Let us hope God like fig leaves.
Listening to Tony Blair something becomes very obvious about he way we think about causes, and Blame. To use Aristoltlian categories - Murder is teleological, manslaughter is merely accidental. What makes someone evil is not the numbers of people killed, or even to way we will them, but intent. We can maim, we can kill as many as we like, innocent or not as long as our aim is not the killing itself. What makes evil is having an intent to kill itself. Now this distinction in terms of individual actions ( I mean murder or maslaughter) is all very well, and possibly jusitifed (although personally I am very unhappy about the idea of intention in implicit itn it – I mean where does intention come form) – but what I am sure about is this argument is mere sophistry when it comes to telling the difference between government and terriorists, and but for two reasons.
First there is Bush and Blair’s remark a very finally nuanced series of philosophical moves that appear to me to be utterly unfounded. I mean here that there doctrine of ‘Good will’ is a very curious mixture. I mean it is basically theological: It is our duty to do what is right because that is what God wants us to do. But then this purpose is Good because it is expressed within the world. I mean we are good, because we are working in the long run (and it might be an very very long run) to make the world better. But to be Good is firmly a thing of this world. Now this is contrast to the otherside who are clearly thinking of Goodness in the life of the world to come., They kill themselves and us beacusw they are performing God’s will in the hereafter . Now the exact distinction between a never realised ‘good purpose’ in his world which legitimates an unlimited amount of killing, and a a purpose in the oher world that does then same actually eludes me. The situation is even more problematic as the purpose which the west aims for is not actually realisable in this world, unless the west itself change. It shows no sings of doing so – and so, like the kingdom of heaven our purpose is as removd from reality as the sucide bomber is.
But beyond this theological nicety there is a much deeper problem . this problem as far as I see it also comes in tow part. Firstly there is something uttrly convient about our definetion of Evil. I mean if we really are following Blair and saying Evil is intent- then almost be defintion our comp;ex government can never be evil. I mean as our system is never the product of one will but rather an amalgam of wills , and we commit wrongs not so much by will, as lack of will – that is in the gaps between conflicting responisiblities, then almost by defintion we will never be evil, however much pain and suffering he cause. That is we impose on the world some kind of highly complex abstract verb of blame : “We make mistakes, you are callous (but understandable), they are evil…”. I doubt of course that other parts of the world can tell they apart. But more than this (and this is the second point) I doubt that Go or nature can. I mean even without my deep philosophical (and for that matter theological) scriples on the matter, I doubt that Nature or God or more importantly other huiman actually reason in thois way. I mean we all know words and intentions are cheap. We all have good intentions, and what we really judge is how others action affect us. That is what we really judge are not the puroposes of our fellows but the effect of those causes on us. What makes th suicide bomber is not a telogical (and condemnable) purpose based on some theological point, but all the acts of routine miserary and arbitary unjustice our all too smug telogy inflict upon others Lives. It is us, and our callousness in pursuit of our possibly laudable (buit never actually realized) goals that actually forge the martry.
And Of course the full horror of our situation is that with rulers like Bush and Blair (and with a media that revels in misery, and enjoys events), we appear to of lost the language capapble of realizing our responisiblity. He are reverting back to the language of theology of telosology or blame, an ,move that will of course only make the entire horrid situation an awful lot worse…