On Inhumanity

Dehumanization and How to Resist It

David Livingstone Smith (Autor)

Buch | Hardcover

240 Seiten

2020
Oxford University Press Inc (Verlag)
978-0-19-092300-6 (ISBN)

Artikel merken

The Rwandan genocide, the Holocaust, the lynching of African Americans, the colonial slave trade: these are horrific episodes of mass violence spawned from racism and hatred. We like to think that we could never see such evils again--that we would stand up and fight. But something deep in the human psyche--deeper than prejudice itself--leads people to persecute the other: dehumanization, or the human propensity to think of others as less than human.

An award-winning author and philosopher, Smith takes an unflinching look at the mechanisms of the mind that encourage us to see someone as less than human. There is something peculiar and horrifying in human psychology that makes us vulnerable to thinking of whole groups of people as subhuman creatures. When governments or other groups stand to gain by exploiting this innate propensity, and know just how to manipulate words and images to trigger it, there is no limit to the violence and hatred that can result.

Drawing on numerous historical and contemporary cases and recent psychological research, On Inhumanity is the first accessible guide to the phenomenon of dehumanization. Smith walks readers through the psychology of dehumanization, revealing its underlying role in both notorious and lesser-known episodes of violence from history and current events. In particular, he considers the uncomfortable kinship between racism and dehumanization, where beliefs involving race are so often precursors to dehumanization and the horrors that flow from it.

On Inhumanity is bracing and vital reading in a world lurching towards authoritarian political regimes, resurgent white nationalism, refugee crises that breed nativist hostility, and fast-spreading racist rhetoric. The book will open your eyes to the pervasive dangers of dehumanization and the prejudices that can too easily take root within us, and resist them before they spread into the wider world.

David Livingstone Smith is Professor of Philosophy at the University of New England in Biddeford, Maine. He has written or edited nine books, including Less Than Human: Why We Demean, Enslave and Exterminate Others (St. Martin's Press, 2011), which won the 2012 Anisfield-Wolf award for nonfiction. His work has been translated into seven languages. David is an interdisciplinary scholar, whose publications are cited not only by other philosophers, but also by historians, legal scholars, psychologists, and anthropologists. He has been featured in several prime-time television documentaries, is often interviewed and cited in the national and international media, and was a guest at the 2012 G20 economic summit, where he spoke about dehumanization and mass violence.

Chapter 1. Introduction
Chapter 2. Why Dehumanization Matters
Chapter 3. Defining Dehumanization
Chapter 4. Holocaust
Chapter 5. Lynching
Chapter 6. How We Do Race
Chapter 7. Racism
Chapter 8. Race Science
Chapter 9. Essence
Chapter 10. From Barbados to Nazi Germany
Chapter 11. Which Lives Matter?
Chapter 12. The Act of Killing
Chapter 13. Morality
Chapter 14. Self-Engineering
Chapter 15. Ideology
Chapter 16. The Politics of the Human
Chapter 17. Dangerous Speech
Chapter 18. Illusion
Chapter 19. Genocide
Chapter 20. Contradiction
Chapter 21. Impurity
Chapter 22. Monsters
Chapter 23. Criminals
Chapter 24. Varities of Dehumanization
Chapter 25. Dehumanization and its Neighbours
Chapter 26. Resisting
c. Reading Deeper

Erscheinungsdatum	09.07.2020
Verlagsort	New York
Sprache	englisch
Maße	132 x 180 mm
Gewicht	299 g
Themenwelt	Geisteswissenschaften ► Philosophie ► Ethik
ISBN-10	0-19-092300-8 / 0190923008
ISBN-13	978-0-19-092300-6 / 9780190923006
Zustand	Neuware