Against Doxastic Compatibilism

William Alston has argued that the so‐called deontological conception of epistemic justification, on which epistemic justification is to be spelled out in terms of blame, responsibility, and obligations, is untenable. The basic idea of the argument is that this conception is untenable because we lack voluntary control over our beliefs and, therefore, cannot have any obligations to hold certain beliefs. If this is convincing, however, the argument threatens the very idea of doxastic responsibility. For, how can we ever be responsible for our beliefs if we lack control over them? Several philosophers have argued that the idea that we bear responsibility for our beliefs can be saved, because absence of voluntary control over our beliefs is perfectly compatible with having obligations to hold particular beliefs. With others, I call this view ‘doxastic compatibilism’. It comes in two varieties. On the first variety, doxastic obligations do not require any kind of doxastic control whatsoever. I argue that this variety of doxastic compatibilism fails because it confuses doxastic responsibility with other closely related phenomena. On the second variety, doxastic obligations do not require voluntary doxastic control, but only compatibilist doxastic control (roughly, reason‐responsiveness) and we do in fact have such control. I grant that we have such control, but also argue that having such control is insufficient for bearing doxastic responsibility. The plausibility of the examples put forward by doxastic compatibilists in support of the claim that it is sufficient for doxastic responsibility derives from the fact that in these examples, the subjects have control over factors that influence what they believe rather than control over those beliefs themselves.     

Explaining the Inexplicable: Differences in Attributions for the Holocaust in Germany,Israel, and Poland

Seventy years have passed since the Holocaust, but this cataclysmic event continues to reverberate in the present. In this research, we examine attributions about the causes of the Holocaust and the influence of such attributions on intergroup relations. Three representative surveys were conducted among Germans, Poles, and Israeli Jews to examine inter‐ and intragroup variations in attributions for the Holocaust and how these attributions influence intergroup attitudes. Results indicated that Germans made more external than internal attributions and were especially low in attributing an evil essence to their ancestors. Israelis and Poles mainly endorsed the obedient essence attribution and were lowest on attribution to coercion. These attributions, however, were related to attitudes towards contemporary Germany primarily among Israeli Jews. The more they endorsed situationist explanations, and the less they endorsed the evil essence explanation, the more positive their attitude to Germany. Among Germans, attributions were related to a higher motivation for historical closure, except for the obedience attribution that was related to low desire for closure. Israelis exhibited a low desire for historical closure especially when attribution for evil essence was high. These findings suggest that lay perceptions of history are essential to understanding contemporary intergroup processes.     

Understanding the Moral Phenomenology of the Third Reich

This paper discusses the issue of German moral responsibility for the Holocaust in the light of the thesis of Daniel Goldhagen and others that inherited negative stereotypes of Jews and Jewishness were prime causal factors contributing to the genocide. It is argued that in so far as the Germans of the Third Reich were dupes of an 'hallucinatory ideology,' they strikingly exemplify the 'paradox of moral luck' outlined by Thomas Nagel, that people are not morally responsible for what they are and are not responsible for. The implications of this paradox for the appraisal of German guilt are explored in relation to the views of a number of recent writers on the Holocaust.     

Structural Injustice and Massively Shared Obligations

It is often argued that our obligations to address structural injustice are collective in character. But what exactly does it mean for ‘ordinary citizens’ to have collective obligations vis‐à‐vis large‐scale injustice? In this article, I propose to pay closer attention to the different kinds of collective action needed in addressing some of these structural injustices and the extent to which these are available to large, unorganised groups of people. I argue that large, dispersed, and unorganised groups of people are often in a position to perform distributive collective actions. As such, ordinary citizens can have massively shared obligations to address structural injustice through distributive action, but, ultimately, such obligations are ‘collective’ only in a fairly weak sense.     

SURVIVORS OF THE HOLOCAUST AND THEIR CHILDREN

Despite the importance given in their narratives to the birth of their children and grandchildren, in most of the interviews I conducted with Holocaust survivors they do not discuss their children or family life in detail. Rather, for many of them, discussion is generally connected to how or what they have explained to their children about their experiences during the war. Survivors’ preoccupation with this issue could be understood as a response to the context in which they find themselves, in which a particular social discourse about survivors has developed. This discourse arguably engendered particular responses from survivors: it is a question that survivors expect to be asked, and it is seen as part of their prescribed role. Based on over 50 narrative interviews with survivors of the Holocaust, this article explores how survivors reflect and understand their parenting. It examines to what extent their behaviour has been influenced by their experiences during the war, or in reaction to a particular social discourse. Whilst literature on the second generation has been predominantly based on the responses of the children of survivors, this article provides important evidence of how survivors reflect on and understand their parenting.     

Speaking about the Unspeakable: genocide and philosophy

ABSTRACT  Genocide is a political catastrophe. Yet it has not received much academic attention. A few social scientists have studied it. Philosophers have largely ignored it. There is a large literature on the Holocaust, but there is little agreement as to how this should be related to other genocides. Some have argued that the Holocaust represented a crisis of Western culture, but that Western culture has not responded adequately for the lack of the appropriate self-understanding. This crisis has been attributed to the predominance of scientistic models of rationality in our culture. Social-scientific approaches to genocide have been criticised because of their commitment to logical empiricism, which is held to be epistemologically and ethically inadequate. Ethical approaches based on liberal humanism have been criticised by post-Nietzschean philosophers for their attachment to allegedly outworn metaphysical assumptions. However, the deconstruction of social science and liberal ethics leads in the direction of relativism and nihilism, which are either useless or dangerous in the face of evils such as genocide. The arguments against conventional social science and ethics are examined, and a counter-critique made of post-modern philosophy in order to clear the ground for constructive thinking about genocide.     

Jewish Identity, Hostility Toward Germany, and Knowledge About the Holocaust in the United States and Germany

This study examined the relationships among Jewish identity, hostility toward Germany, and knowledge of the Holocaust in American and German Jews. Questionnaires were distributed at synagogues in the United States, and packets were sent to heads of Jewish communities in Germany. Participants were 109 Americans and 31 Germans. Results suggested that hostility toward Germany and knowledge of the Holocaust are related to Jewish identity in American Jews, but that the variables are not related to Jewish identity for Jews in Germany. Additionally, Jews in Germany knew more about the Holocaust than did their American counterparts. Clinical psychology internship and post-doctoral fellowship at the University of California,it>Faculty position at Connecticut College in 1965 and served in its department of psychology for 33 years, until his retirement in 1998     

DISPLACED HISTORIANS,DIALECTICAL HISTORIES

For German‐Jewish refugees, the Holocaust and its aftermath produced extremely difficult questions of identity and memory. The considerable literature on German‐Jewish émigré historians has rarely addressed scholars’ efforts to confront such questions, and has particularly neglected the important role of second‐generation refugee historians. This article examines the connection between the experiences, memories and scholarship of two leading second‐generation emigrant historians: George L. Mosse and Peter Gay. As children, Mosse and Gay lived the Goethian Germany of Bildung, and then fled as the same Germany produced the Third Reich and the Holocaust. Each went on to write important work on the life and death of the modern German‐Jewish community. This article contends that Mosse and Gay thus shared a unique combination of intimacy and distance regarding German and German‐Jewish history. Such a combination and a correspondent status of insider‐outsider made Mosse’s and Gay’s lives and perspectives paradigmatic of the dialectical paths of Germany in the twentieth century.     

Hopelessness, Temperament, Anger and Interpersonal Relationships in Holocaust (Shoah) Survivors�� Grandchildren

The psychiatric literature is divided with regard to the long-term psychological effects associated with Holocaust (Shoah) experiences because the findings of clinical and empirical studies often contradict each other. Despite case reports of emotional sequelae related to intergenerational transmission of trauma, recent empirical research has suggested that offspring of survivors of the Shoah did not differ from other children and found no evidence that traumatic experiences of survivors of the Shoah affected their children??s and grandchildren??s adjustment. To shed light on some of the differences between the empirical and clinical observations, the present study set out to compare the grandchildren of survivors of the Shoah and persons of the same age whose families had not been through the Shoah experience. This study compared the two groups on some psychological dimensions relevant to traumatic sequelae: hopelessness, temperament, personality, attitudes, and interpersonal expectations. Subjects were 124 equally divided among the Shoah survivors?? grandchildren and comparison groups; we administered to all subjects TEMPS-A Rome, Beck Hopelessness Scale, State-Trait Anger Expression Inventory, and 9AP (9 Attachment Profile). We found no differences between two groups in Hopelessness, Dysthimic/Cyclotimic/Anxious, Hyperthimic temperament, and self-perception; instead the Shoah survivors?? grandchildren have a view of the other as rejecting, hostile, submissive, insecure, unreliable, and competitive in the interpersonal relationships. The Shoah survivors?? grandchildren are similar to controls in affective temperament, hopelessness and self-perception, but they are more irritable and angry than controls, and their perception about others is deeply negative. Attribution theory was used to elucidate these findings.     

Commands as Divine Attributes

Theories of ethics that attempt to incorporate divine speech or commands as necessary elements in the construction of moral obligations are often viewed as vulnerable to a challenge based on the so‐called Euthyphro dilemma. According to this challenge, opponents of theistic ethics suppose that divine speech either informs one of a preexisting set of values and obligations, which makes it inconsequential, or is entirely arbitrary, which makes it irrational. This essay analyzes some of the debates on the nature of divine commands in eleventh‐century works of Islamic jurisprudence (u?ūl al‐fiqh). I show that Mu?tazilī jurisprudents advanced the view that divine commands were actions performed in time that had concrete manifestations, while Ash?arīs argued that divine speech in general, and commands in particular, were eternal divine attributes. After exposing certain weaknesses in the Euthyphro‐inspired objections to theistic ethics, I argue that the Ash?arī idea of commands as divine attributes is a promising move for scholars interested in defending a divine command view of moral obligation.     

Filial Responsibility and the Care of the Aged

What obligations and responsibilities, if any, do adult children have with respect to their aged parents? This paper briefly considers the socio-historical and legal bases for filial obligations and suggests there is a mismatch between perceptions in the community over what they see as their obligations, what policy makers would like to impose and how philosophers identify and ground these obligations. Examining four philosophical models of filial obligation, we conclude that no one account provides an adequate justification for the types of responsibility that might be assumed in a family relationship.     

Observer perceptions of moral obligations in groups with a history of victimization

The authors investigated when observers assign contemporary group members moral obligations based on their group's victimization history. In Experiment 1, Americans perceived Israelis as obligated to help Sudanese genocide victims and as guiltworthy for not helping if reminded of the Holocaust and its descendants were linked to this history. In Experiment 2, participants perceived Israelis as more obligated to help and guiltworthy for not helping when the Holocaust was presented as a unique victimization event compared with when genocide was presented as pervasive. Experiments 3 and 4 replicated the effects of Experiment 1 with Cambodians as the victimized group. Experiment 5 demonstrated that participants perceived Cambodians as having more obligations under high just world threat compared with low just world threat. Perceiving victimized groups as incurring obligations is one just world restoration method of providing meaning to collective injustice.     

Holocaust <Emphasis Type="Italic">Laughter</Emphasis> and Edgar Hilsenrath’s <Emphasis Type="Italic">The Nazi and the Barber</Emphasis>: Towards a Critical Pedagogy of Laughter and Humor in Holocaust Education

This article tries to defend the position that Holocaust Education can be enriched by appreciating laughter and humor as critical and transformative forces that not only challenge dominant discourses about the Holocaust and its representational limits, but also reclaim humanity, ethics, and difference from new angles and juxtapositions. Edgar Hilsenrath’s novel The Nazi and the Barber is discussed here as an example of literature that departs from representations of Holocaust as celebration of resilience and survival, portraying a world in which lies, hatred and violence are still perpetuated. Because of its transgressive qualities, Hilsenrath’s narrative of the Holocaust as a satire with elements of black comedy can offer pedagogical openings for using laughter to interrupt normative constructions of the Holocaust as an unspeakable and sacred event that lies outside history, and thus beyond the capacities of human understanding. It is argued that laughter is an important modality for inviting deep thinking about the Holocaust, to move it from a transcendent phenomenon to an immanent event, situated clearly in the realm of human action and worthy of understanding so as to prevent it from happening again.     

Migration in Missiological Research

The phenomenon of migration has received a considerable amount of scholarly attention in recent years. This article presents and elaborates on how contemporary missiological research addresses and discusses migration processes. It approached the theme of migration from various perspectives, including how migration phenomena influence individual and communal expressions of faith; how migration experiences are and can be reflected on theologically; and challenges and opportunities of migration to mission thinking and practice. Further, based on the presentation of themes and approaches in the field, the article discusses how migration might challenge and develop the research agenda within missiology. It is argued that migration and migration processes do not only challenge the idea of easily identifiable contexts, but that they also blur and destabilize the whole idea of fixed borders. This challenges missiology to rethink its basic theories related to contextualization and inter‐religious encounters, as well as the understanding of mission thinking and practice.     

From Memorials to Bomb Shelters: Navigating the Emotional Landscape of German Memory

This article addresses the emotional landscape of German memory in the aftermath of the Holocaust and the Nazi past. Different narratives of memory are discussed: the collective, cultural discourse of memory in Germany today; autobiographical memory among Germans and those of German descent; and the impact of history and the role of memory in the clinical situation. Personal experience and its role in the analytic setting is examined within the context of cultural discourses that shape collective and autobiographical memory. The author draws on his experience as a psychoanalyst of German descent, and as a so-called third-generation German. Analytic work with second and third generation Holocaust survivors is discussed. Emphasis is placed on the emotional contexts of memory, and on affect states, such as shame, which challenge and complicate the navigation of history and memory, particularly in analytic interactions.     

Land, Culture and Justice: A Framework for Group Rights and Recognition

Meet the Sorbs. They are a Slavic people in Germany who number around sixty thousand. They are not mistreated or oppressed by the German government. They live in two German states, but they are interspersed with other Germans. Do the Sorbs deserve special, group rights to help maintain their culture? The recent arguments of many theorists suggest that they do. Iris Marion Young has recently argued that all marginalized groups should have group rights. Avishai Margalit and Moshe Halbertal maintain that all cultural groups have certain rights. Will Kymlicka suggests that all ‘societal cultures’ have group rights, which might include the Sorbs.     

Resources and the Rule of Rescue1

abstract The central issue that I consider in this paper is the use of the so‐called ‘Rule of Rescue’ in the context of resource allocation. This ‘Rule’ has played an important role in resource allocation decisions in various parts of the world. It was invoked in Ontario to overturn a decision not to fund treatment for Gaucher's Disease and it has also been used to justify resource decisions in Israel concerning the same condition. In the paper I consider the nature of the Rule of Rescue and its moral justification. The latter involves consideration of the distinction between agent‐relative and agent‐neutral obligations. If the Rule of Rescue is to be justified, it is plausible to think that it will be in the context of agent‐relative obligations. Two problems with this suggestion are considered: the role of identifiability in the Rule of Rescue and the extent to which policy makers in a health care system can be taken to have such obligations. It is argued that in both cases these problems can be overcome and hence that there is a prima facie obligation to follow the Rule of Rescue.     

The Rights of Future People

ABSTRACT  It has been argued by some that the present non-existence of future persons entails that whatever obligations we have towards them are not based on rights which they have or might come to have. This view is refuted. It is argued that the present non-existence of future persons is no impediment to the attribution of rights to them. It is also argued that, even if the present non-existence of future persons were an impediment to the attribution of rights to them, the rights they will have when they come into existence constitute a constraint on present actions. Both arguments build on a suggestion of Joel Feinberg's. Next, three arguments are considered which, while they do not highlight the non-existence issue, are related to it. The view that the causal dependence, of (some) future people on present policies, erodes or weakens the claim that rights considerations should constrain our present actions concerning them, is considered and rejected. The view that future people can only have rights to what is available at the time at which these people come into existence is considered and rejected. So too is the view that the attribution of rights to future people involves, in virtue of resource scarcity, an unacceptable arbitrariness.     

The case of Holocaust Education Week in Toronto

How does one explain the extraordinary success of Toronto's Holocaust Education Week (HEW), 2004, in its 23rd year? This article sketches three distinct time periods of the development of this annual event and argues that the increasingly dominant role of “survivors” and of the “second generation” in these events has played a major role in its success, as well as the involvement of women. The nature of Christian‐Jewish relations and the ways in which HEW fits into a Canadian national narrative will be discussed. The article concludes that the success of HEW can best be understood if one sees its evolving practices as a popular religious movement that bridges gaps between some, but not all, streams of Judaism, of different generations and diverse geographical and class origins.