Less Than Human: Why We Demean, Enslave, and Exterminate Others

by David Livingstone Smith

A revelatory look at why we dehumanize each other, with stunning examples from world history as well as today’s headlines

“Brute.” “Cockroach.” “Lice.” “Vermin.” “Dog.” “Beast.” These and other monikers are constantly in use to refer to other humans—for political, religious, ethnic, or sexist reasons. Human beings have a tendency to regard members of their own kind as less than human. This tendency has made atrocities like the Holocaust, the genocide in Rwanda, and the slave trade possible, and yet we still find it in phenomena such as xenophobia, homophobia, military propaganda, and racism. Less Than Human draws on a rich mix of history, psychology, biology, anthropology and philosophy to document the pervasiveness of dehumanization, describe its forms, and explain why we so often resort to it.

David Livingstone Smith posits that this behavior is rooted in human nature, but gives us hope in also stating that biological traits are malleable, showing us that change is possible. Less Than Human is a chilling indictment of our nature, and is as timely as it is relevant.

Genres: Nonfiction, Psychology, Philosophy, History, Sociology, Politics, Science

336 pages, Hardcover

First published March 1, 2011

About the author

David Livingstone Smith is a Professor of Philosophy at the University of New England in Biddeford, Maine. He earned his Ph.D. from the University of London, Kings College, where he worked on Freud's philosophy of mind and psychology. His current research is focused on dehumanization, race, propaganda, and related topics. David is the author of seven books and numerous academic papers. His most recent book Less Than Human: Why We Demean, Enslave and Exterminate Others (St. Martin's Press, 2011) was awarded the 2012 Anisfield-Wolf award for nonfiction. He is also editor of How Biology Shapes Philosophy (Cambridge University Press, 2016) , and he is working on a book entitled Making Monsters: The Uncanny Power of Dehumanization, which will be published by Harvard University Press.

David speaks widely in both academic and nonacademic settings, and his work has been featured extensively in national and international media. In 2012 he spoke at the G20 summit on dehumanization and mass violence. David strongly believes that the practice of philosophy has an important role to play helping us meet the challenges confronting humanity in the 21st century and beyond, and that philosophers should work towards making the world a better place.g

Reviews

[Nandakishore Mridula · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is a strangely rambling and rather disorganised book, but I am giving it four stars for asking the appropriate question at this juncture of history.

As a species, we have come to take genocide seriously only after the Holocaust: that a people could be exterminated just because of their religion or ethnicity, openly, was a shock to the civilised world. But as David Livingstone Smith amply illustrates in this book, this was not the first instance of genocide in history: all the colonisers perpetrated it to a smaller or larger extent on the colonised people in the Americas and Africa, and Turkey carried out the genocide against the Armenian Jews and Christians with at least as much fervour as the Nazis. And sadly, neither was the Holocaust the last instance. We have Rwanda, Sudan and Bosnia, to name a few.

What do we have in common with all these genocides? The answer is simple - dehumanisation of the victims. The Jews were considered "vermin" by the Nazis; the Tutsi were considered "cockroaches" by the Hutu in Rwanda; and in Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq, the commander in charge was asked to treat prisoners like dogs and make them also believe it because "if you allow them to believe at any point that they are more than a dog then you have lost control of them". This goes for almost all of the nationalities on earth; none are exempt from this crime of dehumanising the enemy.

Dehumanisation is not only for exterminating enemies. It works well for enslavement of a people too. Africans were for a long time considered subhumans, so "owning" them and treating them like domestic animals were justified (both among Arabs and Anglo-Saxons). (Though the book does not mention India, any Indian reading this review will immediately recall how Dalits were - are? - considered by the other castes.) The same works in reverse too - stronger enemies who attack one's country/ tribe are considered monsters. (In this context, please see The Book of Demons by Nanditha Krishna for some interesting Indian perspectives.)

Why do we do this? The author has no concrete answer, but he proposes the following theory:

1. Since ancient times, people have conceived of the universe as a vast hierarchy with God, the supremely perfect being, sitting astride its apex, with inanimate matter lying at its base and everything else situated at one or another of the many levels arrayed in between. Plants are near the bottom, not much higher than the soil from which they grow. Simple animals like worms and snails are more perfect than plants, so they occupy a slightly more elevated rung. Mammals are higher still, and we humans have a privileged rank just below the angels, and two steps beneath the Creator. This taxonomic system was called the great chain of being (or scala naturae, literally “ladder of nature”).

2. Since there is a gradation of living beings, with the human being "near-perfect", it is quite natural to assume one's own tribe as the "real" people and others as inferior. (Again, the author does not mention India, but it again struck me how this idea has been institutionalised here with the caste hierarchy).

3. Race, though not supported as a biological entity by science, is seen as intrinsic by human beings. Racial features are assumed to be part of one's "blood". Therefore, the "mixing of races" is shunned, and different races are "othered".

4. The capacity of violence against the "out-group" (a different tribe) is probably an evolutionary trait as it is common among chimpanzees too. However, cruelty for it's own sake is a specific homo sapiens trait, and is the legacy of our cognitive revolution.

5. The capacity for violence and cruelty, however, is tempered by empathy. Humans find it very difficult to kill one another - again, a feature of abstract thinking gifted to us by the cognitive revolution. To overcome this, we necessarily have to dehumanise our enemies and victims.

Is there a solution? The author says:

Appealing to the voice of reason is a time-honored response to such brutalities. This approach has been implicitly or explicitly advocated by most moral philosophers from Plato, through Kant, right up to their present-day heirs. According to this rationalistic view, dehumanization is a symptom of ignorance, and is to be cured by administering an appropriate dose of intellectual enlightenment. One is to convince the dehumanizer that there’s something about being human that makes all of us worthy of a kind of respect that’s incompatible with perpetrating atrocity. Human nature contains a special ingredient—variously described as rationality, sentience, a soul, and so on—that is absent in other animals, and it is this special ingredient that underwrites human rights. So, those who believe that doing violence to others is licensed by their race, religion, or nationality are simply failing to recognize a deep truth about what it is to be human.

Livingstone recognises that this argument may fail with the confirmed bigot, for whom emotions are tantamount. However, he believes that rationalism is the most effective approach. He signs off with these words:

To deal effectively with dehumanization, we need to understand its mechanics. There’s simply no viable alternative. To do this, we need to bring science to bear on those aspects of human nature that sustain the dehumanizing impulse. I’ve made a few suggestions in this book, but my efforts are only a start. The study of dehumanization needs to be made a priority. Universities, governments, and nongovernmental organizations need to put money, time, and talent into figuring out exactly how dehumanization works and what can be done to prevent it. Maybe then we can use this knowledge to build a future that is less hideous than our past: a future with no Rwandas, no Hiroshimas, and no Final Solutions.

Can this be done? Nobody knows, because nobody’s ever tried.

Maybe it's time we started trying.

[Idan · Rating 3 out of 5]

I lauded the author for trying to tackle this important yet underrepresented topic in academics. This is the first book of the topic that I read that seriously try to examine the particulars of dehumanization, a word I often took for granted without really understanding its mechanics.

However, I feel moderately disappointed after reading this. I still think it lacks deep analysis on several points: Why the dehumanization propaganda is so succesful in breaking our natural inhibition to deliberately harm others? How by repeatedly calling Others as vicious and vile animals can make us delude our minds into thinking about them as subhumans? What exactly is natural inhibition against inflicting pain to others, anyway? How far does social constructivism play a role in creating this? What can be done to strengthen it?

Although it posits more questions that answers, I thank the author for enriching the discourse on the topic of dehumanization in general. It serves as a pretty solid springboard for more understanding about our ugly side. On the plus side, this book is nararated in a very communicative and friendly manner. No doubt it will appeal to more general masses, not only for those inside academic circles.

[Lucy · Rating 3 out of 5]

All I can say is that Dr. Smith tends to go the long way, getting around to his point, and by then that point's so obscured by the lengthy virtuoso displays of his intellect and command over the subject matter that you lose both track and interest. Quite a bit more philosophy than I needed.

That said, I would rather have read this book than not, and he makes a crucial point I hope others will heed (and certainly I'll help advocate from now on) — our institutions of higher learning need to commit serious money/effort into establishing studies of dehumanization, to prevent those processes when they occur as a precursor to social injustice, ethnic cleansing, and genocide. If various schools are now opening up programs re: refugees and forced migrations, then certainly the dehumanization studies track should run hand-in-hand, with collaboration.

[Clark Hays · Rating 4 out of 5]

“If you want to know what people believe, look at what they do.”

And too often, what humans do is pretty ghastly.

We seem to know right from wrong when it comes to crimes against our fellow humans. Murder and rape and torture are all, to varying degrees, prohibited. So why is it we can — at times — so casually disregard laws and morality and common sense, and set aside our own paralyzing sense of revulsion, to commit the most atrocious acts against other humans, and then put on the kettle, make a cup of tea and cheerfully go about the rest of our day with a clean conscience?

The answer is simple: we are conveniently able to suspend our better instincts by dehumanizing those we seek to damage and degrade, rendering them less than human and almost necessary targets of our cruelty. How we do that is less simple, and that’s the point of this book, Less than Human: Why We Demean, Enslave and Exterminate Others.

Author David Livingstone Smith explores the history and philosophic underpinnings of dehumanization, as well as the mechanisms — physical, intellectual, cognitive and cultural — by which it is implemented.

It is an important but not easy read mostly because some of the examples are truly ghastly — like, can’t-fall-asleep-at-night-because-the-hideous-experience-keeps-running-over-and-over-through-your-thoughts ghastly — serving to illuminate and underscore this peculiar and damaging ability in humans.

He argues that we are able to use existing circuitry in our brains — circuitry that proved useful on our evolutionary journey — that, when amplified by cultural forces, allows us to otherize and dehumanize those who we decide are a threat to ourselves, our community, our sense of patriotism and, mostly, to our pristine sense of morality and “rightness” … no matter how far beyond repair we twist them (slavery, genocide, war) to serve our immediate needs.

“…dehumanization is a joint creation of biology, culture and the architecture of the human mind.”

“Given the highly developed social and cooperative nature of our species, how do we manage to perform these acts of atrocity? An important piece of the answer is clear. It’s by recruiting the power of our conceptual imagination to picture ethnic groups as nonhuman animals. It’s by doing this that we’re able to release destructive forces that are normally kept in check by fellow feeling.”

“Demoting a population to subhuman statues excludes them from the universe of moral obligation. “

An examination of race through this lens, which seems especially cogent today, was disheartening and gave a powerful reminder of how far we still have to go to get past these ridiculous, limiting concepts. Just 60 years ago during WWII, “black” blood was not given to “white” soldiers because of the misguided perception among recipients that there was a difference in the blood. Doctors and scientists knew better, unequivocally, but hate — sadly — is often more powerful than truth.

He readily admits that some of his insights are not particularly original, but wrote the book as an effort to start formalizing the study of dehumanization so that, hopefully, we may some day be able to move beyond the default position of otherizing those who are different from us, a path of least resistance that — as history (and today’s world) show again and again — have such devastating consequences.

“Among the earliest forms of human self-awareness was the awareness of being meat,” he writes. Perhaps, in time, we can learn how to come together to celebrate our unique form — thinking meat — rather than squabbling about which particular kind of meat is superior.

[Mia · Rating 1 out of 5]

This book was highly disappointing. This book is from an incredibly privileged perspective that uses philosophical jargon to hit everywhere except the target. This was basically a review of my required freshman classes with the valuable key points being able to fit on just one page. The end of the book poses the solution to look at this problem of dehumanization scientifically. The author completely ignores the issues of power and privilege as being the backbone of dehumanization. I could go on...basically I hated it.

[Isabel · Rating 5 out of 5]

I was do unbelievably honored to have this man as one of my professors in college at UNE. he had us read parts of this book and I decided to grab a copy and read the whole thing. I'm so glad I did. so interesting, and Dr. Smith is an incredible person as well. its a privilege to know him.

[Paco Alegría · Rating 4 out of 5]

Extraordinario trabajo que nos confronta a un fenómeno humano que se ha presentado a lo largo de toda la historia; ¿para qué sirve "deshumanizar"?, ¿Por qué somos capaces de hacerlo?, y ¿Qué tan importante es que nos hagamos conscientes de los procesos y detonadores de este fenómeno?.
Como en sus trabajos anteriores, David Livingstone Smith resulta ameno y profuso en las explicaciones, profesional y de planteamientos muy serios.
Muy buena recomendación.

[Greg · Rating 5 out of 5]

I turned to this book because of the recent gains being made throughout the West by nationalist populist parties that always feature as a central theme resentment and anger against “the others,” whether those be immigrants, “intellectuals” or “elites,” or persons allegedly identifiable by ethnicity, skin color, or religious beliefs.

With the title of the book, I was prepared for a rather grim tour through the evidence Dr. Smith uncovered through his research. But the book is far more interesting, balanced, readable and, actually, non-grim than that!

He is an able, thoroughly interesting writer, and I highly recommend this tome to others.

He does three things in this book especially well:

1) He traces the evolution of “otherness” from antiquity to the present, noting the many ways people have differentiated between “themselves” — their tribe, people, or country — and threatening others — opposing or rival tribes, others with whom they were engaged in competition for vital resources, those “appearing different” through clothes, skin color, or custom, or those who were regarded as either members of an allegedly inferior race or whose state of corruption turned them from members of the human family into “others.”

2) He notes how dehumanization actually works: more than just discrimination, it is a mental process/decision that renders a person or group of persons as, effectively, “less than human” and, therefore, undeserving of the kinds of concern and respect we owe “people like us.” In particular, he surveys how it has been used through history as an instrument of social control BY the wealthy and powerful and AGAINST either those who oppose them or, similarly, as a foil against whom the masses of the people will turn their wrath rather than on those in power. When persons have been successfully dehumanized, then the most awful sufferings can be inflicted on them, and this is what underlies all recorded instances of genocide AND warfare.

3) But also, importantly, he points out that human beings are far from being “just” warlike or killers, even though our history is full of appalling instances of both. Rather, our success as a species has depended upon us being able to work together, to cooperate despite differences. And, as social studies have emphasized, the more we actually get to know each other, the less an anonymous “other” can be deployed to scare or prod us into action. He movingly writes how so much of what we regard as PTSD is actually a consequence of what he calls “a moral wound.” Even trained soldiers cannot take human lives UNLESS they have performed the mental trick of making those whom they seek to kill something other than “humans like themselves.”

As we live in a time when what used to be somewhat camouflaged racial cat-calls have now becoming bellowingly open, including by the offender-in-chief who sits in the White House, this book provides us with much to think about. It warns that we ignore such racial incitements and easy labeling of entire peoples, nationalities, and religions at our great peril.

Make no mistake: the groundwork is being intentionally laid to once again embark on more open racial discrimination against people of color in our own country, and on refugees and immigrants, too.

As all of our great religious teachers have told us, we ARE one human family, one race, and all equal children of whatever or whomever created this universe. To act otherwise is the greatest blasphemy of all!

[YHC · Rating 4 out of 5]

After reading this book, it gave me a lot of thoughts, the whole book is centered by that word: dehumanization. When we don't consider other humans as our kind, then we would dare to kill? I ask myself, i believe many of us don't dare even kill other kinds of animals, specially mammals. It's not a dehumanization question for me to respect a species, we eat animals, but mostly because we don't need to kill them by ourselves, others kill cows and pigs for us, but even if we need to kill ourselves like people in stone age, eventually, we would get used to kill animals, and eat them with thankful mind because it didn't come easy. Do you still feel thankful or guilty when you chew the meats in your mouth? I do... but i know many people claim to love dogs or cats don't feel same way toward cows or pigs.

Which kind of people scare you more? The ones who dehumanized others during the wars like Nazi, or the ones who dehumanized other lives as series killers? I believe most would say the latter ones are monsters, but the former ones were killed even more, no? This could go back to the debate on Eichmann in Jerusalem: A Report on the Banality of Evil Dehumanization didn't seem to be hard to get that if you consider you are just one of the small nail in the whole bigger system. It's easier to dehumanize a group of people than individuals.

Recently I watched the american series called "mindhunter", the main character Holden Ford is fictional, but the criminals and the interviews are pretty much real. These series killers all got humiliated by their parents (mostly by mothers and with absent father in their childhood.) I am thinking about creating psychopath (surely there are born psychopath, means really brain damaged, but we are also good at making psychopaths). Family love is essential for kids to grow up with, it helps them to fight back all the frustrations from school bullies, failed love experiences.

While reading this book, I actually think about we are really no different from other animals, we should not think we are superior. We are just lucky to show up in the right time with the extinction of dinosaurs, with the right structure of hands to hold tool and with huge cerebral cortex compared to our cousins champs. We won the jetpot on the path of evolution, but how long will it last? Dinasaurs dominated the earth much longer than homo sapiens, we are barely here for about 200,000 years (Dinosaurs existed between 230 million years ago and 65 million years ago). We seem to almost kill other animals out with any consequences and sympathy. Well done humans!
Dehumanization is ongoing, but we are good at exploit other kinds of animals to the maximum. I think that is what we need to also worry about.

[Richard]

(I’m currently reading — slowly — Hannah Arendt’s Eichmann in Jerusalem: A Report on the Banality of Evil. After that, I plan on delving into the Myth of Pure Evil explored in Baumeister’s Evil: Inside Human Violence and Cruelty. I suspect, after reading the New York Times review (A Philosophy of Genocide’s Roots) that this will make a good sequel.)

[Anita · Rating 1 out of 5]

Very disappointing book. The author does not even consider how humans treat nonhumans. The author is so prejudiced against other life forms that I frankly cannot understand why he would write a book about this topic. So hypocritical. So insightful. So shallow. I wish I could get my money back. Total waste.

[Moin Uddin]

An intriguing account of why and how the human beings are dehumanized. Asks more questions than it answers. Interesting discussion on race, Us versus Them and Ingroup-Out group dynamics. In author’s own words “…dehumanization is a joint creation of biology, culture and the architecture of the human mind.” #recommendedreading #recomended #readingforpleasure

[Nicole · Rating 3 out of 5]

This book was extremely interesting and relevant for the current times, especially considering it was written in 2009. I found his theories to be partially true but felt like they lacked more substance. Basically, he argues that we are prone biologically as humans to categorize groups to identify those of our own species, which is then becomes influenced by culture and we create “ethnoraces.” This categorization can contribute to dehumanization by categorizing other groups as "subhuman" or animal-like, which then allows us to overcome our inhibitions to mistreating or killing them. My two main problems with this theory are that 1) why do we find it ok, or we aren`t disturbed by the mass killing of animals? Why does classifying a human being as an animal make it "easy" to harm them? Why are we ok with inflicting harm on non-human living beings? He does make the point that when we “animalize” other human groups we don`t think of them as loveable animals like kittens or puppies, but as either predators or vermin that can harm us. 2) He completely ignores the economic motivations or incentives to dehumanize certain groups. We didn`t just enslave Africans because we thought of them as subhuman, they were enslaved because it was economically convenient. Which came first is a chicken or the egg argument but think it is an important factor when analyzing mass violence such as genocide and slavery.

[Bookish Dervish · Rating 3 out of 5]

Well..... From where do we start?
Rating this book is not as easy as I thought. The intention behind it is obvious angelic. It tries to expose behaviors of mistreating people basing on their race, language, religion...... It covers the four corners of the world (at least the author tried) it studies a long period of time as it mentions racism from early recorded history. It condamns slavery which still persists in our era in old forms as new ones alike. But it appears to be soft on Israeli transgressions against the Palestinians. That's poltically and ethically not right.
Here are some ideas that I came to understand in a way or another:
______________
We are all potential dehumanizers just as we are potential objects to dehumanization.
______________
During wars, people tend to dehumanise the enemy to form the basic "ethical" grounds to kill and mistreat their enemies as these acts are strongly inhibited
______________
Psoedospeciation: when people belive a member or a group does not belong to the species
______________
The War-peace pradox;
Violence & killing are strongly inhibited=> buildind societies. Yet;
We have a tendency to be aggressive towards neighboring cultures
______________

[Maher Razouk · Rating 5 out of 5]

لقرون ، فكر الفلاسفة وعلماء الدين في ما يميزنا عن بقية مملكة الحيوان. اعتقد أرسطو أنها العقلانية. بالنسبة للآخرين ، كان امتلاك روح خالدة أو أننا خُلقنا على صورة الله. كان لمارك توين ، الذي كان يكره الغطرسة البشرية ، اقتراحه الخاص.

في مقال عام 1896 بعنوان "مكان الإنسان في عالم الحيوان" ، قال إن الإنسان ينتمي إلى أسفل سلسلة الوجود العظيمة ، وليس بالقرب من القمة. اقترح توين ، بشكل لاذع ، أن ملاحظاته عن الطبيعة البشرية أجبرته على "التخلي عن ولائه للنظرية الداروينية عن صعود الإنسان من الحيوانات الدنيا" لصالح "نظرية جديدة وأصدق : سقوطنا البيولوجي والأخلاقي في نفس الوقت إلى أسفل السلسلة . يعتقد توين أننا النوع الوحيد القادر على القسوة .

" الإنسان هو الحيوان القاسي. إنه وحده الذي يتميز بالقسوة ... الإنسان هو الحيوان الوحيد الذي تصدر عنه تلك الفظائع الوحشية : الحرب. إنه الوحيد الذي يجمع إخوته ويخرج بدم بارد ، ليبيد نوعه. إنه الحيوان الوحيد الذي يخرج من أجل الأجور الدنيئة ... ويساعد على ذبح الغرباء من جنسه الذين لم يؤذوه وا��ذين لم يتشاجر معهم ... وفي الفترات الفاصلة بين الحملات يغسل الدم عن يديه ، ويعمل من أجل "الأخوة العالمية للإنسان"
.
David Smith
Less Than Human
Translated By #Maher_Razouk

[Sawyer X · Rating 4 out of 5]

This book provides a good preliminary understanding of how we dehumanize human animals in order to justify harming them.

What I wish it did was connect the dots from dehumanizing human animals into non-human animals and the way that we treat animals.

It feels like it always touches the cusp, close to asking about why we do justify demeaning, enslaving, and exterminating non-human animals, but there's a seemingly invisible barrier not letting the author take it just one step further. It's exhausting to hope they see it and almost touch, only to veer away at the last moment.

If you're interesting in someone who is able to do this, I highly recommend Eternal Treblinka by Charles Patterson: https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/1... .

[Allen · Rating 3 out of 5]

The respectable author posits theories but has no great answers because he is looking through a lens he believes is the only option. The answer of “why” and “what now” both lie in the book The Chalice and The Blade.

[Jennifer Mangler · Rating 2 out of 5]

The book asks great questions, but I don't know how well it answered them.

[Blanka · Rating 4 out of 5]

This was not an easy book to read. There were a lot of graphic desriptions of atrocities poeple have commited and I often needed to take a break. Nevertheless it's an extremely important topic to address, especially since there has been so little research done so far. Like many academic books there has been a lot of repetition here, but I still feel like the author answered the most important questions. Especially the two that interested me the most: Why do we dehumanize poeple and how do we do it. His theory on why we do it is naturally only his theory and since there's so little research out there, we can't know how accurate it is. But it sounded possible and interesting to me. Kudos to the author for writing about this topic- it couldn't have been easy.

[Edward Sullivan · Rating 4 out of 5]

Compelling, profound, and cogently presented.

[Chelsea Gunderson · Rating 4 out of 5]

This had to be one of the most depressing (albeit interesting) subjects for him to study. Too many times I had to take a break from reading due to the graphic depictions of dehumanization. It’s all very discouraging, but I’m grateful this book exists. It’s very eye-opening.

[Sal Hus · Rating 5 out of 5]

واحدة من أكثر الكتب المرهقة، لثقل موضوعها الغير معتاد. لماذا نضطهد ونبرر العنف ضد بعضنا؟ ولماذا ننتزع صفة الإنسانية عن الآخر؟
أجاد الكاتب طرح الأسئلة والبحث عن اجاباتها، لتتبلور من هذه الإجابات أسئلة أخرى أكثر تعقيدا

[Momen Bari · Rating 4 out of 5]

كتاب غريب.

يخبرنا الكاتب عن الحاجة لوضع نظرية لمفهوم نزع الانسانية- (dehumanization). فيتحفنا بأمثلة عديدة (وكاشفة) كيف ان احد اهم اسبابها هي عدم رؤيتنا للآخر كبشر. أغلب المذابح حدثت بسبب نزع انسانية الآخر وتوصيفهم كحيوانات، هوام، حشرات. هي عملية تشيئ كامل للاخرين. لا انكر ان الامثلة كاشفة، متعددة وذكية، حتي تحليله كيف ان النص القرآني يري الكفار كشر الدواب، أثارت الكثير من الاسئلة عندي.

ولكن -المشكلة- حينما نظر الكاتب للتراث الفلسفي الغربي، تجاهل اتجاهات صريحة ومؤثرة وتخدم السياق. فعلي سبيل المثال، الكاتب احتج بعمانويل كانط واستنبط احكاما من فلسفته الأخلاقية. وتجاهل كليا دور كانط نفسه في محاضراته الانثروبولوجية كعنصري صريح ومقيت. فكانط كان يؤمن بالتراتبية البشرية حيث الجنس الابيض هو السيد والأذكى واكثر الأجناس اخلاقا، في مقابل الجنس الأحمر الذي هو حيوان بالكامل لا تصلح معه التربية او الحضارة. ايضا، كانط يؤمن ان الجنس الأسود يحتاج التربية -فقط- ليصبحوا خدما (عبيد) جيدين. رؤية نبي التنوير الأنثروبولوجية لم نجد لها اي صدي في هذا الكتاب علي الرغم من اهميتها كمبرر استخدمته اوروبا لاستعمار الاخر. فعبئ الرحل الأبيض ان يجبرنا علي دخول الحضارة. ودا مثال واحد من عدة امثلة، وفي المقابل يخبرنا -مثلا- ان ابن سينا كان عنصري ومش بيدينا مثال.

اذا التنظير في الكتاب غريب، ناقص -يمشي علي سطر ويسيب سطرين أو ثلاثة. لكن دا لا يمنع انه كتاب جدير بالقراءة لكثرة الأمثلة (وجعت قلبي اه، بس فتحت لي الباب لاكتر من ١٥ كتاب وعشرات الحواديت اللي محتاجة بحث).

أخيرا الكتاب دا غريب، لأني أول مرة اقرا كتاب بالانجليزي يحتوي علي هذا القدر من التفريع والاستطراد -branching and rambling. طريقة الكتابة تذكرني بالجاحظ. الكاتب يبدأ بفكرة تؤدي لاخري لاخري الا ان نعود للفكرة الأساسية. السرد هنا دائري ودي حاجة اول مرة اخبرها في الكتابة الانجليزية -ودي حاجة عظيمة، لاني كنت فاكر انها اسلوب عربي قح- فعلي سبيل المثال يُنظر الكاتب لنزع الانسانية عند الاغريق ورؤيتهم للآخر (البربري في مقابل اهل اثينا) فيأخذنا في رحلة دائرية للفرق بين المظهر والجوهر ثم الماهية والوجود ثم لتراتبية الوجود لنعود لارسطو ورؤيته للأخر والتنظير لنزع الإنسانية. (كنت مستمتع جدا)

الكتاب دا غريب ومحتاج يترجم ومحتاج اننا ندور ورا كل قصة وسرد حتي لا نغرق (لاحظ، الكتاب دا بيكشف اسؤا ما فينا كبشر)

[UChicagoLaw]

"Smith is a philosopher with a strong interest in cognitive science and evolutionary psychology. His book offers a gripping history of the horrific ways in which human beings have turned other humans into “sub-humans” and “beasts in human form,” from American rhetoric rationalizing African slavery, to the Nazi persecution of the Jews, to the justifications offered for the genocide in Rwanda. He identifies a key thematic in all these campaigns of dehumanization: namely, convincing the persecutors that, when it comes to the persecuted, there is a difference between being essentially human and merely appearing human. He then speculates (not always plausibly, but provocatively nonetheless) that the propensity to draw an essence/appearance distinction is a legacy of natural selection itself. One need not find the evolutionary speculation convincing to nonetheless find his synthesis of the ways in which the essence/appearance distinction figures in the rhetoric of hatred and genocide throughout history insightful and memorable." - Brian Leiter

[SundaytoSaturday .com · Rating 3 out of 5]

SUMMARY: The majority of humans would agree that murder is wrong and yet human history is littered with genocide, whole populations being kidnapped and enslaved, and wars replete with ghastly atrocities. How is it that we can say the murder of another human is terrible, but in an instant dehumanize a fellow human and perform, or at least allow, dehumanizing acts? In Less Than Human professor of Philosophy at the University of New England David Livingstone Smith pulls from history, biology, philosophy, and anthropology to perform an in-depth analysis of defining dehumanization and why we seem predisposed to dehumanizing others.

Dehumanization “is the belief that some beings only appear human, but beneath the surface, where it really counts, they aren't human at all… It isn't a way of talking. It’s a way of thinking--a way of thinking that, sadly, comes all too easily to us”

Livingstone Smith chronicles the building blocks of dehumanization throughout history beginning with Aristotle to David Hume to Immanuel Kant. He touches on the great chain of being (that everything is on a hierarchical scale with God and humans at the top and plants near the bottom) and our propensity for sorting humans into buckets.

This hierarchical view and the ability of humans to sort others into groups is the bedrock from which dehumanization is built. Without the ability to sort people into groups and label them better or worse, there would be no dehumanization. These human predispositions are exploited by those in power by stoking fear of the “other,” labeling them as “counterfeit human beings.” Livingstone Smith says dehumanization is not exclusively an internal issue, but also a product of our environment. Therefore, the words we use matter.

Vermin, parasites, maggots, rats, worms, dogs, wolves, dirty, unclean, filthy, disease carriers, rapists, murderers, degenerates, thugs. All these words have been used, and continue to be used, to dehumanize others. Immigrants at the southern border are not people, they are “rapists” or “carriers of disease.” Black people marching in the streets are not protesters, they are “thugs” or “degenerates.”

When we use the above phrases, it allows us to see the “other” as non-human, more as an animal or virus that needs to be neutralized or exterminated.

Perfectly illustrating this concurrence of events is lynching in America. Many church-going people would go to church, have knowledge about the 10 commandments, agreeing with the sixth commandment to not kill, but attend a lynching after church complete with pictures and snacks in a festive atmosphere. Many white Southerners simply did not see Black people as human, but as vermin to be exterminated. (For a comprehensive history of lynching, we recommend At the Hands of Persons Unknown by Philip Dray)

“When a group of people is dehumanized, they become mere creatures to be managed, exploited, or disposed of, as the occasion demands,” Livingstone Smith writes.

Livingstone Smith says this theme of dehumanizing others by labeling them as animals or bugs shows that people do not believe the "other" has a human "essence." This essence is innate in humans - it is an undefinable trait that makes a human a human. A belief that we are different, more valuable, than animals and plants. For millennia, humans have been trying to answer the question - what makes a human a human?

Is it tied to a higher order of thought? Our industriousness? Our culture? Our developed emotions? Is it our skin color or another physical characteristic? But, anytime someone tries to answer what makes a human a human, a group of people is always left out. They are seen as the “other” and have the potential to be dehumanized.

This leads to the largest critique of the book. While Livingstone Smith does a superb job of tracing the roots of, defining, and showing why humans are prone to dehumanization he does not provide a path forward (although he did write a follow-up, which we have yet to read, titled, On Inhumanity, with ideas on how to resist dehumanization).

This is where the Christian faith, despite being bastardized to justify atrocities throughout the centuries, can provide a path forward. The foundational doctrine of, "the image of God" says that all humans are made in the image of God – full stop. There is no specific characteristic or list. It is not up to us to determine who is worthy or who is not – it is an impossible task for us.

As Lucy Peppiatt says in The Imago Dei: Humanity Made in the Image of God it is a great leveling doctrine. The mysteriousness of this doctrine has one purpose and can only point to one thing alone: being made in the image of God.

Overall, Less Than Human is a well-researched and thought-provoking book that provides important insights into the dangers of dehumanization. It is worth considering if you are interested in understanding how dehumanization operates in society, but we recommend reading Peppiatt’s The Imago Dei: Humanity Made in the Image of God to round out your reading on this subject.

KEY QUOTE: "We are all potential dehumanizers, just as we are all potential objects of dehumanization. The problem of dehumanization is everyone's problem."

MORE: Visit SundaytoSaturday.com where we curate topics for a disillusioned church.

[Sonja · Rating 5 out of 5]

Weder schön noch einfach zu lesen. Aber notwendig.

[Lily Heron · Rating 3 out of 5]

Read for research purposes. Includes some very interesting primary sources on the topic e.g. from the Nuremburg Trials and Vietnam War veterans.

[Jerry Wall · Rating 3 out of 5]

Major emphasis on dehumanization.
In becoming wicked, a person loses his human essence. This causes him to cease being what he was: a human being. p.38d
Alexander Pope . . . 1733 Essay on Man Vast chain of being. p. 39
I will argue that when we dehumanize people we think of them as counterfeit human beings -- creatures that look like humans, but who are not endowed with a human essence -- and that this is possible only because of our natural tendency to think that there are essence based natural kinds. p. 101
Since propaganda as the rhetoric of enmity aims to persuade people to kill other people, others must be dehumanized in a denial that we share a common humanity. Nicholas Jackson O'Shaughnessy, Politics and Propaganda. p. 103 !!!!!
If you want to know what people believe, look at what they do. p. 117 !!!!!!
Adam Smith . . . argues taht morality is built into human nature. It flows from our natural emotional resonance with others. "How selfish soever man may be supposed," wrote Smith in the opening passage of his 1759 book The Theory of Moral Sentiments, "there are evidently some principles in his nature, which interest him in the fortune of others, and render their happiness necessary to him, though he derives nothing from it except the pleasure of seeing it." p. 124 !!!!!
We are, Twain believed, the only spedcies capable of immorality. . . . Man is the only animal that deals in that atrocity of atrocities, war. He is the only one that gathers his brethren about him and forth in cold blood and calm pulse to exterminate his kind. He is the only animal that for sordid wages will march out . . . and help slaughter strangers of his own species who have done him no harm and with whom he has no quarrel . . . . And in the intervals between campaigns he washes the blood off his hands, and works for "the universal brotherhood of man" with his mouth. p. 203 !!!!!!!!!!!!!
Remember that Hume thought morality comes from sympathy, and that we have sympathy with others only to the extent that they resemble us. p. 221
Dog ownership has been denounced as "depraved" by clerics in present day Iran. The Bible contains a number of disparaging references to dogs. p. 253
ds

[Valentina · Rating 4 out of 5]

Mild spoilers: This book was hard to get through, not because of its complexity, but because of its raw portrayal of the darker side of human nature. I knew about discrimination and the horrible acts that followed, but I didn't realize the extent to which this book delves into these issues without hesitation.

Why are we like this? The book doesn’t provide a straightforward answer, but it offers enough evidence for readers to draw their own conclusions. Whether you interpret it through a religious lens of superiority or an evolutionary one, we are arguably the cruelest creatures on this planet, both to our own kind and to those who are different.

I believe this cruelty stems from the core concepts of "fear" and "survival." The less we understand about differences, the more we fear them, feeling threatened and willing to do almost anything to ensure our survival. This drive for survival can lead to dehumanization, which paradoxically, can contradict itself in the name of keeping us alive.

However, darkness cannot survive without light, and there is hope to evolve beyond these fears that drive us. Educating ourselves about these differences and the darker sides of human nature is crucial to conquering and preventing such perverted and inhumane acts. The more we expose ourselves to different perspectives, the more understanding we gain. By stepping out of our limited bubbles, we can prevent history from repeating itself.

“We self sculptors have to understand the properties of human nature if we are to have any hope of getting the results that we are aiming at. To deal effectively with dehumanization, we need to understand its mechanics. There is simply no viable alternative. To do this we need to bring science to bear on those aspects of human nature that sustain the dehumanizing impulse. The study of dehumanization needs to be made a priority. Universities, governments and non governmental organizations need to put money, time and talent into figuring out exactly how dehumanization works and what can be done to prevent it. Maybe then we can use this knowledge to build a future that is less hideous than our past. Can this be done? Nobody knows because nobody has ever tired."

[Ash Higgins · Rating 5 out of 5]

Pair this one with Virtuous Violence by Fiske & Rai and you'll probably not want interact with another human for a few days.

"Everyone talks about dehumanization, but hardly anyone theorizes about it."

Smith pulls from from a bunch of disciplines, information sources, and a few other things that end in "y" to come to some sharply drawn conclusions that are as enlightening as they are chilling.

His confidence in his conclusions can be a little disconcerting at times, but he backs up his points real hard.

Just to give some idea of how hard Smith goes, on page 104 of my copy he comes for Hanna Arendt, refuting "the banality of evil," because she characterized Adolf Eichmann as just some dude that rubber stamped paper work and was indifferent.

This was not the case, and Smith pulls a quote from Goldhagen's "Worse Than War," (another text that's sure to make you long for extended periods of solitude) from Eichmann "I shall laugh when I jump into the grave" (the arrogant prick really thought he would put himself there I swear to fucking god...) "because of the feeling that I have killed five hundred million Jews. That gives me a lot of satisfaction and pleasure."

Smith then says Nazis - at the least high ranking ones like Eichmann and his retinue of fuckheads - "weren't moved by pale abstractions," and "There was *nothing* [emphasis mine] banal about the narrative images at the heart of the Nazi project. They were dramatic, vivid and apocalyptic."

The dehumanization of our fellow people is the result of an extremism and extremism blossoms in extreme circumstances. Nazis the result of the German economic hardship, and Hiroshima the result of the extreme circumstances of World War II itself. This pattern persists in Smith's telling and in the historical circumstances as well.

There is a sense of scarcity created, not about resources or land or treasure, but a belief that there is only so much *human dignity* to go around that some people must not be treated as people.

And then anyone who dares cling to morality and compassion is left to bury bodies by the hundreds.