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Hello Mike While I understand you anger and frustration, I worry that in order to justify or intellectualise your feelings you feel the need to invoke 19th century philosophy on the way. The legacy for Nietzsche's work of the irrationalism of the 1930's has already left a permanent scare on our intellectual culture. For Hegel, the real is only rational in a real sate of rationality to paraphrase the oft used, but seldom understood line. This is clearly not the case at this point in world history. Nor can his system be used to defend the proposition that A=A and B=B. The west (not just the USA) is both a force of criminality as well as justice, these terrorists are both innocent and guilty. The world is not monochromatic whatever the media is trying to tell us. Nor are people monadic; we are not simply self-directing. Consider the implications of your reasoning. If the western alliance accidentally kills another ten thousand innocent civilians, will it take responsibility, or say it was provoked and it can't be held responsible? If you want revenge against the bastards that killed thousands of your countrymen (as well as others from all over the world), and you see that as the grounds for a just war with all its potential consequences, I can understand and, while disagreeing, accept that. However, please don't tarnish even more the western philosophical tradition to justify it (unless of course you want to invoke the man as a nationalist and anti-Semite, but I wouldn't have thought so). Best wishes Philip -----Original Message----- From: Michael CHUMER To: [log in to unmask] Sent: 9/14/01 1:11 PM Subject: Re: debate platform and justice I think the time has come where people of any persuasion or belief should be strong enough to admit that they and only themselves are responsible for their actions. Yet many on this list use this convoluted logic that suggests the perpetrators of these acts and those who direct and control them are in someway justified. "It is not their fault" you say, "but the evil Americans and their invasive policies". In Stace's explication of Hegel's logic the following can be found about justice. And in this case justice will be done. I quote as follows: "The criminal is a rational being whose essence is universality; the animal is not. It is therefore the inherent right of the criminal to be treated as a rational and universal being. Hence the crime cannot be regarded as a mere objectionable act , as dog's delinquencies may, but must be viewed as an affirmation of a law which the criminal wills to be universal. Violence, therefore must be punished by violence. For the criminal has by his own act asserted the law of violence. It is his act as a rational being that his act should be taken as importing a universal, as erecting violence into law. It is the criminal therefore who punishes himself. It is his own will. He has asserted violence as his law and the application of this law to himself is justice" Stace, 1955, The Philosophy of Hegel, p.390 There are those on the list who will substitute the term "USA" for the term "criminal " I substitute the term "terrorist" for the term "criminal". Recent polls indicate that 94% of those Americans polled support a declaration of war. I am sorry but I feel that we are sitting on the tip of the "iceberg of violent retribution" which represents the view of justice in the mind's of Americans as quoted above. Debate if you will, exercise in American bashing if you must, but realize that life as we know it will change dramatically in the next few months because of these horrific acts. Mike Chumer