missed opportunities.(Rescue: The Paradoxes of Virtue)(Transcript)
March 22, 1995... I Recently wrote that "the new world order should emphasize collective responsibility and mutual cooperation and should lay the groundwork for an objective basis on which potential ethnopolitical conflicts and humanitarian crises can be settled...

Expanding military intervention: promise or peril?(Rescue: The Paradoxes of Virtue)(Transcript)
March 22, 1995... A conference dedicated to examining the theme "Rescue" bears a burden of proof. The purpose and logic of this conference challenges and confronts a political-moral principle of nonintervention which has been in operation for centuries. There...

The politics of rescue.(Rescue: The Paradoxes of Virtue)(Transcript)
March 22, 1995... To intervene or not?--this should always be a hard question. Even in the case of a brutal civil war or a politically induced famine or the massacre of a local minority, the use of force in other people's countries should always generate...

Is international rescue a moral issue?(Rescue: The Paradoxes of Virtue)(Transcript)
March 22, 1995... I take it that the moral principle of rescue goes something like this: If (1) X is in peril, and (2) Y is saliently related to X's peril, and (3) Y can hope to offer effective aid to X, (4) at a cost to Y which is not unreasonably high, Y ought...

The seductiveness of moral disgust. (Rescue: The Paradoxes of Virtue)(Transcript)
March 22, 1995... Heart of Darkness In Heart of Darkness, Conrad observed that imperialism, when looked at closely, is not a pretty thing. "What redeems it is the idea only." The ferocious rapacity of Kurz' search for ivory is ennobled in his own eyes by...

"And who is my neighbor"?: Moral sentiments, proximity, humanity.(Rescue: The Paradoxes of Virtue)(Transcript)
March 22, 1995... The Biblical Episode: Three Versions of Solidarity I do not know whether it is of any particular importance that the man who "stood up, and tempted" Jesus, asking him "Master, what shall I do to inherit eternal life?" and thereby provoking...

The moral dilemma in the rescue of refugees.(Rescue: The Paradoxes of Virtue)(Transcript)
March 22, 1995... To rescue people in need is a so-called positive duty. When we wish to clarify our moral intuitions, the distinction between negative and positive duties is of fundamental importance. Negative obligations toward others are obligations not to...

The Macedonian question: still no answers.(Rescue: The Paradoxes of Virtue)(Transcript)
March 22, 1995... THE DISSOLUTION of the former Yugoslavia into a number of smaller states, provoked by Slovenia, Serbia, and Croatia and then encouraged by the international community, placed two Yugoslav republics, the SR Bosnia-Hercegovina and SR Macedonia, in...

Rights: educational, not cultural. (response to Avishai Margalit and Moshe Halbertal, Social Research, vol. 61)
March 22, 1995... Avishai Margalit and Moshe Halbertal have recently argued that "human beings have a right to culture--not just any culture, but their own.... The right to culture is justified by the right to identity" (Margalit and Halbertal, 1994, p. 491,...

A response to Amelie Oksenberg Rorty. (response to article in this issue, p. 161)
March 22, 1995... Our short response will not address all of the issues raised by Amelie Oksenberg Rorty's deep and thoughtful comments on our article, which appeared in the Fall 1994 issue of Social Research on Liberalism. Nevertheless, we would like to clear...