Abstract
In discussing cruelty toward human beings, I argue that disregarding the singularity of any human being is necessary for treating her or him cruelly. The cruelty of Peter the Great, relying upon the intolerance of any human singular individuality, serves me as a paradigm-case to illustrate that. The cruelty of Procrustes and that of Stalin rely upon similar grounds. Relating to a person’s singularity is sufficient to prevent cruelty toward that person. In contrast, a liberal state of mind or solidarity is insufficient to prevent cruelty and, under some circumstances, may even cause it.
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Notes
The idea that each human being is a singular individual already exists in the philosophical literature, especially in or on the writings of Kierkegaard, Derrida, Levinas, and Ricoeur. For some recent treatments of the idea see, for instance, Baldwin 2000, pp. 397–400; Schneiderman 2000, p. 94; and Wall 2003. I use this idea, in its metaphysical and ethical sense, quite differently from each of these treatments. I also attach different meanings and significance to it.
We should not mistake relationality for relatedness. Relationality rests upon the difference(s) between the relating entities, whereas relatedness rests upon the similarity or likeness between the related entities. Hence, the more the entities differ from each other, the more they relate to one another. The similarity that relationality may imply is by no means intrinsic; it is rather relational only.
The systematic grounds for considering each person as a singular individual without falling into the solipsistic trap are extensively explicated in my metaphysical theory, panenmentalism (Gilead 2003 and Gilead 2011). As I have attempted elsewhere to show, torture and acknowledging the singularity of each human being necessarily exclude one another (Gilead 2005). Earlier, I systematically rested this exclusion on a panenmentalist basis (Gilead 2003, pp. 97–111 ).
Thus, singular individuality constitutes relational similarities and commonness. In contrast, according to deconstructive thinkers, such as Derrida and Levinas, singular individuality interrupts human commonness and similarities. For a comprehensive and systematic discussion of human singularity and relational similarities and commonness consult Gilead 2003 and Gilead 2011.
Hence, some of these historians went so far as to consider Peter as the first Bolshevik, even the first Stalinist. Consult Anisimov 1990. Citing Anisimov, David J. Nordlander, for one, portrays Peter as the first Stalinist, more than 200 years before Stalin. See Nordlander 2015, p. 4; cf. Nordlander 1998, p. 791.
Nevertheless, such balancing has raised opposition, for instance: “It was the Polizeistaat that Peter introduced, lock, stock, and barrel, into Russia, without any enlightenment gloss” (Madariaga 1987, p. 644). Madariaga is one of those who could not ignore Peter’s “personal cruelty and the sufferings he inflicted on his people” (op. cit., p. 646). She rejects “the idea that Peter was ‘necessary’; that social engineering by violence is an acceptable form of progress; that, as Belinsky put it, ‘historical necessity is on his side’” (ibid.). To say that Peter sacrificed himself for the sake of the common good and to justify thus his autocratic arbitrariness “is the justification of Stalinism long before Stalin and should be regarded by civilized people as the symptom of diseased minds” (ibid.).
For a detailed description of Peter’s festivities, consult, for instance, Massie 1980, pp. 638–39. About the monstrous curiosities collected by Peter for his original Kunstkamera, see Anemone 2000, pp. 583–602. Although such collections were customary in eighteenth century Europe, Peter “was unique in including ‘live exhibits’ or ‘living monsters’ in his museum” (op. cit, 593). Despite his attempt to consider the “living exhibits” from the progressively scientific viewpoint of the time, Anemone acknowledges “the well known Peterine fascination with the freakish and the grotesque” (op. cit., 596). For a typical example of the distinctions between human beings who attracted Peter’s curiosity, note the following: “Who was the giant Bourgeois? A Frenchman whose main distinction was that he was several inches taller than the Tsar …. Peter was particularly intrigued by the fact that the mother of the French giant was a dwarf” (Anemone 2000, p. 583). Peter was blind to individual singularity, which is beyond any comparison and measurement. What he was obsessed with were the comparable, measurable, or quantifiable distinctions between human beings. Note that both Massie and Anemone attempt “to balance the picture” and to portray Peter as a complicated personality rather than simply a monstrously ruthless autocrat.
Contrary to the following thought-experiment: “At the beginning of my story, the Scanner destroys my brain and body. My blueprint is beamed to Mars, where another machine makes an organic Replica of me. My Replica thinks that he is me, and he seems to remember living my life up to the moment when I pressed the green button. In every other way, both physically and psychologically, we are exactly similar. If he returned to Earth, everyone would think that he was me” (Parfit 1987, p. 200). For some reasons to refute this thought-experiment and its conclusions, see Gilead 2004, pp.161–3 and Gilead 2014.
Discussing the birth of the Russian intelligentsia (“intelligentsia” is a Russian term), Isaiah Berlin writes, “Most Russians historians are agreed that the great social schism between the educated and the ‘dark folk’ in Russian history sprang from the wound inflicted on Russian society by Peter the Great. In his reforming zeal Peter sent selected young men into the western world, and … brought them back to become the leaders of that new social order which, with ruthless and violent haste, he imposed upon his feudal land. In this way he created a small class of new men, half Russian, half foreign – educated abroad, even if they were Russian by birth; these, in due course, became a small managerial and bureaucratic oligarchy, set above the people, no longer sharing in their still medieval culture; cut off from them irrevocably” (Berlin 1978, p. 117).
For a discussion of the profound relatedness of love and singularity consult Gilead 2003, pp. 19–41.
Cf. Berlin 1990, p. 12: “liberty may have to be curtailed in order to make room for social welfare.”
As I explained above, relating to individual singularity may raise affection or some emotions similar to love. Nevertheless, independently of affection and such emotions, this type of relationality is sufficient to prevent cruelty.
I am grateful to Daniel Statman and Saul Smilansky for helpful comments on earlier versions of this paper.
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Gilead, A. Cruelty, Singular Individuality, and Peter the Great. Philosophia 43, 337–354 (2015). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11406-015-9588-4
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11406-015-9588-4
Keywords
- Cruelty
- Singular individuality
- Pscyhical private accessibility
- Intersubjectivity
- Interpresonality
- Self
- Person
- Dignity
- Solidarity
- Liberalism
- Despotism
- Deontology
- Values
- Equality
- Civilization
- Love
- Envy
- Humiliation
- Torture
- Slavery
- Classical Russian literature
- Originality
- Plagiarism
- Immanuel Kant
- John Kekes
- Richard Rorty
- Peter the Great