The Politics of Humanity

understanding of suffering as totally detached from its human causes. But the focus
on the human agency behind human suffering necessarily implies a judgement
about guilt and innocence. This is not an argument against treating the suffering of
the guilty, for humanitarianism would risk forfeiting its grounding in the idea of a
common humanity if it were to do so, but rather it suggests that humanitarianism
finds it difficult, in hating cruelty, not to create dichotomies of guilt and innocence.
For Shklar, however, to do so is to misunderstand how radical an emphasis
on cruelty can be. For her, putting cruelty first makes judging or even blaming
victims superfluous:

It is, however, not only undignified to idealize political victims; it is also very

dangerous. One of our political actualities is that the victims of political

torture and injustice are often no better than their tormentors. They are

only waiting to change places with the latter. Of course, if one puts cruelty

first this makes no difference. It does not matter whether the victim of

torture is a decent man or a villain. No one deserves to be subjected to the

appalling instruments of cruelty.^56

This suggests a way out for humanitarians, though the question becomes more
complicated when they are put in a position of telling stories about the victims to
spur humanitarian concern, as will be examined in the next chapter.
Arguably, though, humanitarians are going further than simply rejecting
cruelty, they are also, in justifying themselves in terms of humanity, negotiating the
ways in which common humanity contrasts with inhumanity.

III Dehumanisation and Inhumanity

In The Warrior’s Honor , Michael Ignatieff writes that "[there] are human and
inhuman warriors, just and unjust wars, forms of killing that dishonor us all. The Red
Cross has become the keeper of these distinctions; they are the sentinels between
the human and the inhuman."^57 As often, Ignatieff phrases the matter nicely here.
56
57 Shklar, Ordinary Vices , 18-19.
Ignatieff, The Warrior's Honor , 161.