The Circle of Obligation

Re: The desecration of the Afghans (the “Circle of Obligation”). In the very first philosophy course I ever took, and it may have even been on the first day (it’s been over 30 years now, so forgive the sketchy details), the professor, when asked by a student what our responsibilities as students were, launched into a rather lengthy dissertation on the concept of the “Circle of Obligation“. The bottom line, for us as his students, was to attend, participate and maintain proper decorum and the response from him would be his honest, educated evaluation of our progress. The actual discussion that proceeded this agreement is what I want to share with you. It revolved around situational ethics and how conditional they were with regard to whether both parties considered themselves in the same group. The professor started back with the first tribal communities of man who gathered together for the sole purpose of survival: anyone too weak to contribute to the survival of the group, was considered outside the community and thus was left to fend for themselves. No obligation was extended to former members placed outside that circle. As survival became more assured the circle widened to include more than hunters and gatherers and specialization began to occur leading very much to the world as we now know it. Part of the instinct for survival is to treat anyone who doesn’t look like the group with suspicion, at the very least, but really as a threat. Ultimately, the professor shared that, in an unsure situation, the only thing you can rely on is yourself, the only things you know are what you bring to that situation, and how you will react will largely be the sum of your experience and whether you believe the other person in the situation with you is in your group, sharing your values. The most basic precept of war is that the enemy is “other” (to use the Muslim term), not in your group, and therefore the rules of your group don’t apply to them, i.e., they can morally be killed. However, the moral code of the West (the Geneva convention and most religions) dictate that the corpse is a sacred article and must be held in the respect of common morality. The failure of the soldiers was not as Americans, not as Marines but as human beings in not realizing that morality is not an abstract notion that arrives specific to a situation but a concept that is carried with them to express in the situation. In placing those corpses outside the circle of common decency, they placed themselves outside the group of moral people.
It has become a basic tenant of our modern life that all morality is situational. It’s now socially acceptable, even fashionable, to take advantage of those unable to defend themselves; call it social Darwinism, call it liasse-faire capitalism, call it free-markets- it is the legacy of the decline of decency and the acceptance of the victimization of our own group. One must still be careful not to be too obvious, or to pick too pathetic a victim, but even that is fading against the pursuit of that unattainable dream: the glory of God that money can buy. The most unfortunate aspect of that trend is the notion that life is sacred specific only to the group that you feel included in and all “other” peoples are unworthy of our morality. The universal revulsion to these acts of desecration actually give me hope that some things are still seen as unconditionally inhuman and may lead to the realization that you are what you believe and you become what you do.
The important thing to remember is you’re not doing it for them, you do the moral thing for yourself.
Ps.(for Erin): I wanted to take a moment and say how much I admired your closing statement (on how religion is treated in modern politics) on Wednesday’s show. I don’t often see people standing in front of the camera, speaking plainly from the heart, and I hope you do that again soon. Very courageous. All the Best, TVA