There is something so distinctive about the deliberate and careful infliction of
suffering described by Orbinski, and indeed in the extraordinary physical reaction of
nausea in an experienced humanitarian medical worker, that the reaction against
cruelty must surely be seen as central to any understanding of humanitarian
concern. Who could dare deny that such cruelty is unacceptable?
All too clearly, cruelty is a concept that cannot be described once and for all,
for the only limit on cruelty seems to be the human imagination. As such, cruelty
makes sense more as a type of human behaviour than as a particular list of possible
acts. Moreover, it speaks to the recurrent horror in the literature on
humanitarianism at the ways humans can think up to make each other suffer. The
humane disposition of the humanitarian is nourished largely by the suffering
deliberately meted out by other humans. Within that, the element of deliberation,
of deliberate, intentional harm seems to hold particular importance in the
humanitarian imaginary.
We can identify two strands to the reaction to cruelty relevant to a
discussion of humanitarianism and its conceptualisations of humanity and
humaneness. The first is the conceptualisation, across or within societies, of a
previously accepted mode of behaviour as cruel. A famous example is Voltaire’s
engagement with the Calas affair, part of the process that led to the abandonment
of judicial torture in pre-Revolutionary France. Though Voltaire was initially
exercised by the religious bigotry at the heart of the case rather than the practice of
torture itself, his argument shifted to emphasise the cruelty of the practice.^33
The second strand is the “discovery of cruelty”, when wider groups discover
or experience previously undreamt of ways that particular individuals or groups
have found of being cruel to each other. This can feed into the first strand. For
33
Lynn Hunt, Inventing Human Rights: A History (London: W. W. Norton & Company, 2007),
70-76. The case apparently prompted Voltaire’s first use of the term “human right”. Hunt
also poses an interesting question: “If natural compassion makes everyone detest the
cruelty of judicial torture, as Voltaire said later, then why was this not obvious before the
1760s, even to him? Evidently some kind of blinder had operated to inhibit the operation of
empathy before then.” Hunt, Inventing Human Rights , 81. The operation of empathy is
examined in the next chapter.