philosophers, the “Shallow Pond theorists” in Kwame Anthony Appiah’s amusing
phrase.^4
Perhaps another common thread is that for many of these writers and
organisations, what rescue means is fairly straightforward. It is usually some variant
of pulling the child out of the pond, and popping them back onto dry land. Yet it is
interesting to note that the language of rescue is used more cautiously within the
literature of humanitarianism in crisis.^5 In part, this reflects the recognition that
saving a human body is not self-evidently exactly the same thing as saving a human
being, as we do not understand our humanity solely in relation to our bodies. It also
reflects awareness of the lives that have not been saved, and a suspicion that, for all
their good intentions, the most meaningful thing that humanitarian practitioners
are rescuing is their sense of self. David Rieff notes the tendency many of us share
to cling on to humanitarianism as a “saving idea”.^6 He is wary of the self-serving
delusions of the American soldier cited above, similar to the famous order of the
Abbot of Cîteaux, Arnald-Almric during the Albigensian Crusade. “Kill them all; God
will look after His own”.^7
Certainly, the notion of rescue, as applied to humanitarian action, is replete
with tensions and paradoxes. But for all that, it remains a vital concept in describing
the contours of humanitarianism. In part, this is because the paradoxes of rescue
are also the paradoxes of humanitarianism, as I will attempt to demonstrate
throughout this chapter. But it is also because, as Chapter 2 suggested,
humanitarianism largely comes into being as a reaction to (and a conversation
about) inhumanity. In the discussion of what constitutes inhumanity, examples such
as the Holocaust, or the practice of slavery, loom large, and carry much symbolic
weight. Chapter 3 showed just how problematic the path from the articulation of
concern to the willingness to act can be, with many bystanders falling by the
4
5 Appiah, Cosmopolitanism , 173. Singer, "Famine, Affluence, and Morality".
6 See notably Pasic and Weiss, "The Politics of Rescue".
7 Rieff, A Bed for the Night , 91.
The second phrase, and indeed the precise attribution, may be apocryphal, but there is
little doubt that the first part, “Kill them all”, represents the instructions of the Crusaders at
the sacking of Béziers. Zoé Oldenbourg, Massacre at Montségur (London: Phoenix Press,
2000), 116.