The CEO is a longstanding friend of the Change in Control program and is a prominent member of our steering committee,
which obviously governs all my actions and prevents me from predicting errors.
She is a professor of fiscal policy at Lincoln.
The really important thing, if you don't know she's here, is to you must read her book on Cosmopolitan or Get Out in 2012.
The first volume of the Teen Public Service with Washington, D.C. Press.
We're wasting the second volume of Cosmopolitan piece, which is a sister volume, and I'm sure we'll be precise about that.
She currently holds the British Columbia Mid-career Fellowship Grant, and that goes on through August this year.
So we're not, she says. Online she is. August 2104.
That's the longest British government grant I could probably ever consider.
And I don't know how you got a hundred year grant, but I won't want to test it.
She's clearly specialist on them on rights, democracy,
ethics of war and distributive justice and year is a huge honour for us to have you giving some thanks.
Thanks for having me. Does everyone have a handout? Good.
Excellent. So thank you very much for inviting me to speak.
Am I right? I should know the answer to that question. But is this the first broadly political philosophical talk, this term?
This term, yes. So that's a bit of a shift in tone compared to what we've heard over the last over the last few weeks.
So as Robert has just said,
I'm currently writing a book which is called Cosmopolitan Peace is the sequel to the book that came out about 18 months ago,
which was called Cosmopolitan Woo. I apologise for this.
Some would call me nature of the title you control really over this.
My editor does what I want to talk to you about today is a topic which matters to me, not just intellectually but personally as well.
But it's the issue of whether we have moral reasons and if so, which kind of moral reasons to remember.
The activities that people that we are going to discuss today will in fact be the very last chapter of the piece.
Now, clearly, it's a very important time during which to tackle the issue.
We have now more or less formally known until the centenary of the First World War.
We have voiced ourselves for five years, more or less constant commemorative ceremonies,
special commemorative ceremonies, practices, events, conferences, books.
You can't walk into your bookshop in these days without being confronted by shelves and desks groaning under the weight of new books,
edited books on the First World War. So it's partly faced with this commemorative onslaught that I decided fairly aptly
for in the first week of November 2013 that I wanted to write something about that.
And it is a topic more of a rich political philosophy, history, a moral philosophy, first of all, that much I hardly ever talk about,
so that the question on the table, as it were, is this to repeat, what kind of reasons do we have moral reasons?
Do we have to engage in those practices?
But let me illustrate by way of an example. Suppose it's never going to happen.
Just suppose, but we don't until the day. Would you say, look, this whole Remembrance Sunday ceremony at the War Memorial is just too expensive.
Don't do it. Let's discuss with you.
Let's use the money to do something else.
Would there be anything wrong in some sense about what it is that we would lose in this country if indeed we would lose anything at all,
morally speaking, about such a move?
Now, when I say that political philosophers do not usually talk about the issue of war, the numbers, that's not entirely true.
They are standard arguments in favour of the view that we ought really in some sense it's going to be this time.
So resources thinking, remembering wars, those standard arguments go like this and I use them on your handout.
Well, yes, we ought to do it as a way to take responsibility for the past.
That's one first standard argument.
The second standard argument says, well, yes, we should engage in those practices as a way to strengthen the bonds that unite us here today.
Our fellow citizens know those arguments, justify remembrance of war and how we use food.
From that, we would tend to use the word remembrance food for short.
By which we mean remembrance of practices such as Remembrance Sunday.
In this country, Memorial Day, in the U.S., those arguments justify remembrance by appealing to a special relationship that unites actors in
remembrance either the special relationship that unites current generations to past generations,
or the special relationship that unites people here today in the present together.
And usually, in fact,
the very special relationships and special relationships which unfold and develop between members of the same political communities.
Usually remembrance practices are justified, except for one set of practices uncomfortable in the second,
but that seems to be justified by appealing to the value inherent in the bonds of citizenship.
They are particularly risky. At the same time, however, it seems to me that at least in the West Wars,
that we perhaps the most imperative to remember are the two world wars and events within wars that, again,
perhaps feel the most important to remember are events which in the very atrocity,
seem to speak to us as human beings and not so much as the French, as a British, as an American, as a German consequence.
It seems to me, in other words, that although standard arguments for war remembrance partake of what I call here particular rustic morality,
that is to say, belonging to those special obligations which we have as part of a certain relationship.
Many of our commemorative practices, particularly around the two world wars or atrocities within wars,
seem to make the most sense of peace intuitively through the lenses of more interesting mystic values.
What I want to try to do in this afternoon is work out whether we could justify
engaging in remembrance practices in a way that does not require assigning a deep,
meaningful value to the bonds of citizenship.
The books that have emerged from War Caucus were published in one of the pieces of cosmopolitan peace.
For those of you who don't really know that cosmopolitanism is the view that individuals from the multitude of rights,
entitlements and duties are given to them if one approves of national political borders.
These are for all of us, for human beings, have certain rights against each other and certain obligations to one another.
Again, quite human beings. I'm deeply committed to that view.
It is the central principle on which my thinking about war and peace relies.
So what I'm particularly interested in here is to see whether the broadly nationalist arguments in
favour of remembrance are all that there is to say about remembrance or whether from a cosmopolitan,
you know, stylistic view, we can in fact offer a justification as to why we should continue to support,
for example, remembrance practices such as murder and Sunday in this country.
So what I want to do, how long are you giving me? 40 minutes.
Okay. So what I want to do first is to discuss the standard documents which we find in the literature, that section two, when you had.
And then I will try to develop a more general statistic account of remembrance duties.
And if there is time, because I predict that you know what I say with upsetting stories, if there is time,
I'll try to pre-empt the objections by outlining some of the worries that historians might have.
So let me begin then. Section two on your handout past and present two problematic arguments,
beginning with the view that engaging in remembrance practices is something that we ought to do as a way to take responsibility for the past.
Now, there are two ways in which we can construe the argument, and the first most obvious one,
the consistent saying that we must take responsibility and commemorate past wrongs.
Of course, the classic example you illustrate the argument is the example of the.
Germany. So as applied to this specific example, the argument goes like this.
Even if contemporary Germans did not themselves know, did their own parents of world powers themselves take part in the Holocaust?
All of them are indeed for admission that crime was committed by their predecessors in this national community known as Germany.
And so, according to the argument, contemporary Germans can reasonably be expected to experience feelings of
shame vs of that collective past which is profoundly shaped by the Holocaust.
And experiencing those feelings of collective shame,
in turn gives them a particularly compelling reason to make reparations to victims of the Holocaust.
And one way in which to make those reparations is to commemorate the Holocaust with the appropriate moral and emotional attitude.
This latter clause I should have said this before. This clause with appropriate, moral, unusual attitude is, it seems to me,
crucial to understanding remembrance practices, whether from this article or indeed historical.
And here is what I mean by phase two.
It seems to me that when we talk of remembrance in general, the realities of war in particular, we are not simply thinking.
It seems to me that it is important to call into online facts about wars of the past.
We tend to take with you because I think to think of you, I must say these are fairly common views from the view that we should remember those events,
those wars in a way that is appropriate to the subject matter morally or emotionally,
by which I mean that if there is a sense in which the war or indeed the atrocities within the war and the remembrance is morally wrong.
Well, in remembering this that we should do so, bearing in mind,
at least in awareness of the moral dimension of these accounts, and likewise remembrance in that particular context.
And it specifically is a second to moving and there is a sense in which reference of what you mentioned, you know,
how you would feel if during the Remembrance Sunday ceremony, you know, the entire cabinet decided to burst out laughing.
But we say there's something inappropriate about that as well.
So what is clear is that when I speak of moral reasons to remember, I mean moral reasons not just to recall the facts to your own mind,
but to do so in a way that is morally and emotionally sensitive and appropriate to what this divisive action was.
So the argument, therefore,
is that contemporary Germans want citizens of this particular country have an especially compelling reason to remember the Holocaust,
which, for example, members of other nations who were themselves complicit in the Holocaust do not have,
in virtue of the proper feelings of shame that they should have about the Holocaust,
even if you could defend themselves by not in any way contemporary Germans implicated in the Holocaust.
Now I can see the force of this argument.
I think that it would not at all when I knew of one of at least one German citizen who there might be others.
But in my view, for what it's worth, is that it would not be irrational for contemporary Germans to feel ashamed of this particular past.
But I do find the view that there therefore has a compelling more reason to remember the Holocaust, which other people don't have.
I find that view somewhat problematic, and the reason why I find that view somewhat problematic is precisely that they were not implicated themselves.
Excuse Herzog in the Holocaust. It seems to me that generally individuals are liable to reparative duties only if
they themselves were causally implicated in the wrong doing or is derived from them.
Jews benefit from their own doing if and to the extent that contemporary Germans are by our procedures,
neither causally implicated in the wound nor do not derive an interest benefit from the occurrence of the Holocaust.
Then it's not funny to me that you mean why they more than anyone else here today,
several decades after the fact and especially compelling reason to remember the Holocaust.
Which we do not have as well. Now, you know, my argument is not that none of us have a compelling reason to remember the Holocaust.
In fact, I shall try to make an argument to the effect that we do.
All of us have such good reason. My worry is about seeking out Germans as bearers of, and especially waiting for reasons to do so.
I use the example of the Holocaust as a means to illustrate the general point that I made here,
which is that the longer the time has elapsed between the occurrence of a war on the one hand and the point at which we deem some Jews to be,
and the second reasons to commemorate that event, the less reason there is to single out a particular group of people,
just on account of the fact that their predecessors a long time ago to where of course it is repeated or derived from Jews,
benefit from their own doing.
So the reparative argument for remembrance does not strike me as particularly strong, particularly to repeat when we study remembrance,
the morality of remembrance practices, when the wars and the remembrance, as it were, for wars of the move or atrocities within the more distant past.
Now. The other way in which we can think of remembrance as a way to take responsibility for the past consists in commemorating past benefactors.
I find that argument from your handouts. The argument goes like this Our soldiers make the highest possible sacrifice for us,
and so we are under a duty of gratitude to them for what they did for us, which we discharge through acts of remembrance and commemoration.
Again, I think that there is a lot of intrusive force, you know, argument.
But I do find it worrisome for two reasons.
The first one is this The argument presupposes that there is such a thing as a free community.
It comes from a national political community which endures over time and of which it
makes sense to say it today has benefited from what its members in the past did.
But of course, the longer time lapse is the less recognisable the polity is that policy.
On his behalf, the move was flawed. So as I write on the handout, it's not entirely clear who were those two American citizens or Mexican.
Such have a particularly compelling reason to remember American veterans in gratitude to those veterans who died in the First World War.
Now, the obvious rejoinder to that worry is that the USA here and now would not be what they are.
I did nothing for the fact that I entered that war in 1917 so that if the USA would not be what they are now,
but for the fact that it entered the war in 1917, then you can see why my recently naturalised American citizen could be heard on the register.
Gratitude to veterans of the First World War.
But of course, we don't know. We don't know what would have happened to the United States in 2014 had the United States entered the war in 1917.
And you might not find that objection compelling. So let me move to the second war that I have.
But the argument that says you recall that we owe it in gratitude to soldiers who fought for us in
the past to remember what they did for us to the extent that we benefited from what they did for us.
Now, here's my second question. Now, that's a correction.
I know that there are members of the armed forces in the room, so I'm going to articulate my worry as delicately and sensitively as I can.
My worry is this, though it seems to me that benefiting from our predecessor's deeds and sacrifices
is not enough to generate a duty of gratitude to them for what they did.
It must be the case that the deeds and sacrifices which they committed and incurred were themselves morally justified.
Otherwise we would be under a duty to remember in gratitude soldiers who died for the sake of our community.
Even if the war in which they were engaged was profoundly unjust.
And I find that to worrisome. The view that when we benefit from the commission of a grievously, unjust,
unjust war and by an unjust war rule which involved in much thought and response
with killing the view that when we benefit from that war having been fought,
even if the benefit was wrongly obtained, we have a duty of gratitude to the soldiers who actually did that for us.
Now we've produced lots of historical examples,
but the bottom line is this that before we rush to the conclusion that we have a duty of gratitude, these soldiers who fought for us in the past,
a duty which we discharge by remembering them before we rush to the conclusion that we must attend,
it seems to me to the moral features of that which they did for us.
Now, you might think that it's. I'm being too quick.
Yes, you might say, well, hold on.
More often than not, in the past, soldiers were not aware that they were getting wrongfully if indeed they were for me.
They were not aware of this. They did nevertheless incur absolutely enormous physical and psychological and moral burdens for our sake.
I'm not alone used as a compelling reason to be grateful.
Even if there were in fact, wrong.
And that alone brings us a compelling reason to stand in front of the War Memorial in Whitehall on Remembrance Sunday.
By way of reply, I should like to suggest and insist that whatever we ought to experience and express gratitude to them for what they did,
irrespective of the more features of their will, is doubtful. Even if we benefited from it.
Now I emphasise what they did for this is the crucial food issue.
Perhaps we should be grateful to soldiers of the past for the fact that they meant to benefit us,
that they were willing to incur great sacrifices for us.
Their successes. But to be grateful for that is not the same as to be grateful for what they did.
And I want to maintain that in order for us to be appropriate and grateful for what they did for us,
what they did for us cannot be grievously, morally wrong.
Now, in the face of the enormous suffering which soldiers have endured and do more often than not.
This might seem like an acceptably harsh conclusion to endorse.
My point, and this is important. My point is not that we have no compelling more reason to remember with the appropriate emotional, moral attitude.
What soldiers did did when they behaved unjustly.
In fact, we have very strong reasons to remember them, to remember them in sorrow.
My point here is that gratitude is not going to do the work that needs to be done in
order to explain why we should engage and support those important remembrance practices.
So appealing to the past is not going to help a lot.
It seems to me, in justifying those practices. What about if you didn't take the prisoners who turned your back and preach to.
The argument here is like this in promoting wars of the past 13 years.
We acknowledge that the bond that unites us to our compatriots is rooted in our history,
which we share with them, like the bonds of friendship and kinship, which are linked and strengthened over time.
And so in just the same way as remembering now that relatives can strengthen our relationships with current family members,
likewise with fellow community members, remembering what our fellow community members did for us is constitutive both of our relationship to
them as true generation or fellow community members and of our relationship with our contemporaries.
So the story is very simple. You know, again, to illustrate, you know,
when we gather or when our leaders gather on behalf again on this stick with example around one Sunday in Britain when they gather on our behalf.
Mm hmm. Morning of Remembrance Sunday. And we do what they do, you know, at the memorial, they are not just doing something for soldiers of the past.
They are trying to do something for us here and now in the present.
At least you say they are communicating.
It seems to me the sort that in remembering what soldiers who fought in Britain and the Commonwealth in the First World War,
we are strengthening the criminal bonds that unite British citizens.
Yes. And now I'm very aware of my French accent as I'm portraying the sentence and of the fact that I use the pronoun we.
But of course I do so entirely, you know, advisedly.
One of the difficulties with this argument is, of course, that it presupposes an enduring,
relatively homogenous national community that we do, you know, over time.
And you might find that new worrisome. But there are some of the objections which was raising worries, which was raising the argument.
And the first objection, again, it's specifically about is this, that the argument will work only if the career relationships,
which are strengthened in the present sort of acts of remembrance, are more relevant.
And that's not always the case. So the example that night is that of Soviet commemorations of the Great Patriotic War.
I mean, studied on his successors for decades, engaged ground ceremonies in Moscow in particular,
to commemorate what really is in many ways the resounding success for the Soviet Union.
In fact, some historians just have to say that's the only success that you can chalk up to that particular in the regime.
And that culminated culminated with the erection of the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier in Moscow in 1965.
But of course, they did so largely as a way to support and probe one of the most grotesque abusive regimes that ever existed.
Now, I don't think there is any value, you know, to be had in strengthening that kind of regime.
And so it's hard to see how we can justify remembering the practices in this particular context,
not appealing to the values of sustaining that particular kind of relationship,
the relationship that the united in the Soviet citizens to Stalinist totalitarianism.
That's my first objection. My second objection is that continues to inaction.
Search has a national transgenerational community don't be exclusionary act only that will only justify remembrance of history or
communal predecessors contributions to who we are know and now remember the argument says what it should be about the family.
So when you are now in a family together, you know, remember your ancestors, you are strengthening the bonds that unite you here and that.
So if we apply it to the case of war, by implication it means that as a French,
I have a particularly compelling more reason to stand up with the French did during the Second World War,
which, frankly, to put it entirely in non-academic language, is small potatoes compared to what the Americans, the Canadians and the British did.
And that strikes me as entirely counter intuitive.
There is one word for fighters, a Japanese to you used to remember.
Again, with your appropriate moral, you were surprised to actually I would have to be something my gratitude.
It is the French is certainly by comparison with Turkey, the Americans, the Canadians and the British.
And you don't want to be opposed to the notion of a national constitutional convention are extraordinary as well,
because to justify remembrance practices in this way is largely to exclude marginalised communities within the broader national communities,
marginalised communities which cannot be expected to identify with the dominant narrative.
So the example of having one here is the example of the way in which the 4th of July is commemorated in the United States.
The argument that I'm scrutinising here would be like this The American citizens here now will strengthen the bonds that you not them here and now.
If they together commemorate one of the founding moments in the history of the American nation,
the Declaration of Independence on the 4th of July 2017.
But, of course, that particular way of understanding and rendering the past, in this case the creeds,
the relentless wars which were waged before the destruction of independence and afterwards against Native Americans.
And in fact, I did a bit of research on this.
Now, to my knowledge, there is no federal day of commemoration of the wars against African-Americans in the US.
Some states, South Dakota, use Columbus Day as a way to engage in those practices.
But there is no federal symbolic mnemonic in the acknowledgement of these wars,
and it seems to me that appealing to a national narrative runs the risk of to repeat,
you know, including some of the less savoury events of our collective past, which in fact we should put into our mind.
So I'm trying to show that the standard justifications for immigrants practices have some problems.
And one of the key points that I have made, one of the recurrent criticism of late,
is that this standard argument seems to me to be sufficiently insensitive to how rich or
generous national communities are whose members are called upon to remember wars of the past.
But the other difficulty with many of those arguments is that they are sufficiently insensitive to the moral
futures of some of the most salient moral features of the wars or acts within those wars under remembrance.
So let me now move on with those two worries you had to section three on your handout.
What I think might be a genuinely, universally safe way of just if I remember was due to its.
Here's the key argument.
We are very different from a communal ancestors from one another culturally, because it's all in the forms of gender, sexuality, religion, etc., etc.
But we do have one thing in common. We are just human beings.
We have the capacity for moral and rational agency,
and that in turn supports universal requirements not to harm one another and more rigidly as well as a universal requirement to bring about peace.
That requirement is universal in the sense that we all want to live, but it's irrespective of who we are,
irrespective of our membership in this or that national straight political community.
This is really not a particularly profound claim. I mean, it's standard really to contemporary contemporary Brits.
It is standard to many use of certainly the Western moral, political, philosophical canon.
But where does that leave us? With respect to war, remembrance.
Some people who hold that view about the strength of that Universe Universalist take
in a requirement not to harm one another and wanted to make and to bring about peace,
saying that there's nothing inherently valuable to national relationships.
Some people who have that view that you a requirement say, for example,
that the fact that you are British and the father time French and the fact that other people are German,
American, Russian or Chinese is completely irrelevant to what is really the most generally valuable about our lives.
Even if you take that view, you can still accept that a relationship you feel in nationals and compatriots is tremendously valuable
in that it can it can help us abide by the moral imperative not to harm one another unjustly,
and indeed the more imperative for peace.
For example, you can sometimes hear people say, we, the British, don't come do acts of torture.
We, the Americans, try to always be very aware of the morality of what we are doing.
So the first thought that I want to give to you is that if commemorating those wars,
the legacy of which is an enduring part of a political culture, enables us as members of that political culture.
To be better equipped to meet the university operative.
Then we have strong, compelling moral reasons to remember fools.
But also. And this is the more important point. If the argument of peace ultimately provides justification, refers to calls for war remembrance.
Then we have very compelling more reasons, it seems to me, to remember those wars,
not insofar and because they have historical significance for us in a given political culture,
but insofar as they have to be supported, you have the deepest and most universal moral significance to us human beings.
I think we have similarly strong reasons for human beings to remember those wars which had universal
significance to us and to which we are not connected as participants or descendants of participants.
And so this is why it seems to me that all of us, irrespective of who we are, we have very strong moral reasons to ensure,
as far as we can, that unjust wars in which millions of people died and more to do it should not take place.
We have very strong moral reasons to remember generous support for those reasons as a means
to ensure that they are not committed again and certainly not committed against our behalf.
Likewise with remembering atrocities which fighters, whether regular or even combatants, have committed against civilians.
And so if, for example, commemorating the First World War, which is an important part of the national legacy, is French, British,
American, German, Austrian, Russian is commemorating the First World War, serves as a reminder of the horrors of war in general.
And if it helps us to keep in view the moral imperative not to senselessly sacrifice lives, then of course we should do so.
It seems to me. And this is why, in fact, I think it's some time you appropriate to remember we're sorry.
Even those who took part in unjust wars.
There is always something bad about killing.
There's always something to be regretted about. And that gives us a strong reasons to remember people we fought in those wars.
With so much. This argument since June provides more reasons to commemorate the two global wars taken tied to its legacy concerns national borders.
But it also provides us with more reasons to remember specific events within those wars,
as well as more global particular wars which display the very worst and the very
best know which human beings are capable towards one another as human beings.
We all have compatible reasons as human beings to support and take part in the
coalition of atrocities wherever and against whomever they have been committed.
Likewise with the promotion of the soldiers whose lives were committed in vain,
but also saying that we are similarly compelled morally human beings to remember the acts of heroism,
kindness and compassion which soldiers and civilians carried out in war,
precisely because those acts displayed the very best of which we are capable as human beings.
So what I want to do is show that you do not need to be wedded to the importance of the very
notion of national unity in order to find a justification for engaging in remembrance practices.
Even when those remembrance practices, as a matter of fact, seem to be very tied to the national culture of those which take part in them.
Do you have time to appease the historians? I feel that we probably should.
Okay. So so here is what I think some historians.
I used to be a historian myself. I got so worried when I was watching this.
So here's what I think some historians will say, that we grumble, that we say it's ridiculous.
I mean, that we count on him his wars as objects of remembrance from the war, the context in which they are moved frequently,
that in my view, we have no greater reason and no reason to cheer on the differently.
The First World War, for example, from the Second World War.
It would seem that, in my view, what I said earlier is that we all, according to these,
have very strong, compelling, more reasons to remember genocides or even to my view,
there is no reason why we should focus on Auschwitz in advance of the Rwandan genocide, because with any genocide, you know, we do.
And that would seem to be very problematic to pick out some wars and some events is particularly expressive of,
to repeat the very worst than the very best of which was being told in the capable.
So that remembrance becomes completely historical.
And I can see why one would have that war.
And so I'm going to try and, you know, lay at least the lead on sufficient that you might in mind that I'm no longer a historian.
So maybe, you know, what I'm about to say will not be enough to appease the historians.
I'm very worried about Hugh, because I remember reading the interview between The Economist three years ago where you were,
in effect, making that comment that remember, you know, the First World War without paying attention Pacific and I the stories.
So I'm certainly not claiming that the one we remember together collectively, the First World War,
when we said we should support student conferences, we should support commemorative events.
I'm not claiming that we should say, Oh, let's remember the Battle of the Somme, just as a token of the horrors of trench warfare when we do remember,
and that is a thing we need to happen in two years from now when we do collectively,
you know, remember the Battle of the Somme, we should do it in full awareness of what that word was, what its meaning,
the importance of a place where, you know, in the First World War that, if you will, is a duty of basic scholarship.
When we think about events of the past, we should think about the need for the zero in the lack of the best knowledge that we have.
No argument here is that we have reasons to remember wars of the past which are not tied to a particular national culture.
And that argument, it seems to me,
is entirely compatible with treating the Battle of the Somme example again in its proper, you know, accurate context.
There is a deeper worry that we've seen in the results, which is that on my own, my view,
it's quite possible that if another appalling genocide of the magnitude of the Holocaust occurred in the next 50 years,
then in my view it's of course quite possible that in 500 years from now we would have no greater reason
to remember the Holocaust than to remember that putative genocide happening in 15 years from now.
And you might worried about this. I'm not sure that I should be worried about this.
I mean, I'm not really ready to see some of the soldiers who died in the Battle of Waterloo for fear that perhaps it's a moral failure.
You know, for part I mean, I'm interested in it, but I'm not thinking.
I would be remiss if I didn't somehow feel some sense of combining sense of mourning for those particular soldiers as opposed to,
for example, who died in the siege of Sebastopol 40 years later.
So I think I'll leave it at that. I think that the approach was is.