Ethics in a Time of Barbarism

During a time of widespread intraspecific aggression and barbaric captivity throughout the planet, this study of the ethics of survival asks the burning question: At the extremes of experience, when captives are struggling to survive, is there a line at which the moral judgment of survival behavior ceases? Stated differently: Are there times in the lives of humans when the valiant attempt to maintain moral scruples clashes with the way the world is—moments when moral pretension, moral aspiration, and the expectation of moral agency are absurd? Putting the burning question under strain, Carl P. Ellerman offers testimony from the confessional publications of survivors who were subjected to life-threatening barbaric experiences. He also critically scrutinizes the competing ethical perspectives of Hume, Kant, Nietzsche, and the U.S. Department of Defense Military Code of Conduct to show how the ethics of survival has been handled philosophically and militarily. Empirical evidence from Evolutionary Biology, Primatology, and the Neurosciences is interwoven to advance a biological realism in the ethics of survival. Readers are also invited to undertake an honest self-examination, using active imagination to answer unsparing questions, as if each reader were wearing the shoes of a captive who abjures the fictions of an ideal self.

Carl P. Ellerman obtained his PhD in Humanities from Syracuse University, USA. Currently, he is a psychotherapist in private practice. Though now retired from teaching, he formerly taught Philosophy at Lemoyne College and in the maximum-security prison in Auburn, NY.