Two Victim Paradigms and the Problem of "Impure" Victims

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  • DMDiana Tietjens Meyers
    Diana Tietjens Meyers
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Abstract
In this passage, Richard Rorty is commenting on the failure of the United States and its European allies to take effective military action to stop the massacres and genocidal rape camps Serbians launched against Muslims during the 1990s wars in the former Yugoslavia. Instead of construing the problem as a question of what we owe to distant others or a question about the limits of national sovereignty, Rorty frames it in terms of moral psychology. "We" perceive victims as contemptible losers. 2 "We" perceive victimizers as disgusting brutes. Both are morally tainted and hence unworthy of "our" moral attention and response.
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