Humanity: A Moral History of the Twentieth Century [Paperback]

Jonathan Glover (Author)

Book Description

ISBN-10: 0300087152 | ISBN-13: 978-0300087154 | Publication Date: September 1, 2001

This important book confronts the brutal history of the twentieth century to unravel the psychological mystery of why so many atrocities occurred--the Holocaust, Hiroshima, the Gulag, Cambodia, Yugoslavia, Rwanda, and others--and how we can prevent their recurrence. Jonathan Glover finds disturbing similarities in the psychology of those involved with atrocities, yet offers hope that the development of a political and personal moral imagination can empower us to resist all acts of cruelty.

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com Review

In Humanity, English ethicist Jonathan Glover begins with the now commonplace observation that the last 100 years were perhaps the most brutal in all history. But the problem wasn't that human nature suddenly took a sharp turn for the worse: "It is a myth that barbarism is unique to the twentieth century: the whole of human history includes wars, massacres, and every kind of torture and cruelty," he writes. Technology has made a huge difference, but psychology has remained the same--and this is what Glover seeks to examine, through discussions of Nietzsche, the My Lai atrocity in Vietnam, Hiroshima, tribal genocide in Rwanda, Stalinism, Nazism, and so on.

There is much history here, but Humanity is fundamentally a book of philosophy. In his first chapter, for instance, Glover announces his goal "to replace the thin, mechanical psychology of the Enlightenment with something more complex, something closer to reality." But he also seeks "to defend the Enlightenment hope of a world that is more peaceful and more humane, the hope that by understanding more about ourselves we can do something to create a world with less misery." The result is an odd combination of darkness and light--darkness because the subject matter of the 20th century's moral failings is so bleak, light because of Glover's earnest optimism, which insists that "keeping the past alive may help to prevent atrocities." He cites Stalin's bracing comment, made while signing death warrants: "Who's going to remember all this riff-raff in ten or twenty years' time? No one." At one level, Humanity is a book of remembrance. But it's more than that: it's also an attempt to understand what it is in the human mind that makes moral disaster always loom--and a prayer that this aspect of our psychology might be better controlled. --John J. Miller --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

From Booklist

An ethics academic in Britain, Glover discourses on the dismantlement of absolute morality concepts synonymous with Friedrich Nietzsche, and explicitly put into effect by the twentieth century's terrible tyrants. To describe the release Lenin, Stalin, Hitler, and Pol Pot granted themselves from ordinary morality's prohibitions against killing, Glover quotes their ideological justifications of creating a perfect human society. Having opened this book with Nietzsche's pronouncements that man creates his morals, Glover's linking of mass murder with that philosopher is direct, and, if not an original way of comprehending the sufferings inflicted by dictators, it is worthwhile revisiting for those vexed by the apparent meaninglessness of enormous crimes. Indeed, Glover is a direct writer, not given to the opacity that clouds many a discussion of ethics. For instance, he narrates specific atrocities, and describes the psychological "traps" the triggermen find themselves in as their rationales for their actions. The "trap" metaphor extends in Glover's view to events such as World War I, and whatever dispute diplomatic historians will make with that, ethicists will find profit in Glover's not totally bleak survey. Gilbert Taylor
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

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Product Details

• Paperback: 480 pages
• Publisher: Yale University Press (September 1, 2001)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0300087152
• ISBN-13: 978-0300087154
• Product Dimensions: 7.6 x 5 x 1.3 inches
• Shipping Weight: 12.8 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.2 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (21 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #51,281 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Most Helpful Customer Reviews

100 of 105 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A Service to Humankind, September 6, 2000

By 

C. J. Roberts (Deptford, NJ USA) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: Humanity: A Moral History of the Twentieth Century (Hardcover)

This is an important work written in a clear and accessible manner. It is anecdotal and interpretive in style. Typically, one or more chapters tell a war story including details which may not be generally known; then the end of each section develops lessons to be learned.

Glover's book is a terrible indictment of war and other atrocities in the 20th Century. It is sometimes a tough read but is much more focused on the "whys and wherefores" than on the gruesomeness of the underlying subject matter. In other words it examines the psychology, politics and philosophy of war. The book is not comprehensive. We can all think of history which is not covered here. I guess I still have not quite figured out what criteria Glover used to include or exclude material. However, his themes are rationally developed. Some wars are shown to have been tribal in nature, some based on a belief system. Sometimes objective truth was abandoned and a cycle of self-deception ensued.

Glover shows how one's moral identity can be systematically eroded allowing us to slide into participation. Tools may include innuendo, ambiguous intentions, the "cold joke", the imposition of belief systems, the abandonment of objective truth, the spiral of hate, the use of precedent, the confusing of ends and means, physical distance (frequently enabled by technology), and the fragmentation of responsibility. Rectitude and honor were part of the "innocence" (i.e. part of the trap) that led to the First World War trenches. These can all lead to the abandonment of objective truth and a cycle of self-deception can ensue. Sometimes bureaucracy together with distance and division of labor can shrivel human response.

To resist, we need to keep our humanity alive. People need imaginative awareness and the democratic habits of tolerance, persuasion and compromise; also the abilities to accept ambiguity, to apply skeptical inquiry and to think critically. Moral identity is a key resource. We need to maintain self-respect and autonomy. We also need to notice small things and to guard against a slide into participation. The first step is to not look away and there is great value in early protest or refusal.

Reading this has been a growing experience for me and I now own an authoritative reference (more than 900 items in the bibliography) to help me write letters next time government leaders move us in uncomfortable directions. Thank you Professor Glover. Your book is a service to humankind.

11 of 11 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars An Examination of Man's Inhumanity to Man, July 10, 2001

By 

Edward Garea "Edward Garea" (Branchville, New Jersey United States) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: Humanity: A Moral History of the Twentieth Century (Hardcover)

Jonathan Glover has written an interesting and lively chronicle of the twentieth century using the prism of morality as his filter. Noting that the last 100 years were the most brutal in human history, Glover seeks the reasons why this became the case. In Europe at rhe start of the century, most people accepted the authority of morality. What happened to undermine that authority? Glover states that barbarism is not unique to the twentieth century: atrocities have always been with us throughout recorded time. Technology has made a difference; hyped as the answer for a better life, technology has also made it easier for programs such as genocide and biocide, not to mention the total destruction of humanity via nuclear weapons. Never before has the fate of so many been in the hands of so few.

Perhaps it has been that the view of human psychology developed during the Enlightenment has stagnated, failng to adjust to new developments and the outgrowths of those developments in the industrialized world. Glover tellingly quotes John Maynard Keynes's criticism of Bertrand Russell's comments about life and affairs as "brittle" because there was "no solid diagnosis of human nature underlying them."

But Glover errs by leading his book with a look at Nietzsche as a harbinger of the new type of thinking, concentrating on Nietzsche's values of "cruelty," which the philosopher had associated with the overman, the man who overcomes himself, creating new values in the process. Nietsche did not endorse his values of the ubermensch as values for the mass of humanity. The Nazis attempted to adopt Nietzsche as a philosophical cornerstone, but it is evident from their writings, especially those of Alfred Baumler (quoted by Glover), that they did not understand exactly what their chosen philosopher was really saying. Glover would have been much better off in this study by leading off with a study of Nietzsche's study of resentment. The twentieth century marked the triumph of resentment over rationality, taking the technology developed through and by a brittle rational world-view and using it not for the enhancement of human life, but rather the destruction of life.

Glover also misses another opportunity when he fails to note that the bloody reigns of Stalin and Mao are in a very large sense based on the Enlightenment view of human psychology that mankind was perfectible. Those not in step with the new order were deemed expendable, Glover quotes a chilling statement Stalin made while issuing arrest warrants, "Who's going to remember all this riff-raff in ten or twenty years' time? No one."

Most of Glover's analysis is spent with Hitler, and from the viewpoint of twentieth century history we can understand why. Much more is known about Hitler and his regime than those of Stalin and Mao, of whom new revelations are made with every passing year. In covering the excesses of all three dictators, Glover remains on target with an analysis that keeps the reader turning the pages.

Other strong points include chapters on Hiroshima, Rwanda, the Gulf War, and the refusal of Italians to help their allies, the Nazis exterminate Jews in Croatia, serving as a beacon of hope and rationality in a deadly irrational darkness.

Well worth your time and money, especially that it is now in paperback, and thus easier to read on the train or bus. The book will make you think and is the perfect tome to read on the way to and from work.

8 of 8 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars To read with eyes burning ..., September 6, 2001

By 

Adam J. Jones (Kelowna, BC, Canada) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: Humanity: A Moral History of the Twentieth Century (Paperback)

Jonathan Glover's book is not quite like anything you've read on war, state terror, and genocide. The tour of twentieth-century horrors is thematic rather than chronological, organized according to the ethical issues Glover wants to explore. This takes a little getting used to, but it allows the author to jump, for example, from the First World War to the Cuban Missile Crisis, to see which lessons had been learned in the interim and which might be applied in the future. The cumulative power of Glover's pointillist technique is enormous. "Humanity" combines a clear-eyed (necessarily often gruesome) depiction of *in*humanity with an informed and enlightening discussion of how leaders and ordinary people can change things for the better. As an examination of the psychological and existential origins of mass murder and genocide, it marks an advance on Ervin Staub's classic "Roots of Evil," and should be of interest to any student of modern history and politics.