
 |
|
May 25, 2012
Mark Clayton: Is Hillary's State Dept. hacking Al Qaeda? Not quite
Erika Bolstad: Temple cancels Wasserman Schultz speech
The Kosher Gourmet by Ethel G. Hofman: The former president of the International Association of Culinary Professionals, whose members included the likes of Julia Child, is back with contemporary Shavous cuisine: Ruby Fruit Soup, Sweet Noodle Kugel with Cheese, Key Lime Curd, Calsone Casserole Frittata with Wild Mushrooms, Sun-dried tomatoes and Olives, Baked Tilapia with Pepper Cheese Cream and Brown Sugar Shortbread
May 24, 2012
Jeff Jacoby: The peace process battered Israel's reputation
Michael Muskal: 'Pro-choice' position hits record low, according to poll
Chris Farrell: Are We in a Tech Bubble?
The Kosher Gourmet by Penelope Wall: PHILLY CHEESE STEAKS --- hold the steak!
May 23, 2012
Tony Pugh: More private colleges offering tuition discounts
Mary Beth Franklin: How to Choose the Right Annuity for You
Tina Susman: The wig wasn't enough: Man gets 13 years for posing as his dead mom
The Kosher Gourmet by Emma Christensen:A simple way to do fish right
May 22, 2012
Warren Richey: Can US group challenge overseas surveillance act? Supreme Court to decide
Thomas M. Anderson: Walking Away From a Mortgage
The Kosher Gourmet by Megan Gordon: Enjoy a celebration of the most rich and layered flavors: Black bean, sweet potato and quinoa chili
May 21, 2012
Mark Clayton: Cybersecurity: How US utilities passed up chance to protect their networks
Howard LaFranchi: NATO summit: Who will foot the bill for long-term Afghanistan security?
Chris Farrell : Earn Dividends in Emerging Markets with This WisdomTree ETF
Stephen Whiteside, Ph.D. : Mayo Clinic Medical Edge: Social anxiety disorder --- or just shy?
Guy Jackson : Victim's father regrets death of Lockerbie bomber
The Kosher Gourmet by Mario Batali: Famed chef's veal shoulder farsumagru: A festive meat course for late spring
May 18, 2012
Rabbi Berel Wein: Striving: The People of the Book's Book for (All of) the People
Steven Goldberg: 5 Great Stock Picks and the Exchange-Traded Fund that Owns Them
Mary Pickett, M.D.: Ask the Harvard Experts: Don't be forced into gluten-free lifestyle based merely on a doctor's false-positive test
The Kosher Gourmet by Carolyn Malcoun: DIY healthy lunchbox treats: HOMEMADE FRUIT BARS for kids and brown-bagging adults alike
May 17, 2012
Warren Richey: Teacher fired for being unwed and pregnant can sue religious school, court rules
Josh Mitnick: Netanyahu's 'centrist' coalition is already proving it's anything but
Steven Goldberg: Earn Dividends in Emerging Markets with This WisdomTree ETF
Amina Khan: Research links coffee to lower death rates
The Kosher Gourmet by Faith Duran : Cheesy Potato Breakfast Casserole with Cheddar and Sun-Dried Tomatoes
May 16, 2012
Carmen Terzic, M.D., Ph.D. : Mayo Clinic Medical Edge: A variety of exercises can help improve balance
Melissa Healy: National strategy on Alzheimer's disease aims to halt it by 2025
The Kosher Gourmet by Joyce White : GOODNESS GRACIOUS: GREENS! 4 winning recipes that are no longer just for down-home folks (Includes expert tips & techniques)
May 15, 2012
Kristen Chick: Obama administration resumes arms sales to Bahrain despite serious unresolved human rights issues. Activists feel abandoned
Pat Mertz Esswein: Homes are now affordable again and mortgage rates are low. What you need to know before you buy
Kathy Kristof: Our Practical Investor Fights Inflation with These 6 Investments
Sue Hubbard, M.D.: The Kid's Doctor: Lactose intolerant young child? Check again
The Kosher Gourmet by Kathy Hunt: Spread a Little Excitement with EXOTIC CONDIMENTS (4 RECIPES)
May 14, 2012
Lisa Gerstner: How to Protect Your Identity, Finances If You Lose Your Phone
Harvard Health Letters: Heart disease and dementia
The Kosher Gourmet by Megan Gordon: MANGO COCONUT OAT MORNING MUFFINS are a bright but hearty delight
May 11, 2012
Jessica L. Anderson: Get the Best Deal on a Used Car
Jett Stone: Forget face-lifts and fake knees. Scientists have seen the fountain of youth --- and it's broccoli
The Kosher Gourmet by Chef Mario Batali: The famed chef's vegetable dish that tastes true to the season: FAVAS AND SUGAR SNAP PEAS WITH POTATOES AND TARRAGON
May 10, 2012
Sergei L. Loiko: Putin sends warning to U.S., NATO in Victory Day speech at Red Square
Mary Rourke: How being a 'mentch' got Vidal Sasoon his start and fighting in Israel's War of Independence provided him with confidence and a strong sense of his own identity
Jeff Bertolucci: Get Home Phone Service for Less Than $10 a Month
The Kosher Gourmet by Betty Rosbottom: Gleaming with its golden, crimson, and snowy white hues, this silken smooth and creamy STRAWBERRY ORANGE TRIFLE looks impressive, but is easy to prepare
May 9, 2012
Sharon Palmer, R.D. How you can reduce your risk -- or delay -- chronic diseases associated with aging
|
| |
Jewish World Review
May 14, 2010
1 Sivan 5770
Researching Good and Evil
By
Suzanne Fields
http://www.JewishWorldReview.com |
The idea of good and evil, out of fashion for a while, is back. In the pop-culture game of what's "in" and what's "out," you could say that morality is "in," moral relativism is "out."
Even babies seem to know that. "Some sense of good and evil seems to be bred in the bone," says Paul Bloom, a Yale psychologist who discerns moral judgments in infants as young as 5 months. "With the help of well-designed experiments," he writes in The New York Times Sunday Magazine, "you can see glimmers of moral thought, moral judgment and moral feeling even in the first year of life."
Such fine distinctions are harder to find in certain adults. Terry Eagleton, a British Marxist intellectual who defends the existence of G0d, goes so far as to question whether evil can exist in the absence of G0d. In his book "On Evil," he writes that Satan had to understand G0d's transcendence "in order to turn it down." Without G0d as an antagonist, how can evil be measured? Satan shrinks when secularized.
If these arguments stretch moral insights, the Topography of Terror in Berlin, which this week opened its new museum on the site of the Nazi Gestapo, brings us back to a picture of hell on earth. Visitors can see where layers of evil emanated from the heart of the German capital. Here, 7,000 little Eichmanns and Himmlers, many of them ambitious university graduates eager to climb the career ladder, scurried about doing their evil business. There was nothing banal about it.
The opening of the Topography of Terror coincides with the publication in English of Peter Longerich's book, "Holocaust: The Nazi Persecution and Murder of the Jews." He draws on primary sources and archives in Eastern Europe dating from the 1930s, sources inaccessible to historians before the Soviet Union collapsed. These documents show how anti-Jewish attitudes were a central tenet of Nazi rule, shaping policy in all directions — official and informal, political and cultural, ideological and pragmatic, personally and collectively. The Nazis, he reasons, carved out political territory for persecuting the Jews "comparable with that of foreign policy, economic policy and social policy."
While the subject of good and evil is always with us, seen in both purity and complexity, the way in which Jews remain protagonists in this philosophical/philological drama is relevant to contemporary discussions of morality. While we can be sure that babies, with or without a moral compass, are not born anti-Semites, it's obvious that anti-Semitism continues to stalk the public conscience. The most provocative of the new wave of moral discussions over good and evil starts with the Jews drawing links from medieval anti-Semitism to contemporary anti-Semitism disguised as anti-Zionism.
"In the modern world, the Jew has perpetually been on trial; still today the Jew is on trial in the person of the Israeli," writes Anthony Julius in "Trials of the Diaspora: A History of Anti-Semitism in England." He shows how academics in England who organize boycotts of Israeli goods are the latest in a long line of English intellectuals who relish sneering at Jews. What's different today is that left-wing intellectuals have formed an alliance with militant Islamists in repeating historical anti-Semitic slurs, this time as anti-Israeli insults.
The connection of intellectuals to anti-Semitism has been revived as well in a new book about Martin Heidegger, the philosopher who flourished between the world wars. Although Hannah Arendt forgave her onetime lover's Nazism, qualifying it as an "escapade" — a brief error of judgment for a rarefied thinker who should have known better than to get mixed up in politics — Emmanuel Faye, in "Heidegger," characterizes him as a Nazi philosopher who thought deeply and looked favorably on the fused forces of the will of the people and the will of the Fuhrer. That's surely what Leni Reifenstahl meant when she called her 1934 Nazi propaganda movie "Triumph of the Will."
In the exploration of morality in babies, psychologists say babies cry when they hear other babies cry. They argue that a baby is empathetic to another baby's pain, that there's an evolutionary purpose to feeling empathy for another. Given our social history, that's a hard sell. But it does seem promising that in our latest debates over good and evil we accept the reality of measuring ourselves against absolutes of right and wrong. This demonstrates the potential to make things better. "Certain compassionate feelings and impulses," they argue, "emerge early and apparently universally in human development."
The trick is how to keep them as we grow older. That's some trick.
Every weekday JewishWorldReview.com publishes what many in the media and Washington consider "must-reading". Sign up for the daily JWR update. It's free. Just click here.
Comment on JWR contributor Suzanne Fields' column by clicking here.
Suzanne Fields Archives
© 2006, Creators Syndicate, Suzanne Fields
|
|

Arnold Ahlert
Mitch Albom
Jay Ambrose
Michael Barone
Barrywood
Lori Borgman
Stratfor Briefing
Mona Charen
Linda Chavez
Richard Z. Chesnoff
Ann Coulter
Greg Crosby
Alan Douglas
Larry Elder
Suzanne Fields
Frank J. Gaffney
Bernie Goldberg
Jonah Goldberg
Julia Gorin
Jonathan Gurwitz
Paul Greenberg
Argus Hamilton
Victor Davis Hanson
Betsy Hart
Ron Hart
Nat Hentoff
Marybeth Hicks
A. Barton Hinkle
David Horowitz
Jeff Jacoby
Renee James
Paul Johnson
Jack Kelly
Ed Koch
Ch. Krauthammer
Michael Ledeen
John Leo
David Limbaugh
Kathryn Lopez
Rich Lowry
Michelle Malkin
Jackie Mason
Ann McFeatters
Dale McFeatters
Dana Milbank
Jeanne Moos
Dick Morris
Jim Mullen
Deroy Murdock
Judge A. Napolitano
Bill O'Reilly
Kathleen Parker
Star Parker
Dennis Prager
Wesley Pruden
Tom Purcell
Sharon Randall
Robert Robb
Cokie & Steve Roberts
Heather Robinson
Pat Sajak
Debra J. Saunders
Martin Schram
Culture Shlock
David Shribman
Roger Simon
Michael Smerconish
Thomas Sowell
Ben Stein
Mark Steyn
John Stossel
Cal Thomas
Dan Thomasson
Bob Tyrrell
Ben Wattenberg
Diana West
Dave Weinbaum
George Will
Walter Williams
Byron York
ZeitGeist
Mort Zuckerman

Robert Arial
Chuck Asay
Baloo
Chip Bok
Dry Bones
Lisa Benson
John Branch
John Cole
J. D. Crowe
John Deering
Brian Duffy
Everything's Relative
Mallard Fillmore
Glenn Foden
Jake Fuller
Bob Gorrel
Walt Handelsman
Joe Heller
David Hitch
Jerry Holbert
David Horsey
Lee Judge
Steve Kelley
Jeff Koterba
Dick Locher
Chan Lowe
Jimmy Margulies
Jack Ohman
Michael Ramirez
Drew Sheneman
Kevin Siers
Jeff Stahler
Scott Stantis
Ed Stein
Danna Summers
John Trever
Gary Varvel
Kirk Walters
Dan Wasserman

Mr. Know-It-All
Ask Doctor K
Richard Lederer
Frugal Living
Tech Maven
On Nutrition
Bookmark These
Bruce Williams
|