Neither Victims Nor Executioners: An Ethic Superior to Murder

The reissue of Camus' seminal essay, 'Neither Victims nor Executioners, ' could hardly be more timely. In Iraq and Afghanistan, the hideous march to oblivion goes on apace. America is ironically reversing the ethic proposed by Camus' title. American adventuring, playing the part of omnipotent executioner, is creating multitudes of victims. No search is undertaken for a 'third way.' Indeed, were the Camus thesis proposed, it would evoke only wide-eyed innocent arrogance. Kennedy and Klotz-Chamberlin have dedicated a lifetime to the 'third way' commended by Camus. Our gratitude to our mentors for a prescient, timely introduction. --Fr. Daniel Berrigan, SJ Pacifists are not looking for a Utopian outlook nor unrealistic expectations. Many said, 'South Africa will not change.' But it did. Others looked at Northern Ireland and, it took years, but it also changed. The Soviet Union changed. The Middle East will change but not through violence or murder. We still think of ourselves within borders, protecting ourselves from others, Europe took its borders away and they are better. South, Central, and North America should take away their borders, as well as people in the Middle East. . . . We should build a culture of nonviolence through an understanding of human rights without regard to race, religion, and nationality. --Mubarak Awad, founder of Nonviolence International If we spontaneously approve of nuclear terrorism, if we become apologists for the uninhibited use of naked power, we are thinking like Communists, we are behaving like Nazis, and we are well on the way to becoming either one or the other. In that event we had better face the fact that we are destroying our own Christian heritage. --Thomas Merto

Author: Albert Camus
Publisher: Wipf & Stock Publishers
Published: 07/15/2008
Pages: 74
Binding Type: Paperback
Weight: 0.23lbs
Size: 8.50h x 5.47w x 0.19d
ISBN13: 9781556357718
ISBN10: 1556357710
BISAC Categories:
- Philosophy | Ethics & Moral Philosophy
- Social Science | Violence in Society
- Political Science | Peace

About the Author
Albert Camus (November 7, 1913 - January 4, 1960) was a French author and philosopher and one of the principal luminaries (with Jean-Paul Sartre) of existentialism. He was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1957.