Description
Book SynopsisTrade Review"Bernstein (New School for Social Research) presents a strong case for moving ethical inquiry in a new direction... Bernstein's presentation is clear, original, and persuasive... Highly recommended." -- L. J. Alderink * Choice *
"Bernstein’s moral instincts strike as sound, and his novel ideas pertaining to embodiment, trust, and love — and their relation to dignity — strike as insightful contributions to moral psychology." -- Craig Duncan * Notre Dame Philosophical Reviews *
“A complex and enigmatic discussion of torture and rape.” * Philosophy in Review *
Table of ContentsAcknowledgments
Introduction
Part One : History, Phenomenology, and Moral Analysis One / Abolishing Torture and the Uprising of the Rule of Law
I. Introduction
II. Abolishing Torture: The Dignity of Tormentable Bodies
III. Torture and the Rule of Law: Beccaria
IV. The Beccaria Thesis
V. Forgetting Beccaria
Two / On Being Tortured
I. Introduction
II. Pain: Certainty and Separateness
III. Améry’s Torture
IV. Pain’s Aversiveness
V. Pain: Feeling or Reason?
VI. Sovereignty: Pain and the Other
VII. Without Borders: Loss of Trust in the World
Three / The Harm of Rape, The Harm of Torture
I. Introduction: Rape and/as Torture
II. Moral Injury as Appearance
III. Moral Injury as Actual: Bodily Persons
IV. On Being Raped
V. Exploiting the Moral Ontology of the Body: Rape
VI. Exploiting the Moral Ontology of the Body: Torture
Part Two : Constructing Moral Dignity Four / To Be Is to Live, to Be Is to Be Recognized
I. Introduction
II. To Be Is to Be Recognized
III. Risk and the Necessity of Life for Self-Consciousness
IV. Being and Having a Body
V. From Life to Recognition
Five / Trust as Mutual Recognition
I. Introduction
II. The Necessity, Pervasiveness, and Invisibility of Trust
III. Trust’s Priority over Reason
IV. Trust in a Developmental Setting
V. On First Love: Trust as the Recognition of Intrinsic Worth
Six / “My Body . . . My Physical and Metaphysical Dignity”
I. Why Dignity?
II. From Nuremberg to Treblinka: The Fate of the Unlovable
III. Without Rights, without Dignity: From Humiliation to Devastation
IV. Dignity and the Human Form
V. The Body without Dignity
VI. My Body: Voluntary
and Involuntary
VII. Bodily Revolt: Respect, Self-Respect, and Dignity
Concluding Remarks : On Moral Alienation
I. The Abolition of Torture and Utilitarian Fantasies
II. Moral Alienation and the Persistence of Rape
Notes
Index
