COMMENSAL ISSUE 94

MURDER & PERSONS : First, in response to your comments on Sheila Blanchard's contribution (C93/32-33), I would like to jump on my 'moral philosophy' hobbyhorse once again.

You criticise Sheila's "if it is not illegal it is not murder" notion, pointing out that this was the Nazi defence to the charge of genocide at Nuremberg. I would contend that the Nazi defence was legitimate within its own moral and legal frame of reference, but not within the - moral, even if not yet at that time enshrined in law - frame of reference of the Allies. I would contend this not because I believe morality to be a wholly subjective, culturally determined matter, but because the Allies assumed a broader definition of the person. And, as I have argued before, 'we call that moral which tends towards coherence among persons', however 'persons' may be defined within a given social group.

You mention the particular doubts that attended the prosecution of Nazi military commanders, and such doubts are justifiable. For any soldier to fight effectively it is necessary for the enemy to be depersonalised in his mind: that is, for the enemy to be decisively excluded from the person category. It is just possible that this is becoming increasingly difficult, due to the general dissemination of information about categories of person other than our own, and to the relative ease with which people can now move about the world. This may give some justification to Martin Lake's contention that "we are slowly becoming more civilised" (C93/42), although there is plenty of room for doubt here.

You also mention the question of capital punishment. It seems to me that the fundamental justification for the death penalty - even if this justification was not articulated - was that the murderer (or whatever) had by his act excluded himself from the person-category (being the category of entities akin to ourselves (whoever we may be)). His act might even be seen as revealing what he intrinsically was: a murderer, not a human being. To execute him was therefore not murder, -only a person can be murdered- but simply a way of emphasising and rendering absolute his exclusion, and reinforcing the general self-conception of the rest of society as 'decent' people by way of contradistinction.

A possible definition of murder would therefore be: to kill a person maliciously is murder, a person being an entity admitted to the person category. Entities who have at one time or another been excluded from this category include murderers, enemy soldiers, Jews, blacks, homosexuals etc. etc. etc.

The question then becomes 'What determines who we admit to the "person" category ? This is where the matter of culture and cultural identity comes in. The number and type of entities admitted to the category seems to bear some sort of inverse relation to the strength of the cultural identity of a given group, or to the extent that a given group is prepared to place its identity within the context of a broader definition of the person. If we are more tolerant than some, it could simply be the result, not of moral superiority, but of a weaker sense of cultural identity.

HUMOUR : Secondly, and with reference to your comments on my C93 contribution (C93/13), I believe that my trouble in fitting examples of humour into Bergson's theory (my C92 contribution refers) has probably more to do with laziness and analytical ineptitude on my part than with any inadequacy in the theory.

As mentioned in my C93 contribution, Bergson's "central image" is that of "something mechanical imposed on something living" and I argued (C93/11) that this relates to the subject-object dichotomy.

I would contend that the essence of humour is the ambiguous or paradoxical nature of the human person as simultaneously subject and object. This is the ur-ambiguity, just as the fact that we - conscious selves - have bodies - objects among a multitude of things - is the ur-joke.

Humour involves an ambiguity that, both as being an ambiguity (ultimately traceable to the ur-ambiguity) and by its nature in any given case, relates to the subject-object dichotomy or to the organic / mechanical image that develops from that dichotomy in so far as 'mechanical' or 'objectified' behaviour among humans derogates from their subject-status. (One of Bergson's contentions is that the social function of humour is to prompt the avoidance of 'mechanical' behaviour).

To take the 'Eye drops off shelf' headline that you mention (C92/12). This involves:-

1. an obvious verbal ambiguity in the word 'drops' as both verb and noun.
2. a reference to something organic (the eye) being made subject to 'the mechanical' i.e. dropping like any other object subject to gravity; ( - the eye is being treated in isolation from the rest of the body, thus emphasising its status as an object as against something directly pertaining to a conscious subject - ) and
3. the unconscious (or deliberate?) gaffe of the journalist in behaving, or pretending to behave, in a 'mechanical' (unconscious) way in not realising the implication of his / her words.

Through the ambiguity of 'drops' (a blunder that involves the mechanical or unconscious behaviour of the person who perpetrated it) the object-status of the eye - and by implication of the subjects that eyes pertain to - is emphasised through the process of falling.

As for the other headline you mention, "bridge held up by red tape", this also involves various obvious and less apparent ambiguities. However, the ambiguous nature of the human person is less concretely represented and more difficult to tease out, which possibly accounts for that fact that you find it less amusing. I shall nonetheless attempt an analysis as follows:

1. The metaphor 'red tape' has reference to the mechanical behaviour of bureaucrats. This cliched metaphor is by virtue of the gaffe, given a literal application, thus emphasising the object-status of
2. he ‘metaphier' (to borrow a term from Julian Jaynes) and by replication of the bureaucrats whose behaviour supplies the 'metaphrand'.
3. Then there is the obvious ambiguity of the expression 'held up' i.e. as both 'hindered' and 'supported', whereby the blunder is perpetrated.
4. 'Red tape' sounds like an inadequate sort of support for a bridge. Thus reference is made to the frequent inadequacy of the human subject in the face of the stubborn object-status of both him / herself and the world of things that he / she inhabits.

HUMAN LIFE : Lastly, and if anyone is still awake, I would like to end with a few comments prompted by Stef Gula's response to Norman Mackie (C93/25).

My answer to the question "...What is so unique and distinct about human life that the power which creates and regulates it is excluded from the laws of Nature... ?" would be 'the fact of reflexive awareness', which, as discussed in previous contributions, and although it may exist to a limited extent in other animals, is only fully present in humans. It is reflexive awareness that is 'unique and distinct about human life', that separates us from 'nature' (the sum-total of organic functioning in the absence of reflexive awareness), and that, via the existential crisis that it precipitates (the subject rendered object due to its subjection to bodily existence), constitutes "the power that creates and regulates" human life.

Michael Nisbet