A Delicate Balance: What Philosophy Can Tell Us About Terrorism by Govier, Trudy

ISBN: 9780813365855

Basic Books | 01 January 2003

Hardback | 192 pages 

A thoughtful treatment of terrorism, synthesizing recent world events with the ideas of major philosophers including Plato, Hobbes, Nietzsche, and others to provide a foundation of hope for the future. Did the world change on September 11, 2001? For those who live outside of New York or Washington, life's familiar pace persists and families and jobs resume their routines. Yet everything seems different because of the dramatic disturbance in our sense of what our world means and how we exist within it. In A Delicate Balance , philosopher Trudy Govier writes that it is because our feelings and attitudes have altered so fundamentally that our world has changed. Govier believes that there are ethical challenges we cannot ignore. From Plato and Aristotle on courage to Kant on revenge, to 20th Century philosopher John Rawlss views on justice, Govier mines the world of philosophy to reflect on terrorism. Govier argues that moral complexities such as victimhood, evil, power and revenge, if properly understood, can provide a basis for hope not despair. Govier walks the reader through this shift, challenging us to construct a new sense of the world and our place within it.