Humanitarianism

Clausewitz’s paradoxical trinity Prussian military general and theorist Carl von Clausewitz provided a clear perspective on the character and nature of war through his paradoxical trinity. Clausewitz suggests that war is a timeless paradoxical trinity made up of hatred, violence and enmity; chance and probability, and subordination to rational policy. He suggested that violence is a blind natural force; chance and probability allows the creative spirit to roam; and the subordination as an…

During the 1930s the world was struck by a crippling economic slump due to the crash of the American stock market. The world soon started to call this slump “The Great Depression”. Until 1935 the New Zealand government was a coalition government consisting of the Liberals and Reform Party, later known as The Nationalists, these two very conservative parties thought that they could help New Zealand through the depression by cutting government spending and focusing on the farmers, who they…

The Dark Side of Innocence The world is filled with desperation, where survival and self-reliance is the only way to live, and every minute, every second, and every single breath is precious. In an apocalyptic situation, wherein one’s survival is the priority, McCarthy reveals a repentant and ashamed tone towards the evil deeds humans are essentially forced to do for their own survival. In the novel The Road, author Cormac McCarthy utilized forthright diction and significant details to epitomize…

Inspiring Future Environmentalists The last set of ESS lectures emphasized the link between environmental and human rights. They also explained how public pressure can affect environmental issues in a positive way. This link between environmental and human rights was expressed in the first two lectures, “Environmental Constitutionalism” and “The Fall 2016 CESD Report”. Both lectures spoke of the need for public control of our precious natural resources by exploring the downsides of…

Catastrophe: Humanity’s Voyeuristic Project In today’s information-rich world, we are constantly inundated by the spectacle of catastrophe and disaster in everyday television and social media. What value or role does the concept of catastrophe have in determining the actions of people and institutions? As people are often moved to offer sympathy or take action in response to images of suffering, perhaps it is valuable to consider whether their intentions are a bit more insidious and self-serving…

Rodney Stark’s book, God’s Battalions: The Case for The Crusades, is an overview of the highly controversial Christian Crusades into the land of Israel from a predominantly Christian perspective. Stark covers reasons for why the Crusades happened, how they happened, and the effects they had on the people and culture who took part. In addition to this, Stark refutes many of the commonly shared claims about the Crusades and Christianity of that time, opposing views that hold Christians responsible…

Since its publication in 1818, Frankenstein by Mary Shelley has become one of the most memorable science-fiction novels of all time. The classic tells an intriguing narrative involving the artificial creation of human life. For nearly two centuries since the completion of Shelley’s novel, it has been the creature, not Victor, whom scholars have analyzed to a great extent, especially in regards to the validity of his innocence. Frankenstein has been analyzed by numerous authors, but hardly any in…

idiot” (30). Through this manipulation, they disguise an unethical deprivation of a basic human right as a simple elimination of an unnecessary nuisance. As a direct result of the inability to thinking critically, people lose defining qualities of humanitarianism and the society becomes a monotonously functioning machine replete with callousness, violence, and extreme conformity. The novel’s society exemplifies one of many catastrophic theoretical outcomes of failure to actively exercise the…

Africans to Christians. There was soon a shift though, in the 18th Century because of the Enlightenment. It was believed that Christians could and should not be enslaved. In the Pillars of the Enlightenment, one of the new main ideas was one of humanitarianism, which believed that all men were created equal, and it is their born right that all men are free. This thought eventually led to the passing of the Declaration of the Rights of Men and Citizen, in which the articles state that all men are…

The Persecution of Innocent Lives The period of witch hunting can be described by R.H Robbins as, “the shocking nightmare, the foulest crime and deepest shame of western civilization,” (“The Witch Hunts”). In Europe between the 15th and 18th centuries, around 60,000 ordinary people were imprisoned and sentenced to death over accusations of witchcraft. Witch-hunting had the crime of degrading women and attempting to put people under authoritative control. The misogynistic society and strict…