scholarly journals Is There, If Not Virtue, Any Moral Value to Be Found in Payback?

Religions ◽  
2020 ◽  
Vol 11 (1) ◽  
pp. 28
Author(s):  
Andrew Flescher
Keyword(s):  
Extreme Case ◽  
Moral Principle ◽  
Holocaust Survivor ◽  
Acting Out ◽  
Moral Value ◽  
Reinhold Niebuhr ◽  
Loved One ◽  
Primo Levi ◽  
Self Worth ◽  
The Dead

Can payback, punitive action fueled by the desire to hurt an offending aggressor, ever be justified? In Anger and Forgiveness, Martha Nussbaum emphatically answers “no”, arguing that payback and the anger on which it is based, even following severe loss, distracts one from pursuing the betterment and loving nature one should be striving to cultivate instead. Timothy Jackson admires Nussbaum’s appreciation for such a beautiful spiritual ideal but criticizes her for denying credit to the potential feeler of anger for overcoming the temptation to engage in payback, the initial presence of which is critical for a graceful and triumphant self-transformation. Diana Cates, qualifying Jackson, maintains that we should not assume in payback scenarios that it is suffering that is aimed at, even if the experienced pain of an offender is foreseeable. Granting the worthwhile high road Nussbaum and her respondents seek to travel, one may still ask: is there also a positive case to be made for desiring payback in the extreme case of responding to an egregious offense, i.e., an offense that is violent, paralyzing, and life-altering? Payback will not bring a lost loved one back from the dead, but can it bring oneself back from the dead? This essay explores the merits of this possibility, honing in on the therapeutic aspect of the desire—and occasionally the acting out of the desire—for a victim to pay her aggressor back in kind. Drawing on the work of the Christian realist Reinhold Niebuhr, the Judaic thinker and Holocaust survivor Primo Levi, and the Christian ethicist and feminist Giles Milhaven, I argue that while no moral principle ever ought to be adopted out of retributive action—such action is by definition bereft of virtue—we should nevertheless not dismiss too quickly the notion of there being any moral value in desiring payback, for desiring payback might be an egregiously offended victim’s only alternative to the paralysis induced by malice. On this exceptional basis, payback strictly limited to its therapeutic scope may become, for the sake of preserving self-worth, not only tolerable, but a victim’s most preferable alternative.

Braulio of Zaragoza’s Letters on Mourning

Augustinianum ◽  
2019 ◽  
Vol 59 (1) ◽  
pp. 161-197
Author(s):  
Alberto Ferreiro ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Seventh Century ◽  
Loved One ◽  
Burial Practices ◽  
Isidore Of Seville ◽  
The Dead ◽  
The Church

Braulio of Zaragoza (c. 585/595-651) was one of the most prolific writers of seventh century Visigothic Spain. The collection of 44 letters that he wrote are a unique and rich depository of information for that era and region of western Christendom. He was a personal adviser to three Visigothic kings, Chinthila and Chindasvinth and Reccesvinth, and he correspondended with his renowned contemporary Isidore of Seville. This study focuses on the letters that he directed at people who had lost a loved one and who needed consolation in their moment of mourning. The letters do not reveal anything about funerary burial practices, but they do yield a rare personal glimpse of what the Church taught about mourning the dead. Personal letters by their very nature are a literary means where peopleexpress their intimate feelings, in this case both those who were the recipients and Braulio who wrote to them. We see the Bishop of Zaragoza at his pastoral best in the letters of consolation written to family and friends who were mourning.

Symbol and Contrast in the Aeneid

1968 ◽  
Vol 15 (2) ◽  
pp. 105-112 ◽  
Author(s):  
D. E. Eichholz
Keyword(s):  
Extreme Case ◽  
Boundary Line ◽  
The Real ◽  
The Dead ◽  
Real Action

Interpreting the Aeneid in terms of symbols is nowadays a fashionable and respectable procedure. It can also be highly dangerous, as some of its practitioners frankly admit. For example, Michael C. J. Putnam writes: ‘Any attempt, however sympathetic and careful, to delineate or clarify a poet's special, often private, symbolism, is subject to many hazards. I am not unaware of the difficulties of moving over a terrain wherein the already subtle boundary-line which separates critic from creator grows dimmer still.’ A sterner warning comes from Robert A. Brooks at the beginning of his article on the Golden Bough: ‘The oak-spirit and the King of the Wood, the mistletoe and the Queen of the Dead are all impressive concepts. But if the “real meaning” of the golden bough lies in these or near them, then Vergil must be considered an artist after the fashion of the late David Belasco, who painted the back of his stage sets as well as the front. What is happening on the stage or in the poem we may suspect to be illusory or subsidiary; the real action may be taking place in the carefully prepared but invisible recesses of the scene, approachable only by those who have a pass backstage. This is not Vergil's method …’ The warning should be heeded, even though the writer is citing an extreme case.

Invest in Health, Not Death

Pained ◽  
2020 ◽  
pp. 139-140
Author(s):  
Michael D. Stein ◽  
Sandro Galea
Keyword(s):  
End Of Life ◽  
Advance Directives ◽  
End Of Life Care ◽  
Poor Health ◽  
Life Care ◽  
Loved One ◽  
The Dead

This chapter assesses the inevitability of death and the need to think about how people can live healthy lives, without ignoring how they end. Once people accept that they are going to die, how they spend their money and their time on health begins to shift. Perhaps death can help people focus on living better, on the conditions people need to create in order to generate health. Of course, people should not neglect the experience of dying. Two out of three Americans do not have advance directives that guide what treatments they receive if they are sick, and they cannot communicate the end-of-life care that they want. Engaging in a dialogue about how people manage the dying process can help correct this oversight. It is also important to remember those who are left. The dead leave behind the grieving, who can experience a burden of poor health that is directly linked to loss of their loved one. Ultimately, recognizing the inevitability of death can guide people toward ways in which they can live healthier, die with dignity, and ensure their loved ones are supported when they pass on.

Mourning, Remembrance, and Mahler's “Resurrection”

2012 ◽  
Vol 36 (1) ◽  
pp. 58-83
Author(s):  
Ryan R Kangas
Keyword(s):  
Sigmund Freud ◽  
Traumatic Experience ◽  
Gustav Mahler ◽  
Loved One ◽  
Resurrection Of The Dead ◽  
The Face ◽  
The Dead ◽  
To Come ◽  
Work Of Mourning ◽  
Coping With Death

Abstract “You must have had the experience of burying someone dear to you,” wrote Gustav Mahler in a letter explaining his Second Symphony to the music critic Max Marschalk, suggesting that the critic's own experiences with death might help him better understand the symphony. Inversely, if listeners bring personal losses to bear on the piece, Mahler's Second Symphony offers one possible model for coping with death. If we take the distinction that Sigmund Freud draws between two responses to loss—melancholia and mourning—as a discursive frame, Mahler's Second Symphony may be heard as an attempt to come to terms with the death of a loved one by moving gradually from melancholia to mourning. According to Freud, a melancholic subject cannot truly cope with the traumatic experience and instead reenacts it, but someone who mourns truly remembers the loss and thus commemorates the dead, allowing them to live on, if only in memory. Framed in such a way, the early movements of Mahler's Second Symphony—characterized by the alternation between halting sections that dissolve almost as soon as they begin and long-breathed melodies that seem to unfold effortlessly—suggest the melancholic subject's struggle between despair in the face of abject meaninglessness and a manic euphoria, neither of which addresses the loss. By contrast, the text in the symphony's final movement, adapted by Mahler from Friedrich Klopstock's chorale on the resurrection of the dead, encourages true remembrance of the deceased as a figure beyond death. Heard as a musical enactment of mourning, the final movement suggests that the dead who are mourned are resurrected through remembrance. Forcing us to acknowledge Mahler's death on some level, the final movement completes the work of mourning by engendering the composer's own resurrection in our memories as we witness each performance of his Second Symphony.

scholarly journals Romance e Shoah Pratiche di narrazione sulla tragedia indicibile

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Alessandro Cinquegrani ◽  
Francesca Pangallo ◽  
Federico Rigamonti
Keyword(s):  
Large Scale ◽  
Holocaust Survivor ◽  
Cultural Issues ◽  
Cultural Objects ◽  
The Public ◽  
Primo Levi ◽  
Past Generation ◽  
Age Gap ◽  
The Holocaust ◽  
Northrop Frye

Over the last 70 years, Holocaust representations increased significantly as cultural objects distributed on a large scale: fictional books, museum sites, artworks, documentaries, and films are only a few samples of those echoes the Holocaust produced in contemporary Western culture. There are some specific patterns in the way the Holocaust has been represented that, however, contrast with the survivors’ account of the same event: for example, the dichotomy between bad and good characters so essential within Holocaust-based media – especially on television and film - does not really match with the testimony’s experience. While storytelling strategies may help to involve the public by emotionally engaging with the story, the risks of altering the real meaning of the Holocaust are quite high: what we often label as a “story” is actually been an outrageous, documented mass-genocide. Furthermore, as the age gap between the present and the past generation progresses, also the collective awareness of Nazi crimes as a real fact gets compromised. This volume explores selected Holocaust narrations by contextualizing the historical, literary, and social influences those texts had in their unique points of view. Starting with some recent examples of Holocaust exploitation through social media, the first chapter explores the paradigm shift when the Holocaust became a cultural, fictional trend rather than a historical massacre. In the second chapter, the analysis examines postmodern representations of Holocaust and Nazi semantics through relevant examples taken from both American and European literature. The third chapter analyses Europe Central by William T. Vollman, as all the narratological and cultural issues considered in the previous two chapters are well outlined in this articulated novel, where the relationship between reality and its representation after the postmodernist period is largely investigated. In chapter four, an account is given of the connections and differences between the narratological category romance, as understood by Northrop Frye, and Holocaust narration features. In chapter five, those elements are used to consider the work of Italian Holocaust survivor and Jewish writer Primo Levi, as his narration around Auschwitz adopts some fictional tools and still refuses undemanding storytelling mechanisms. The sixth and final chapter examines the relevant novel Les Benviellants by Jonathan Littell, considering its Nazi genocide account through the antagonist’s perspective.

scholarly journals “The zone of interest”: honouring the Holocaust victims

2018 ◽  
Vol 16 ◽  
pp. 47
Author(s):  
Aída Díaz Bild
Keyword(s):  
Value Of Life ◽  
Holocaust Survivor ◽  
The Novel ◽  
Literary Representation ◽  
Primo Levi ◽  
The Holocaust ◽  
The Subject

Amis has always found the question of the Holocaust’s exceptionalism fascinating and returns to the subject in “The Zone of Interest”. After analysing how the enormity of the Holocaust conditions literary representation and Amis’s own approach to it, this article focuses on one of the main voices of the novel, Szmul, the leader of the Sonderkommando, whose members were Jewish prisoners forced to clean the gas chambers and dispose of the bodies. Through him we confront directly the horrors of the Holocaust. One of Amis’ greatest achievements is precisely that he humanizes and rehabilitates the figure of the Sonder by transforming Szmul into a comic hero who, in spite of the atrocities he witnesses, reaffirms the unconditional value of life and fights to give meaning to his terrible predicament. The novel is dedicated to the writer and Holocaust survivor Primo Levi, whose voice can be heard throughout the text.

scholarly journals Principle of Care and Giving to Help People in Need

2016 ◽  
Vol 30 (3) ◽  
pp. 240-257 ◽  
Author(s):  
René Bekkers ◽  
Mark Ottoni–Wilhelm
Keyword(s):  
Charitable Giving ◽  
Empathic Concern ◽  
Moral Principle ◽  
Experiment Study ◽  
Moral Value ◽  
Personality Psychology ◽  
Helping Behaviours ◽  
Helping Behaviour ◽  
Group Members ◽  
Nationally Representative

Theories of moral development posit that an internalized moral value that one should help those in need—the principle of care—evokes helping behaviour in situations where empathic concern does not. Examples of such situations are helping behaviours that involve cognitive deliberation and planning, that benefit others who are known only in the abstract, and who are out–group members. Charitable giving to help people in need is an important helping behaviour that has these characteristics. Therefore we hypothesized that the principle of care would be positively associated with charitable giving to help people in need, and that the principle of care would mediate the empathic concern–giving relationship. The two hypotheses were tested across four studies. The studies used four different samples, including three nationally representative samples from the American and Dutch populations, and included both self–reports of giving (Studies 1–3), giving observed in a survey experiment (Study 3), and giving observed in a laboratory experiment (Study 4). The evidence from these studies indicated that a moral principle to care for others was associated with charitable giving to help people in need and mediated the empathic concern–giving relationship. © 2016 The Authors. European Journal of Personality published by John Wiley & Sons Ltd on behalf of European Association of Personality Psychology

scholarly journals Speaking with the Dead: The Sick Chick and the Psychic Crypt in Gail Honeyman’s Eleanor Oliphant is Completely Fine

2021 ◽  
Vol 20 (1) ◽  
pp. 46-58
Author(s):  
Catherine Macmillan
Keyword(s):  
Childhood Abuse ◽  
Single Woman ◽  
Loved One ◽  
The Dead ◽  
Chick Lit

Abstract This paper explores Gail Honeyman’s 2017 novel Eleanor Oliphant is Completely Fine from the perspective of Abraham and Torok’s concept of the psychic crypt. On one level the protagonist Eleanor, a thirty-year-old urban single woman searching for love, resembles a chick-lit heroine; however, Eleanor is deeply lonely, apparently autistic, suicidal and a survivor of childhood abuse and trauma. The paper argues that Eleanor’s difficulties can be understood as the consequences of encryptment which, in Abraham and Torok’s terms, is a disease of mourning where the dead loved one is incorporated rather than introjected into the psyche.

Dead is not better: The multiple resurrections of Stephen King’s Revival

2021 ◽  
Vol 12 (2) ◽  
pp. 189-203 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jeffrey Andrew Weinstock
Keyword(s):  
Mary Shelley ◽  
First Century ◽  
General Sense ◽  
Loved One ◽  
Death Of A Child ◽  
Weird Fiction ◽  
Mad Scientist ◽  
The Dead ◽  
Religious Revivals ◽  
Specific Sense

Stephen King’s 2014 novel, Revival, plays with its title in several respects. It is first a familiar Frankenstein-esque narrative about a mad scientist who seeks to revive the dead. It is also, however, about religious revivals, both in the specific sense of the religious gatherings held by minister and main antagonist Charles Jacobs, and in the more general sense of attempting to find something in which to place one’s faith in a world where accidents can claim the lives of loved ones. Beyond this, Revival plays with its title in two more senses. First, it elaborates on the recurring theme in King of existentialist angst precipitated by the death of a child or loved one, which King uses to question God’s benevolence or existence. In order to ask these questions, King also resurrects the spirit of Mary Shelley, taking from Frankenstein the theme of reanimation of the dead. The narrative’s conclusion, however, offers yet another revival as it transitions us from the horror of Shelley to the weird fiction of Arthur Machen and H. P. Lovecraft. Thus, through these various revivals, King’s novel charts the evolution of twentieth- and twenty-first-century horror from Shelley to Lovecraft and our contemporary ‘weird’ moment.

scholarly journals Principle of Care and Giving to Help People in Need

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Rene Bekkers ◽  
Mark Ottoni-Wilhelm
Keyword(s):  
Charitable Giving ◽  
Empathic Concern ◽  
Moral Principle ◽  
Experiment Study ◽  
Moral Value ◽  
Helping Behaviours ◽  
Helping Behaviour ◽  
Group Members ◽  
Nationally Representative ◽  
Representative Samples

Theories of moral development posit that an internalized moral value that one should help those in need—the principle of care—evokes helping behaviour in situations where empathic concern does not. Examples of such situations are helping behaviours that involve cognitive deliberation and planning, that benefit others who are known only in the abstract, and who are out-group members. Charitable giving to help people in need is an important helping behaviour that has these characteristics. Therefore we hypothesized that the principle of care would be positively associated with charitable giving to help people in need, and that the principle of care would mediate the empathic concern–giving relationship. The two hypotheses were tested across four studies. The studies used four different samples, including three nationally representative samples from the American and Dutch populations, and included both self-reports of giving (Studies 1–3), giving observed in a survey experiment (Study 3), and giving observed in a laboratory experiment (Study 4). The evidence from these studies indicated that a moral principle to care for others was associated with charitable giving to help people in need and mediated the empathic concern–giving relationship.

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