Paul Kucharski

My aim in this essay is to advance the state of scholarly discussion on the harms of genocide. The most obvious harms inflicted by every genocide are readily evident: the physical harm inflicted upon the victims of genocide and the moral harm that the perpetrators of genocide inflict upon themselves. Instead, I will focus on a kind of harm inflicted upon those who are neither victims nor perpetrators, on those who are outside observers, so to speak. My thesis will be that when a whole community or culture is eliminated, or even deeply wounded, the world loses an avenue for insight into the human condition. My argument is as follows. In order to understand human nature, and that which promotes its flourishing, we must certainly study individual human beings. But since human beings as rational and linguistic animals are in part constituted by the communities in which they live, the study of human nature should also involve the study of communities and cultures—both those that are well ordered and those that are not. No one community or culture has expressed all that can be said about the human way of existing and flourishing. And given that the unity and wholeness of human nature can only be glimpsed in a variety of communities and cultures, then part of the harm of genocide consists in the removal of a valuable avenue for human beings to better understand themselves.

In this paper, I explain and defend Karol Wojtyła’s claim that “if we wish to speak rationally about good and evil, we have to return to the philosophy of being. If we do not set out from such ‘realist’ presuppositions, we end up in a vacuum.” I begin by outlining Wojtyła’s existential understanding of the good, according to which the good for x is found in those ends that complete the being that is lacking in x, or that enhance its existence in keeping with its nature. Then I explain how Wojtyła moves from an existential understanding of the good to the thesis that “exemplarism is the very heart of the normative order.” Finally, using representative thinkers from both the Continental and Analytic traditions, I defend Wojtyła’s claim that when we divorce goodness from being we end up in a moral vacuum, in a kind of nihilism where the good signifies nothing other than the rationalized articulation of one’s subjective needs, desires, or wishes. In such a state, the only means for resolving moral disagreements is through the consensus of the majority or the forceful rule of the strongest will.

What does it mean to say that a person has dignity, and what explains her dignity? Linda Zagzebski argues that personal dignity entails both infinite and irreplaceable value. Initially she grounds the former claim in the power of rationality and the latter in the uniqueness of one’s subjective lived experience. Later she grounds both in the power of rationality, understood in terms of reflective consciousness. I argue that the latter account is an improvement upon the former but that needless problems arise from both accounts because she conflates properties considered in the abstract with properties instantiated in concrete persons and she fails to recognize an ambiguity in the notion of incommunicability or uniqueness. I also argue that the more fundamental account of rationality should be given not in terms of reflective consciousness but in terms of the ability to understand particulars in light of universals.

My aim in this essay is to advance the state of scholarly discussion on the harms of genocide. The most obvious harms inflicted by every genocide are readily evident: the physical harm inflicted upon the victims of genocide and the moral harm that the perpetrators of genocide inflict upon themselves. Instead, I will focus on a kind of harm inflicted upon those who are neither victims nor perpetrators, on those who are outside observers, so to speak. My thesis will be that when a whole community or culture is eliminated, or even deeply wounded, the world loses an avenue for insight into the human condition. My argument is as follows. In order to understand human nature, and that which promotes its flourishing, we must certainly study individual human beings. But since human beings as rational and linguistic animals are in part constituted by the communities in which they live, the study of human nature should also involve the study of communities and cultures—both those that are well ordered and those that are not. No one community or culture has expressed all that can be said about the human way of existing and flourishing. And given that the unity and wholeness of human nature can only be glimpsed in a variety of communities and cultures, then part of the harm of genocide consists in the removal of a valuable avenue for human beings to better understand themselves.

In Existence and the Existent, Jacques Maritain speaks about the difficulty of knowing persons as subjects. Typically we know persons as objects, or “from without,” and this explains why we describe people as instantiations of various qualities that can be shared in common with others. But according to Maritain, “To be known as object... is to be severed from oneself and wounded in one’s identity. It is to always be unjustly known.” In this paper, I consider the epistemological means by which knowing persons as subjects is possible. I argue that we can find parallels between knowing persons and what Maritain refers to as the “intuition of being”, and that reflecting on these parallels can help us to see a solution to the problem of knowing persons—just as the act of existence is not known through a concept, but through a judgment that separates what a thing is from the act by which it exists, so too, I argue, one’s subjectivity is known not through a concept but through a judgment that separates one’s shareable qualities from the self/person underlying these qualities.

In this paper, I explain and defend Karol Wojtyła’s claim that “if we wish to speak rationally about good and evil, we have to return to the philosophyof being. If we do not set out from such ‘realist’ presuppositions, we end up in a vacuum.” I begin by outlining Wojtyła’s existential understanding of the good,according to which the good for x is found in those ends that complete the being that is lacking in x, or that enhance its existence in keeping with its nature. Then I explain how Wojtyła moves from an existentialunderstanding of the good to the thesis that “exemplarism is the very heart of the normative order.” Finally, using representative thinkers from both the Continentaland Analytic traditions, I defend Wojtyła’s claim that when we divorce goodness from being we end up in a moral vacuum, in a kind of nihilism wherethe good signifies nothing other than the rationalized articulation of one’s subjective needs, desires, or wishes. In such a state, the only means for resolving moraldisagreements is through the consensus of the majority or the forceful rule of the strongest will.