The philosophy of genocide
on October 15, 2014 . ( 5 )
Armenians_marched_by_Turkish_soldiers,_1915by Massimo Pigliucci
I have recently hosted one of my regular dinner & philosophy discussions in
Manhattan [1], and this time we chose the topic of genocide. More
specifically, we poured over an as yet unpublished paper by NYU philosopher
Paul Boghossian on “The concept of genocide” [2].
I find the topic both fascinating and obviously urgent, and Boghossian’s
paper is a study in how to write a good and accessible philosophy essay that
actually makes you look at something allegedly “obvious” in an entirely new
way. That said, naturally, I have my reservations about the paper’s central
thesis, which we will get to in due course.
Right at the beginning of Boghossian’s essay we find out that, perhaps
surprisingly, there actually is disagreement about the definition of
genocide and – more importantly – people worry that the word is now simply
been thrown around for cynical political motives, and is therefore in danger
of losing whatever efficacy it may have.
The term “genocide” was coined by jurist Raphael Lemkin in the ’40s,
specifically to indicate what Hitler had done to the Jews and – similarly –
the Turkish government had perpetrated against the Armenians living in
Turkey [3]. The United Nations quickly adopted the term (in 1948), and its
Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide listed
the following criteria for the definition of genocide (quoted verbatim by
Boghossian):
(a) Killing members of the [target] group;
(b) Causing serious bodily harm;
(c) Deliberately inflicting on the group conditions of life calculated to
bring about its physical destruction in whole or in part;
(d) Imposing measures intended to prevent births within the group;
(e) Forcibly transferring children of the group to another group.
Importantly, the UN legal definition of genocide makes no mention of the
word “State,” meaning that the actions do not (necessarily) need to be
conducted with explicit governmental support. According to Boghossian, then,
the 1915 events clearly qualify, regardless of repeated denials by the
Turkish government.
There are, of course, objections to this interpretation. One is based on the
observation that the concept of genocide did not exist in 1915, so the
Armenian event cannot possibly qualify. Boghossian rightly points out that
this is as silly as saying – as postmodernist philosopher Bruno Latour
actually did say! – that archeologists are wrong in saying that Pharaoh
Ramses II died of tuberculosis, because you see, the bacillus responsible
for that disease was discovered by Robert Koch only in 1882. Hopefully this
sort of thing needs no further comment.
That said, and as Boghossian promptly acknowledges, the application of some
concepts is indeed time dependent: for instance, nobody could be hip before
the concept of hipness became a feature of our culture. However, it doesn’t
appear that this presents a problem for the events of 1915, since the only
concept actually required is that of an ethnic group, coupled with the
intention to harm such group.
A second objection considered by Boghossian is based on the observation that
the UN passed its legal resolution on genocide in 1948, coupled with the
idea that laws usually are not applied retroactively. Again, this isn’t
convincing according to the author, since it confuses the application of the
concept with the application of the law. Even if the law is not retroactive,
the concept can still apply.
Boghossian however arrives at a point in his essay where he begins to worry
that the UN definition itself is deeply flawed, which may make any
application of it problematic, and even morally troubling. Moreover, he does
not seem to see an easy way out of the problem, in the end.
The NYU philosopher begins by articulating three purposes for using the word
and then analyzing how they hold up against the UN definition: 1) to name a
distinctive phenomenon; 2) to associate an unambiguously negative moral
connotation to the term (i.e., there is no such thing as a justified
genocide); and 3) to highlight that the crime is distinctively heinous.
Concerning the distinctiveness of the crime (#1), the UN wording talks about
attempting to destroy a group “in whole or in part,” which of course
immediately raises the question of how small can the part be before we stop
talking about genocide. This may seem like a trivial, even pedantic, point,
but it isn’t. Indeed, there are potentially major practical consequences
stemming from it. For instance, a number of Jewish organizations engaged in
systematic targeting and revenge killings of Germans after WWII. Was this an
attempt at counter-genocide, so to speak? Hardly, but the answer does depend
on just how small the “in part” clause of the definition allows a group to
be.
Of course Boghossian is aware of the possibility of resolving this by
changing the UN wording to “in whole or substantial part,” but then other
problems arise: are the 3000 people who died on the terrorist attacks of
9/11, 2001 in the US a “substantial” (enough) part of the American people?
If no (as I am inclined to say), then why is there a salient moral
distinction between those 3000 deaths and the 8000 killed at Srebrenica,
which the UN did declare a genocide (perhaps hastily?)? [4] You see how
superficially simple things can unravel rather quickly once we look at the
details.
Concerning #2 above, the unambiguously negative connotation of the term
genocide, Boghossian points out that – contra to what is implied by the UN
definition – it is almost never the case that groups are targeted only qua
groups. There are always other motivations operating as well. For instance,
the Turkish government had the clear intention (and additional motive) of
building a Muslim state when it undertook the events of 1915. Obviously,
however, this still does not make those actions justified (analogously,
neither does Israel’s desire for security – as much as it is in itself a
reasonable goal – justify the regular massive killing of Palestinian
civilians that we have seen in recent times).
Two objections to #3 above (how heinous is the crime?) are discussed in some
detail by Boghossian: first, why exactly is it morally worse to target a
group rather than to just violate individual rights? Do groups have rights
above and beyond their individual members? Second, if there are group
rights, why are these limited to ethnic, racial and religious groups, but
are not extended to, say, political ideology, social class, and so forth?
It could be argued that only groups whose membership is not a choice should
be considered as possible target of genocide, but this does not square with
the inclusion of religion and the exclusion of gender from the legal
treatment of genocide. And at any rate, asks Boghossian, why should choice
on the part of the victims determine the degree of immorality of a crime?
One possibility is to amend the UN definition to include hatred of that
group, thus assimilating genocide to hate crimes. Boghossian responds with a
highly unlikely thought experiment involving a dictator who kills off random
ethnic groups for the sole purpose of showing who’s the boss, and who acts
without hatred. I think this is likely the weakest link in his argument,
though, and I will come back to it below.
Another logical alternative would be to go in the opposite direction, and
expand rather than limit the types of groups that could qualify. But this
runs into the different problem that there is no clear stopping criterion:
Boghossian asks therefore whether people that worked at the World Trade
Center on 9/11 would make up a sufficiently coherent group, for instance.
Self identified membership doesn’t cut it either, unless one agrees that,
say, NYU faculty could be the target of a genocide attempt (on the part of
the university administration, perhaps?). As usual in philosophy, don’t be
fooled by the apparent triviality of the counter-examples. As contrived as
they may seem, they are designed to make a conceptual point clear, and the
implications need to be considered, not dismissed out of hand.
In the end, Boghossian puts forth the suggestion that the fundamental
problem is the inevitable vagueness of the very idea of killing a people, as
opposed to the clarity of the corresponding idea of killing a person. He
thinks that the UN definition does not do well with respect to the three
purposes outlined, and that moreover it is hard to see how it could be
fixed.
He concludes: “Even without the availability of the concept of genocide, we
can still point out that in 1915 over a million Armenian men, women and
children were either intentionally killed or died during mass deportations
that were conducted with wanton disregard for life. . What I think we should
resist is the temptation to capture all this in one neat word.”
Well, yes, we could do that, but we would be missing something important, I
think, something that goes back to the very reason Raphael Lemkin coined the
term genocide to begin with. For all the vagueness and pitfalls of the
concept, it does seem to point toward a particularly heinous kind of crime,
directed at a broad category of people largely, though not necessarily
solely, precisely because they are members of that category. And yes, it
does also seem that hatred is a crucial component, though by no means the
only one making up the toxic cocktail that moves people toward genocidal
actions. So the analogy with hate crimes is indeed apt.
Of course we can point to millions of Armenians, or Jews, and so forth that
have been killed by one crazy group of people or another (the Ottomans, the
Nazis, or what have you). But it wasn’t just that large numbers of people
were killed. That, in and of itself, is unfortunately an all too frequent
occurrence in human history, up to contemporary times. The point is that it
is particularly heinous when the killing is specifically targeted, and
systematically carried out, because of a will to eliminate an entire group
of human beings. There is a good reason to bring up the analogy with hate
crimes more generally – Boghossian’s attempt to undermine that parallel
notwithstanding. Hate crimes are recognized in both civil and criminal law
[5] as to be at the least in part the result of prejudice. They carry a
higher moral valence than similar types of violence undirected toward
specific groups because the intent is not just to maim or kill individuals,
but to send the chilling message to anyone else who identifies with the same
group that they’ll be next, or at the very least that they are not welcome
here.
Moreover, the evidence is pretty clear that hate crimes do have measurable
effects beyond the direct harm to the immediate victims. These effects are
psychological, and range from affective disturbances to generalized terror
among members of the targeted group. In the case of genocide, of course, it
is also the sheer scale of the violence at which the mind balks, and which
deserves singling out.
Yes, Boghossian’s specific points are good ones, and they do need to be
considered seriously. Further, we should most definitely resist any cynical
political use of the word “genocide” that risks permanently degrading its
moral import. Then again, plenty of other words face the same threat. Just
consider how easy it is these days to be considered a “hero,” for instance.
And the vagueness of some concepts – as Wittgenstein famously pointed out –
is often not a limitation of our understanding, not does it mean that the
concepts cannot be used properly. Some concepts are inherently fuzzy, and we
simply have to learn to live with their fuzziness and engage in serious
conversations any time a significant borderline case comes up. Clearly, this
is much more than an academic debate. As New York Times Nicholas Kristoff
once wrote, we “will be judged in years to come by how [we] responded to
genocide on [our] watch” [6].
_____
Massimo Pigliucci is a biologist and philosopher at the City University of
New York. His main interests are in the philosophy of science and
pseudoscience. He is the editor-in-chief of Scientia Salon, and his latest
book (co-edited with Maarten Boudry) is Philosophy of Pseudoscience:
Reconsidering the Demarcation Problem (Chicago Press).
[1] Dinner & Philosophy meetup.
[2] Boghossian’s paper, to appear in the Journal of Genocide Studies, can be
downloaded in draft form here.
[3] The Armenian Genocide, Wiki entry.
[4] The Srebrenica Massacre, Wiki entry.
[5] Hate Crime, Wiki entry.
[6] Quote from: “Nicholas Kristof: The Crisis of Our Times,” interview by
Joel Whitney for Guernica, 28 June 2005.