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In the Eye of the Hurricane: Tales of Good and Evil, Help and Harm
In the Eye of the Tales of Good and Evil, Help and Harm continues Philip Hallie's lifelong exploration of the human choice to do good or evil. Hallie examines the behavior of Major Julius Schmaling, a German commander who saved the lives of Chambon villagers during World War II; of Joshua James, a sea captain who saved dozens of shipwrecked sailors by rowing out to sea in the fiercest of storms; and of Katchen Coley, his neighbor and founder of the Connection, a halfway house where she devoted herself to helping drug- and alcohol-addicted people.
In the Eye of the Hurricane also provides special insight into the author's own life, his struggle with morality, and how he comes to terms with his own ethics. He tries to understand his own ambiguous moral actions, first as a child in the Jewish ghetto of Chicago, fighting to protect himself and his younger brother from anti-Semitic bullies, then as a World War II artilleryman, and finally as a philosopher of ethics who realized he could not be objective in studying the viciousness of human beings throughout history.
A highly accessible work that places difficult ethical questions in a personal, and very readable context, this book remains grounded in the day-to-day reality of the stories, allowing readers to come to their own conclusions about human nature.
In the Eye of the Hurricane also provides special insight into the author's own life, his struggle with morality, and how he comes to terms with his own ethics. He tries to understand his own ambiguous moral actions, first as a child in the Jewish ghetto of Chicago, fighting to protect himself and his younger brother from anti-Semitic bullies, then as a World War II artilleryman, and finally as a philosopher of ethics who realized he could not be objective in studying the viciousness of human beings throughout history.
A highly accessible work that places difficult ethical questions in a personal, and very readable context, this book remains grounded in the day-to-day reality of the stories, allowing readers to come to their own conclusions about human nature.
255 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 1997
3 people are currently reading
65 people want to read
About the author
Philip Paul Hallie
10 books5 followersPhilip Paul Hallie (1922-1994) was an author, philosopher and professor at Wesleyan University for 32 years. During World War II he served in the US Army. His degrees were from Harvard, Oxford (where he was a Rhodes Scholar at Jesus College from 1949 to 1951) and Grinnell College. He studied and wrote on the nature of cruelty.
His best-known book was "Lest Innocent Blood Be Shed" (1979), which told the story of the French Protestants of Le Chambon-sur-Lignon, who provided a haven and safe passage abroad to 2,500 Jews during World War II.
His best-known book was "Lest Innocent Blood Be Shed" (1979), which told the story of the French Protestants of Le Chambon-sur-Lignon, who provided a haven and safe passage abroad to 2,500 Jews during World War II.
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Displaying 1 - 7 of 7 reviews
October 2, 2015
Cases, tales and examples are an important tool in Ethics; they are both the starting point for theories and their test. Even Kant sets up a test for the categorical imperative of always telling the truth, when he asks us what we ought to do when a murderer knock at our door and asks if his victim, our friend, is hiding within. Many cases have been devised as “thought experiments”, notorious among them are the tram experiments to test just how utilitarian our decision-making processes are; for example, if you notice a runaway tram about to run down five unsuspecting people, and if you could throw a switch which would only kill three different people, would you throw the switch? Such examples are quite artificial, and their critics claim, among other things, that they completely miss out on the complexities of real-life. Another path entails studying historical cases, and in a sense this is what Hallie sets out to do, without removing himself from the context of the case, that it is to say, what does the case say in the light of who Hallie is, his values and his ethical behaviour.
Hallie grew up as a Jew in a tough Chicago neighbourhood, won scholarships, fought as a soldier in World War II and became a philosopher. He distinguishes between a ethical principles based on negations (e.g. Thou shalt nots) and those based on affirmations (e.g You shoulds). As he bluntly puts it, since even a corpse complies with thou-shalt-nots, negations can carry you only so far. He is particularly interested in understanding what leads people to help strangers.
As a soldier and a Jew who firmly believed Hitler had to be stopped and that this could only be done by the force of superior power, it is interesting to find him fascinated by the case of the mainly Huguenot village of Le Chambon in France, which harboured and helped Jews escape occupied France by non-violent means. What did the villagers do, what ethical and, to a certain extent, psychological standpoint did they hold and exercise? Hallie visited Le Chambon for extended periods and interviewed several of the surviving villagers to try and understand this case better.
His second case, involves Major Julius Schmähling, the German officer in charge of the occupied region of France which included Le Chambon, a case with far more ambiguity. The major, a former teacher, could have ordered Chambon wiped out, or searched thoroughly or attempted to intimidate the village by all the means he had at his disposal, yet his behaviour led to the French mayor of Le Puy -another city under Schmähling´s control during the war, writing a letter in 1966 thanking the major “...for rendering the conditions of war as supportable as they could be ´within the limits of the freedom that [Schmähling] had been granted´”.
For his third major case, Hallie switches contexts and studies Joshua James, a New England sea captain who steered the lifeboats out of Hull, a poor village to save the lives of tens of shipwrecked sailors. What makes a man risk his life and command a boat in the teeth of fierce storms, time and time again, to save others, on a purely voluntary, unpaid basis well into his seventies? This part of the book includes some fascinating sidelights on two of Joshua James contemporaries, Thoreau who visited Hull and Emerson who admired James´ exploits.
The final case is on Kätchen Coley, a personal acquaintance of Hallie´s, who spent her life helping drug- and alcohol-addicted people with a fierce commitment and single-mindedness that led, among other things, to her divorce. If Joshua James was astonishingly successful at saving lives, Coley´s record in saving addicts appears to have been much less successful, thus perhaps making her perseverance so much more noteworthy.
In all four case, Hallie goes far beyond the story of one individual; what he uncovers and becomes increasingly fascinated by, are the relationships in the community that enables them to produce and support figures like Pastor André Trocmé in Le Chambon, Joshua James in Hull or Coley in Middletown, Connecticut and by the relationship between helper and helpee.
This is a very readable, honest, passionate and thought-provoking book with no pat answers, which manages to convey a wonderful sense of grappling with deep, transcendent and very human ethical concerns and actions.
Hallie grew up as a Jew in a tough Chicago neighbourhood, won scholarships, fought as a soldier in World War II and became a philosopher. He distinguishes between a ethical principles based on negations (e.g. Thou shalt nots) and those based on affirmations (e.g You shoulds). As he bluntly puts it, since even a corpse complies with thou-shalt-nots, negations can carry you only so far. He is particularly interested in understanding what leads people to help strangers.
As a soldier and a Jew who firmly believed Hitler had to be stopped and that this could only be done by the force of superior power, it is interesting to find him fascinated by the case of the mainly Huguenot village of Le Chambon in France, which harboured and helped Jews escape occupied France by non-violent means. What did the villagers do, what ethical and, to a certain extent, psychological standpoint did they hold and exercise? Hallie visited Le Chambon for extended periods and interviewed several of the surviving villagers to try and understand this case better.
His second case, involves Major Julius Schmähling, the German officer in charge of the occupied region of France which included Le Chambon, a case with far more ambiguity. The major, a former teacher, could have ordered Chambon wiped out, or searched thoroughly or attempted to intimidate the village by all the means he had at his disposal, yet his behaviour led to the French mayor of Le Puy -another city under Schmähling´s control during the war, writing a letter in 1966 thanking the major “...for rendering the conditions of war as supportable as they could be ´within the limits of the freedom that [Schmähling] had been granted´”.
For his third major case, Hallie switches contexts and studies Joshua James, a New England sea captain who steered the lifeboats out of Hull, a poor village to save the lives of tens of shipwrecked sailors. What makes a man risk his life and command a boat in the teeth of fierce storms, time and time again, to save others, on a purely voluntary, unpaid basis well into his seventies? This part of the book includes some fascinating sidelights on two of Joshua James contemporaries, Thoreau who visited Hull and Emerson who admired James´ exploits.
The final case is on Kätchen Coley, a personal acquaintance of Hallie´s, who spent her life helping drug- and alcohol-addicted people with a fierce commitment and single-mindedness that led, among other things, to her divorce. If Joshua James was astonishingly successful at saving lives, Coley´s record in saving addicts appears to have been much less successful, thus perhaps making her perseverance so much more noteworthy.
In all four case, Hallie goes far beyond the story of one individual; what he uncovers and becomes increasingly fascinated by, are the relationships in the community that enables them to produce and support figures like Pastor André Trocmé in Le Chambon, Joshua James in Hull or Coley in Middletown, Connecticut and by the relationship between helper and helpee.
This is a very readable, honest, passionate and thought-provoking book with no pat answers, which manages to convey a wonderful sense of grappling with deep, transcendent and very human ethical concerns and actions.
July 7, 2013
Uneven, but since he died before finishing it, I guess that's to be expected. Some good stuff - Hallie "does philosophy" in a very personal way, bringing his own background and biases clearly into the picture. He relates his lifelong journey in pursuit of understanding the question of evil, and his latter further investigation into the question of good - i.e. what moves people to do selfless acts of kindness/courage/heroism? No answers here, but some interesting stories. I was uncomfortable with some of the assumptions he made about what is "human nature" ("we" apparently all enjoy watching others suffer, as long as "we" are safe); on the other hand, his discussion of Thoreau is acerbic and great.
December 19, 2017
I ended up DNFing this book because I had to read it for my ethics class. It was okay, and kind of interesting, but the book is a rental and I havet to return it. I got behind on the reading mid semester and I never finished thos because there was nothing on the final about it. I decided not to try to rush and finish it because I want to read things that I actually want to read rather than what was assigned for class. I feel a little ashamed of myself for not finishing it because it is the first book that I had to read for school that I haven’t finished, but I lack the time and the interest.
November 9, 2021
An exploration, partly autobiographical, of ethical reasoning, good and evil, facets of compassion and obligation, and thoughts toward the end of the author’s life on the relationship between helpers and the helped.
It was, for me, an introduction to Joshua James as an historical figure with some excellent writing about shipwrecks and rescue in the 19th century.
It was, for me, an introduction to Joshua James as an historical figure with some excellent writing about shipwrecks and rescue in the 19th century.
November 11, 2012
An ethics professor getting personal about how he makes sense of good and evil. I figured that the tidiness of the categories would blur over the course of the book.... but they didn't really.
The book does, however, offer a stunning description of shipwrecks.
The book does, however, offer a stunning description of shipwrecks.
Want to read
January 26, 2011Mentioned in The Princessa: Machiavelli for Women by Harriet Rubin.
March 15, 2016
This was required reading for my Ethics class, and it was surprisingly good. The narratives were thought-provoking and well written.
Displaying 1 - 7 of 7 reviews