McCormick, Peter
When Famine Returns

Ethics, Identity, and the Deep Pathos of Things.

Making use of detailed case studies from the Great Bengal Famines of the 1940s to the recurring Ethiopian famines of the 1970s and 1980s and the later Sudanese famines, McCormick argues that famine is in part a philosophical issue. In the personal and tentative style of the short, classic reflective essay rather than in the impersonal style of the contemporary extended philosophical monograph, he proposes that "the problem of famine" cannot be understood as exclusively an economic or political problem. Rather, comprehending famine properly raises at least one quite fundamental ethical issue. For the basic ethical significance of famine is that seriously considering whether and just how one ought continually to assist the numberless victims of famine challenges our previous understandings of what it is both to be a person and to live fully, and rightly, the life of a person. VIII,167 Seiten, broschiert (Universitätsverlag Winter 2003)