Practical Wisdom in Environmental Education

David Havlick ; Marion Hourdequin
Affiliations:Department of Geography, University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill, NC, USA

Department of Philosophy, Brandeis University, Waltham, MA, USA

Abstract

To create an ecologically literate, motivated, and engaged citizenry, environmental education must help students develop practical wisdom. We discuss three elements of teaching central to this task: first, greater emphasis on contextualized knowledge, grounded in particular places and cases; second, multi-modal learning that engages students as whole persons both cognitively and affectively; and third, stronger connections between knowing and doing, or between knowledge and responsibility. We illustrate these elements through our experience teaching field-based environmental studies courses, but also emphasize ways in which practical environmental education can be effectively incorporated into campus-based classes.

Introduction

In the Nicomachean Ethics Aristotle addressed the question of what constitutes a good life for human beings. Aristotle's answer was that a good life is a virtuous life. He offered a detailed account of the virtues of character, which are social virtues that allow individuals to live well in relation to other members of the community. Aristotle 's thorough discussion of these virtues, along with his account of friendship, suggests that the knowledge human beings require to flourish is deeply practical. Only in the closing sections does Aristotle call this view into question, elevating a life of philosophical contemplation and theoretical wisdom above all else, noting that contemplation comes closest to mirroring the activity of the gods.

The tension between practical and theoretical wisdom in the Nicomachean Ethics has been the source of endless academic controversy. Yet, regardless of what Aristotle intended, he at least acknowledged that insofar as we are human, we need practical wisdom: 'for our nature is not self-sufficient for the purpose of contemplation, but our body also must be healthy and have food and other attention'.(1) We first need to know how to sustain ourselves as individuals and in communities before we can be free to pursue lives of pure theoretical contemplation.

The division between the theoretical and the practical may not be as sharp as Aristotle suggested, but regardless of how one draws the distinction, practical wisdom has never been more important than it is today. We need to learn how to live well in a world plagued by environmental problems at scales ranging from local to global. We need to learn how it is possible for human beings and the ecosystems upon which we depend to flourish in an increasingly crowded world. This will require practical wisdom of the most thoughtful and sophisticated kind; not necessarily the kind of wisdom that today's higher education effectively provides.

In 1976 the United Nations identified as the goal of environmental education in its Belgrade Charter:

to develop a world population that is aware of, and concerned about, the environment and its associated problems, and which has the knowledge, skills and commitment to work toward solutions of current problems and the prevention of new ones.(2)

Nearly three decades later, only limited progress has been made towards achieving this goal world wide.

Even if applied more modestly to the college curriculum and its graduates in the USA, the UN's goal remains distant. Despite efforts to integrate environmental education into K-12 programs and college curricula, the overarching objective of creating an ecologically literate, motivated and engaged corps of graduates remains elusive.

Effective environmental education at the college level requires a move towards the practical. In order to facilitate this shift, we discuss three elements that can contribute to integrated learning: first, greater emphasis on contextualized knowledge, grounded in particular places and cases; second, multi-modal learning that engages students as whole persons both cognitively and affectively; third, stronger connections between knowing and doing or between knowledge and responsibility. We illustrate these elements primarily through our experience teaching field-based environmental studies courses, however, we also emphasize that these features can be incorporated into traditional classes on campus.

Practical wisdom requires contextualized knowledge. By contextualized knowledge we mean that concepts and skills learned in the classroom should not remain at such a high level of abstraction that they cannot be utilized in everyday thinking about what to believe and what to do; rather, they should link up with life outside the university walls. Students need to develop analytic and critical thinking skills not just to solve logic problems, but to grapple with the complexities of real world issues, for which deductive reasoning may not suffice. For philosophers this means coming down to earth, spending more time discussing cases that involve real world possibilities and less time relying on fanciful 'possible world' examples. For geographers this means helping students understand how the physical and cultural features of places influence social and environmental processes right here and now, not just on the other side of the world or in the future and the past.

Knowledge can be made practical through a variety of means. In our experience, one effective way to contextualize knowledge is to get students out of the classroom. Rather than read about the interconnections between elevation and temperature, logging and stream siltation or suburban sprawl and habitat fragmentation, students can experience these relationships for themselves in the field. Theoretical knowledge can be reinforced and made practical by experiences that allow students to explore and confirm what they read or hear in lectures. After covering the basics of the hydrologic cycle and energy flow, for example, in a recent course we brought students to the local sanitary landfill for a tour. As we stood around a settling pond filled with leachate, or 'landfill tea', our guide described the water's destiny. Once the settling pond fills, the water is pumped to the county water treatment facility, then on to nearby Jordan Lake, which supplies drinking water for several nearby communities. Several of the students who lived in these towns were astonished to learn that the waters oozing from this garbage heap flow after three short steps from their own household taps. Such experiences increase awareness and promote critical thinking, encouraging students to examine and assess for themselves the ways in which the environment and human activities are intertwined and to discuss with their peers the implications of these connections.

Moving farther from the college campus, a growing number of field-based academic programs provide intensive opportunities for students to explore environmental issues experientially. These courses, such as those we have taught for the Missoula, Montana-based Wild Rockies Field Institute, offer educational opportunities unavailable in typical classroom settings and may prove crucial in achieving the goals of environmental education. Field experiences immerse students in the natural and human histories of particular places, where students can learn inductively, starting with place-based experiential data and moving toward generalizations based on this experience. The localization and particularity of field experiences reverse the typical process of classroom learning in philosophy and the sciences, where students often learn general principles first, followed by specific examples that illustrate these generalizations. Inductive knowledge building, in contrast, does not presuppose the existence of general principles that apply to all cases. Instead, students' interactions with land managers, visits with ranchers, environmental activists and Native Americans and active work on ecological restoration projects reveal the complexity of environmental issues and challenge students to deal with this complexity, building analytical and deliberative skills needed for effective participation in environmental decisions.

Another feature of field experiences is that they engage students in diverse ways: physically, intellectually and emotionally. They encourage multiple modes of learning, which, in addition to accommodating a diversity of learning styles, help develop knowledge that is multidimensional and vivid, richer than the usual words from a text. While classroom instructors must often work hard to foster learning through multiple pathways, in the field this variety is built into the course. In our campus-based classes we find it consistently challenging to cover a large amount of material in a single semester. Perhaps nowhere is this challenge felt more strongly than in teaching world regional geography, a survey course that takes students around the world in roughly half the proverbial 80 days. By combining lecture notes, PowerPoint presentations, slides, informal discussion, small group exercises, role play, 'geography bowl' activities and brief student presentations the format can be varied, but the overall trend is one of knowledge flowing from the instructor to a relatively passive assembly of students.

In the field, although we typically spend at least as much time in advance designing the syllabus and structuring the lesson plans for a course, there are inevitably encounters that spawn spontaneous 'teachable moments' during which the group of students and instructor(s) collectively are challenged to process information and critically assess these experiences. During the hiking portion of the day we commonly stop to point out particular plants or plant associations, note the shifting forest types as we ascend or descend, discuss management policies that apply as we pass through jurisdictional boundaries (or clearcuts, rangeland, etc.) or simply scout an area for a suitable camp site. Questions often arise as students explore areas close to camp: Why is this stream so cold, what made these ruts in the trail or why aren't there any trees growing here? Although in the courses we have taught there is time set aside for structured classes (discussion, lecture or field activities), learning does not end when class is over. Field experiences soften the boundaries between 'class' and 'life', distributing the flow of information over the course of the day, with frequent opportunities to reinforce and expand on ideas through direct encounters and observation.

It might be objected that field courses, especially those set in remote locations, do not provide students with 'practical' knowledge at all. Who needs to know why certain trees grow on dry sites but not near moisture or what makes mountain streams so chilly? Today's students need to know how to design web sites, manage computer networks and write an effective cover letter, not learn the natural history of some faraway place to which they may never return. While it is true that the particular details of plant taxonomy may be neither necessary nor sufficient to promote environmental literacy, learning to know a particular place well is an important first step towards reintegrating humans into the environment and showing how human activities, from computer network management to logging to the national energy policy, actually affect the world. By interacting with the animals, plants and people of particular places, students develop the skills and insight they need to understand other places and people, including those close to home. In fact, these lessons from the field often help students to think ecologically, encouraging them to make connections that extend beyond disciplinary boundaries or single actions and to consider how various parts contribute to the whole. As we illustrated with the brief excursion to the landfill, even a short field trip can add important practical knowledge to our experiences. When these students add their garbage to the campus bins they can now reflect on how such refuse circulates back to their hometown water supply.

This brings us to our last point: the importance of connecting knowledge and responsibility. Multimodal learning and contextualized knowledge both support this third educational goal. By connecting knowledge to real world issues and by engaging students more fully and deeply in the learning process, these first two elements help connect knowing and doing. Field-based learning also fosters responsibility in other ways. Especially in backcountry courses, students and instructors form not only a learning community, but a community in all aspects of life, if for a short time. Cooking and cleaning responsibilities are shared and students learn that the safety of the group depends on the intelligent behavior of each of its members.

Although critiques such as Cronon's influential 1995 essay, 'The trouble with wilderness', point to a distancing effect where the idea of wilderness lulls society into ignoring the real challenges that exist where we live, in fact we find that wilderness-based education can link students profoundly to the importance of taking responsibility for their actions.(3) On a field course in southeast Alaska a student once ignored our instructions not to bring food into his tent and his half-eaten candy bar nearly got him expelled from the course. When we later saw a large bear working the shoreline for barnacles and mussels the course rules suddenly made sense. In this way, prescriptions for behavior in the field often come with clearer consequences than those in the classroom, whether these are focused on environmental topics, such as recycling, or practical ones, such as camping safely in bear country. Ideally, by experiencing themselves as agents whose actions matter - to their own safety, to the well-being of the group and to resident animals and plants - students gain a heightened sense of the import of their everyday decisions that can carry over to other settings.

Particularly when trying to convey complex or abstract concepts about environmental processes, ethics or management, the move outdoors to direct experience seems to awaken in many students an ability to find more direct meaning and to see themselves as part of the world they are learning about, rather than as just passive observers of it. By removing students and their instruction entirely from field or forest as we now have in most college coursework, environmental education itself becomes abstracted. In the climate-controlled environment of the average university classroom students understandably may find it difficult to link a particular lecture on energy consumption to the means of producing power and to connect greenhouse gas emissions to rising seas and increased flooding. In this setting it is not only conceptually difficult to make these connections, but it contradicts one's personal experience. The air-conditioned room feels soothing, not like a contributing element to global climate change.

In the field such topics may be more actively approached. On a Field Institute semester course on the Colorado Plateau of Utah and Arizona, for example, in the span of two days students were able to visit a Hopi initiative to provide photovoltaic arrays to isolated communities, camp on the banks of the (now) clear, cold waters of the Colorado River downstream from the Glen Canyon Dam, be guided through the dam from top to bottom to see (and smell and hear) how it produces hydroelectricity and finish off with a tour of the Navajo Power Plant, with, in passing, a glimpse of the Black Mesa coal mining site that feeds it.

The lessons learned from these experiences ultimately remain up to each individual, but as a program such field-based education can ensure that students will at least understand how some of our major energy sources are produced, and with what consequences. The intimacy of such encounters - peering into the fiery dynamo of the coal furnace or descending through the damp corridors of the dam - also presses students to both feel and think. Learning in this way has a visceral quality that tends to pierce through collegiate apathy. Of course, there is no guarantee that students will form the 'right' outlook on the basis of such experiences. However, as teachers we aim to raise questions and motivate critical thought, rather than implant a particular point of view. The vividness of field trips that illustrate the intricacies of real world environmental issues can spur students to engage with one another in earnest conversations about how power should be produced and consumed, the generation and fate of our trash and our relationship to the environment more generally.

Such visits help provide what Aldo Leopold called 'an intense consciousness of land', which he considered essential for individuals to develop a land ethic. As he wrote in his 1949 critique of the educational and economic system that prevailed then and now:

Your true modern is separated from the land by many middlemen, and by innumerable physical gadgets. He has no vital relation to it; to him it is the space between cities on which crops grow. Turn him loose for a day on the land and if the spot does not happen to be a golf links or a 'scenic' area, he is bored stiff.(4)

Leopold's lesson can apply to both 'natural' and human dominated landscapes: field-based explorations can transform a mass of shoreline 'seaweed' into a rich montage of algal diversity or show how a coal-fired power plant heats dorm rooms in Chapel Hill, links to mining in the southern Appalachians and affects air quality in central North Carolina.

We find that in the classroom students find it hard to imagine how environmental policy issues, ethics or specific practices translate to the world beyond the campus. In a course one of us recently taught on environmental ethics, students drew a blank when asked for examples of how global climate change might outpace the environment's ability to adapt. Finally, when pressed, one student constructed an abstract analogy: 'If the whole world was brown and suddenly it turned purple, the brown things would be poorly adapted to the new environment'. While that may be true, the students lacked the ability to vividly imagine how climate change might affect Colorado's aspens and Montana's whitebark pines, agriculture in Bangladesh, residents of the Maldives or native villages in northern Alaska. Had they read in more detail about these things, they might have gained a clearer picture, but even then it might have been hard for them to envision how changes in climate and landscape would affect the communities, human and non-human, of particular places.

As early as 1949 Aldo Leopold lodged this complaint against environmental education:

'[it] defines no right or wrong, assigns no obligation, calls for no sacrifice, implies no change in the current philosophy of values'.⁵

Environmental education that is abstract and decontextualized, that engages students solely through books and lectures and that does little to link knowledge to responsibility will undoubtedly continue to fall prey to this critique. We have tried to show how field-based environmental education can promote practical wisdom, by engaging students more directly and actively in learning and by showing how environmental issues are matters of real consequence to all living things.

Our intent here is not to diminish the importance of classroom learning or the instruction that takes place on college campuses, but rather to encourage a more integrative approach to post-secondary environmental education that includes both traditional forms of learning and the more open experiences afforded by field-based programs. These, in turn, may include a mix of experiences to give students a sense of the range of environments from which we can learn and whose workings we need to understand. The 'field' includes not just forests, deserts, prairies and mountain peaks, but the campus quad, the university power plant, local streams, landfills, factories, water treatment facilities and even the halls of Congress. The strongest learning will take place when students can recognize concepts as they appear in a variety of field-based situations, while also linking in the other direction from specific practices to concepts and methods mastered on campus. Ideally, the two kinds of instruction can be mutually supportive.

Even the most ambitious field-based academic programs should, and typically do, work to integrate, not replace, learning conducted inside the classroom. Programs such as Prescott College's 4 year undergraduate degree use a block-quarter calendar that allows students to participate in 4 week blocks of field courses followed by 10 week quarters usually more devoted to classroom instruction.⁶ The University of Montana's Wilderness and Civilization Program brings a group of 25 students together for a 1 year experience that begins and concludes with 10-day backpacking and canoeing expeditions, but still sends the cohort through two semesters of coursework on campus to study wilderness management, the economics of wild land preservation, environmental ethics and other subjects.⁷ This inside-outside combination not only gives students a chance to see the practical dimensions of environmental problems, but the change in venue can also provide opportunities to reflect on and synthesize learning, allowing students to return to campus (or careers) with renewed focus and inspiration.

As we have noted, the lessons gained by these field-based courses should be refreshed wherever possible in classroom coursework, just as the field courses emphasize many concepts and methods that need to come from classroom instruction. How can this be accomplished? Ultimately, we view this not so much as a matter of learning and retaining facts as it is the development of skills in critical thinking and deliberative discussion. Both inside and outside the classroom we ought to be training students to engage the world in which we all live, to inquire of ourselves and those we encounter and to be able to enter into constructive dialogue. This rests upon an ability, as Barry Lopez has suggested, to propose questions and conversations rather than impose ideas and rules.⁸ It requires that we integrate our actions with our ideas and recognize that both of these come with consequences. And, wherever possible, it should come with an educational approach that prompts students to learn in the classroom, but also learn to leave the classroom behind. For it is out there, beyond the buildings and quads of the college campus, that the vast majority of our students will need to find their way in life. We owe it to them, and ourselves, to get out there with them as part of our collective preparation. Those of us who are academics will not be hurt by the reminder that the pursuit of theoretical wisdom is deeply dependent on our having the practical wisdom to design economies and communities that can sustain us in relation to the ecosystems of which we are a part.

Environmental education that teaches practical wisdom empowers students not only to understand and appreciate the workings of the world as observers, but encourages them to learn how to live well in the world. This is not a matter of figuring out the 'right' stances to take on environmental issues, then going on with one's life. Living well is a process that requires openness, curiosity, creativity and a willingness to work with others. What contextualized, multimodal and practical education can teach is that environmental problems cannot be 'solved' and settled like equations in mathematics. Our relationship to the environment, like our relationship to other human beings, is dynamic and ongoing. Thus, in addition to a theoretical understanding of nutrient cycles, biodiversity indices and environmental engineering, we need practical skills of attention, reflection and responsiveness that are best learned through engagement with the world outside the classroom.

Published in: Ethics, Place & Environment, Volume 8, Issue 3 October 2005 , pages 385 - 392

Notes

¹ Aristotle, Aristotle's Nicomachean Ethics, translated by W. D. Ross, revised by J. L. Ackrill and J. O. Urmson (New York, Oxford University Press, 1980), Book X, ch. 8, sec. 4.

² 'The Belgrade Charter: a global framework for environmental education', Connect: UNESCO-UNEP Environmental Education Newsletter, 1(1) (1976), pp. 1-2.

³ William Cronon, 'The trouble with wilderness; or, getting back to the wrong nature', in William Cronon (ed.), Uncommon Ground: Toward Reinventing Nature (New York, W. W. Norton & Co., 1995), pp. 69-90.

⁴ Aldo Leopold, A Sand County Almanac and Sketches Here and There (Oxford, Oxford University Press, 1970), pp. 223-224 (Original work, Oxford University Press, 1949).

⁵ Leopold, A Sand County Almanac, pp. 207-208.

⁶ Prescott College website. Retrieved June 15, 2004, from http://www.prescott.edu/academics/rdp/how.html.

⁷ Wilderness and Civilization Program website. Retrieved June 15, 2004, from http://www.forestry.umt.edu/research/MFCES/programs/wi/wildciv.htm.

⁸ Barry Lopez, The Rediscovery of North America (New York, Vintage, 1992), p. 18. (Original work, University of Kentucky Press, 1990).

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Emotion

Austin E. Grigg
University of Richmond

An emotion can be described as a person's acute or relatively short-lived reaction that is revealed in his or her behavior as well as felt in his or her conscious experience. An emotion is generally accompanied by widespread changes in physiological functioning—increased pulse and breathing rates, for example. An emotion is usually initiated as a reaction to factors outside the individual—circumstances in his environment.

With many emotions, there appear to be two particular behavioral reactions. First, there occur well-integrated reflex patterns like those observed in smiling, crying, rage, or the startle reflex. Second, there are motivational manifestations—persistent purposive actions, such as efforts to escape an unpleasant or frightening situation, or deliberate violent behavior in response to anger. The motivational function of emotions is generally accepted by psychologists, but there is less agreement that each emotion must necessarily involve integrated reflex patterns.

Problems in Defining Emotion

From antiquity, writers have described emotions and their effects on behavior. The word "emotion" comes from the Latin emovere, which means to stir up, agitate, or excite. The language of every literate culture includes hundreds of words that describe feelings or emotions. It is easy to identify intense reactions of fear, anger, grief, or joy as emotions. There is general agreement that joy differs from sorrow and that disgust is unlike pleasure.

Nevertheless, students of behavior have faced problems in attempting to formulate a precise definition of emotion. It would seem that the person who experiences some emotion could be used as the source for an accurate description and definition of the state. However, two people experiencing joy, for example, may provide strikingly different descriptions of feeling joyful. Also, an outside observer might protest that joy was not really aroused, and that the individual was not really very happy. Thus individuals who claim to experience the same emotion may describe dissimilar feelings, and an outside observer may insist that neither is describing what the observer has in mind for the particular emotional feeling.

Late in the 19th century, scientists believed that they could solve the dilemma by studying the physiological reactions that occur during emotional experiences. Subsequent research, however, indicated that even this approach does not provide a precise definition. It has been found that different emotions show highly similar physiological reactions. In many instances the physiologist can tell that an emotional reaction is occurring but cannot determine exactly which emotion the individual is experiencing.

Another theory of emotion was proposed in the 19th century by Charles Darwin. His investigation of evolution led him to believe that humanity's behavior contains residuals of responses that had been necessary in lower forms of animals and in earlier times for humans but are no longer as essential for survival. In 1872 he compared certain emotional expressions in man to the role of such reactions in animals. He pointed out that baring the teeth was typical in animals when preparing to fight, and he saw a relationship between this and humans' tendency to bare their teeth when extremely angry. Darwin concluded that there is something very primitive about emotion. His theory has not been generally useful to psychologists.

The James-Lange Theory

The most influential theory of emotions was proposed in 1884 by William James, who was an American psychologist and philosopher. A Danish physiologist, Carl Lange, without prior knowledge of James's writings, published the same concept in 1887. The proposition came to be known as the James-Lange theory. Prior to the formulation of this theory, it had been assumed that emotions were aroused by ideas that the provoking situation aroused in the individual's mind. To use a simple example: person sees bear; person feels afraid; person runs away. James and Lange reversed the sequence: person sees bear; person runs away; person feels afraid. According to this view, the physiological reactions are an immediate reflex response to the provoking stimulus. The emotion appears only when the individual senses that bodily changes are occurring. Emotion, according to this theory, is the awareness of physiological reactions—for example, in the glands and other organs in the abdomen—that are aroused at once when the provoking situation affects the observer. Accordingly, individuals do not cry because they feel sad; they are sad because they have begun to cry. Whereas it had been assumed that physiological reactions followed some sort of judgment or appreciation of the provoking situation as safe or dangerous, good or bad, pleasant or unpleasant, the James-Lange theory asserted that the physiological reactions either preceded or were at the very least simultaneous with the awareness of an emotional experience.

The Cannon-Bard Theory

Another theory of emotions, known as the Cannon-Bard theory, was first recognized by the American physiologist Walter B. Cannon in 1927 and was elaborated by another American physiologist, Philip Bard, in 1934. This theory stresses the role in emotions of the hypothalamus and other structures in the brain. Cannon's experiments with animals showed that removal of the hypothalamus eliminated the familiar patterns of emotional response. Experiments with animals also demonstrated that emotional behavior is not changed radically when the nerve links between the brain and various organs are severed, a finding that contradicts the James-Lange theory. Moreover, it was found that rather sharp differences in organic changes from emotion to emotion, as predicted by the James-Lange theory, do not seem to occur. Cannon also found that it is possible by means of drugs to produce striking organic changes but that the changes do not seem to produce emotions. Cannon felt that the abdominal organs are rather insensitive and that messages from there are so diffuse that it would be difficult to explain how specific feelings could result from such indistinct signals. The Cannon-Bard theory holds that both emotional experience and physiological changes are set off simultaneously through activation of the hypothalamus.

The Perceptual-Motivational Theory

Two American psychologists, Magda Arnold in 1960 and R. W. Leeper in 1965, arrived at a similar view of emotion, known as the perceptual-motivational theory. In her theory, Arnold stressed the judgment that the individual makes of the provoking situation. She asserted that the individual appraises the provoking situation immediately as potentially pleasant or unpleasant and that the emotion follows promptly from this judgment. This theory holds that emotion is a form of motivation, a drive to experience circumstances that are judged to be pleasant and to avoid situations that are judged to be unpleasant. Whereas the James-Lange theory holds that the body reacts reflexedly on encountering the provoking situation, the Arnold view is that the body responds to the individual's appraisal of the provoking situation.

No fully satisfactory explanation or theory of emotion has been formulated. From the psychological view, it has been difficult to establish theories of emotional responsiveness because different people may react in widely different ways to the supposedly same emotion. From the physiological view, a persistent problem has been that most of the bodily mechanisms that have been described as occurring in emotion have been known also to occur in the absence of emotion.

Action of the Nervous System

During intense emotion, the whole organism appears to be involved, but many of the most significant reactions may be traced to the autonomic nervous system. The autonomic system contains nerve groups that are located outside the brain and function with some independence of the brain and central nervous system. This somewhat self-regulated (autonomous) system is divided intotwo parts. The sympathetic system is most active during emotional states. The craniosacral division, known as the parasympathetic system, controls functions that go on during quiet states—digestion, for example. Typically, the sympathetic system works in opposition to the parasympathetic. Thus if one system accelerates the activity of some body organ, the other system inhibits the functioning of the organ.

In emotions the sympathetic system accelerates the heartbeat, whereas the parasympathetic checks the rate of heartbeat. Secretions of the adrenal gland are accelerated by the sympathetic system. Many physiological changes observed during certain emotions are responses to the sympathetic division of the autonomic nervous system: speeding of the heartbeat, increase in rate of respiration, increased perspiration, increased supply of epinephrine (adrenalin) in the bloodstream, concentration of the blood supply in the skeletal muscles, and increase in the amount of blood sugar released from the liver.

Emotions and Behavior

When an individual remains under prolonged emotional tension, physiological changes may accumulate. This condition may produce disturbances in behavior, mostly because the prolonged activation of the autonomic nervous system brings about deviations from normal physiological functioning. In 1938 the American psychiatrist Flanders Dunbar presented a strong case for the role of emotion in producing physical illness, reporting evidence that the response of the physiology of the body to prolonged emotional tension may produce psychosomatic symptoms. Such symptoms are not initiated by microbes or by other traditional causes of physical diseases but are seen as the consequences of emotional tensions. Hence, they are called psychosomatic illnesses, or illnesses of psychogenic origin.

This concept of the causal role of emotions in producing physical symptoms began to receive prominence late in the 19th century when the French neuropsychiatrist Jean Charcot reported his studies of the emotional factors in hysteria. Sigmund Freud also described the emotional basis of physical symptoms in hysteria and in other forms of neurosis. In the United States, Adolf Meyer, the Johns Hopkins neuropsychiatrist, developed during the first three decades of the 20th century what he called the theory of psychobiological parallelism. He stressed the role of emotional factors in both physical and mental health. Cannon reported his famous experiments on the physiological effects of acute emotion in 1938. During World War II, military psychiatrists reported numerous instances of profound changes in bodily function as well as in mental stability that appear to have been precipitated by intense and prolonged emotional states.

Attempts to Classify Emotions

Many schemes have been proposed for classifying emotions, but these are of little more than academic interest. Most authorities divide emotions into those that are pleasant (such as joy and love) and those that are unpleasant (fear and grief). An American psychologist, M. A. Wenger, held that most subjective descriptions of emotions can be classified along certain dimensions, or axes: undifferentiated excitement, axis of fear (for example, terror, anxiety, apprehension), axis of pain, of anger, of disappointment, of sexual excitement, and of relief.

Another American psychologist, Robert Plutchik, developed a scale of intensity of emotion based on the judgments of a large number of students who were asked to rate how strongly they had experienced various feelings. In a table of emotions based on judgments about intensity, he listed ecstasy, rage, and terror as the most intense, and annoyance and dislike as moderate in intensity.

Development of Emotional Expression

A great deal of attention has been given to the development of emotional expression in infants and throughout childhood. There is general agreement that shortly after birth the only distinguishable emotion is a kind of generalized agitation or excitement. Kathrine M. B. Bridges has shown that as the infant becomes older, an increasing number of emotions become apparent. She found, for example, that a 3-month-old infant can express delight and distress; a 6-month-old baby can express anger, disgust, and fear; and a 1-year-old can express elation and affection.

Despite variations in home background and experiences, the capacity for specific emotional reactions appears at about the same age in all children. This suggests that the capacity to display emotions develops by a process of biological maturation and that there is a reliable, biologically determined sequence of development of emotional responsiveness. A 6-month-old infant cannot express jealousy, for example, but toddlers of 15 months are often reported to display such feelings. Although the capacity to express emotions occurs through maturation, the objects or circumstances that are capable of arousing the particular emotion in a specific individual depend upon the learning experiences of the child.

Encyclopedia Americana, 2009

Also See Morality and Emotions in this blog.

Further Reading

Buck, Ross, The Communication of Emotion (Guilford Press 1984).

Evans, Phil, Motivation and Emotion (Routledge 1989).

Gainotti, G., and C. Caltagirone, eds., Emotions and the Dual Brain (Springer-Verlag 1989).

Harris, P., Children and Emotions: The Development of Psychological Understanding (Basil Blackwell 1989).

Lyons, W., Emotion (Cambridge 1980).

Rorty, Amelie O., ed., Explaining Emotions (Univ. of Calif. Press 1980).

The Ethics of Philosophical Practice

Prof. R. W. Hepburn

Philosophical practice makes strenuous moral demands: honesty and fairness to opponents in argument; an ability to tolerate prolonged uncertainty over serious issues; the strength of character to change one's mind on basic beliefs, and to follow the argument rather than one's emotional leanings; independence of mind rather than readiness to follow philosophical fashion.

Moral respect for readers and hearers requires that a philosopher avoid non-rational persuasion, cajoling, deriding, or otherwise manipulating them into agreement. Philosophy should demonstrate that we can disagree profoundly over fundamentals without lapsing from a common reasonableness. That same respect requires a philosopher to expose the structure of his argument as perspicuously as possible, so as to encourage, not impede, its criticism.

Clarity and simplicity of style, the minimizing of technical expressions, abstaining from formal apparatus when ordinary language can be adequate, also express concern to be understood and to let argument and evidence alone carry the persuasive weight. A turgid and obscure style may veil real gaps in argument. A pretentious style may covertly work to disarm critical appraisal, replacing the authority of good argument with the would-be personal authority of the philosopher as sage.

Philosophy has a serious responsibility for language. It is one of its most important custodians—obliged to oppose terminologies that arrest or confuse thinking. Slipshod and imprecise language loses sensitivity to distinctions between reasonable and unreasonable, between good and bad argument—in any field, including the fields of personal and political morality. To impoverish the resources of language risks also impoverishing human experience, denying us the words we need to articulate its varieties.


Does a stress on style and the stewardship of language imply that philosophy is a branch of literature? In some important ways it is literature. But the rapprochement is carried too far when a philosopher lets the imaginatively vivid presentation of a slant on the world give it an appearance of self-evidence, and deflects critical alertness from the fact that categories have not been deduced and reasoned justification has been subordinated to expressing the quasi-poetic ‘vision’.

Philosophers, then, need a wholesome sense of their fallibility. It is unwise for a philosopher to aspire to the role of expert or authority; for that works towards weakening the critical attentiveness constantly needed from readers and hearers.

"The Oxford Companion to Philosophy", Oxford University Press 2005

Who are the Global Terrorists?

By Noam Chomsky

After the atrocities of 11 September, the victim declared a "war on terrorism," targeting not just the suspected perpetrators, but the country in which they were located, and others charged with terrorism worldwide. President Bush pledged to "rid the world of evildoers" and "not let evil stand," echoing Ronald Reagan's denunciation of the "evil scourge of terrorism" in 1985 -- specifically, state-supported international terrorism, which had been declared to be the core issue of US foreign policy as his administration came into office.NOTE{_New York Times_, Oct. 18, 1985.} The focal points of the first war on terror were the Middle East and Central America, where Honduras was the major base for US operations. The military component of the re-declared war is led by Donald Rumsfeld, who served as Reagan's special representative to the Middle East; the diplomatic efforts at the UN by John Negroponte, Reagan's Ambassador to Honduras. Planning is largely in the hands of other leading figures of the Reagan-Bush (I) administrations.

The condemnations of terrorism are sound, but leave some questions unanswered. The first is: What do we mean by "terrorism"? Second: What is the proper response to the crime? Whatever the answer, it must at least satisfy a moral truism: If we propose some principle that is to be applied to antagonists, then we must agree -- in fact, strenuously insist -- that the principle apply to us as well. Those who do not rise even to this minimal level of integrity plainly cannot be taken seriously when they speak of right and wrong, good and evil.

The problem of definition is held to be vexing and complex. There are, however, proposals that seem straightforward, for example, in US Army manuals, which define terrorism as "the calculated use of violence or threat of violence to attain goals that are political, religious, or ideological in nature...through intimidation, coercion, or instilling fear." NOTE{_US Army Operational Concept for Terrorism Counteraction_ (TRADOC Pamphlet No. 525-37), 1984.} That definition carries additional authority because of the timing: it was offered as the Reagan administration was intensifying its war on terrorism. The world has changed little enough so that these recent precedents should be instructive, even apart from the continuity of leadership from the first war on terrorism to its recent reincarnation.

The first war received strong endorsement. The UN General Assembly condemned international terrorism two months after Reagan's denunciation, again in much stronger and more explicit terms in 1987. NOTE{GA Res. 40/61, 9 Dec. 1985; Res. 42/159, 7 Dec. 1987.} Support was not unanimous, however. The 1987 resolution passed 153-2, Honduras abstaining. Explaining their negative vote, the US and Israel identified the fatal flaw: the statement that "nothing in the present resolution could in any way prejudice the right to self-determination, freedom, and independence, as derived from the Charter of the United Nations, of people forcibly deprived of that right..., particularly peoples under colonial and racist regimes and foreign occupation..." That was understood to apply to the struggle of the African National Congress against the Apartheid regime of South Africa (a US ally, while the ANC was officially labeled a "terrorist organization"); and to the Israeli military occupation, then in its 20th year, sustained by US military and diplomatic support in virtual international isolation. Presumably because of US opposition, the UN resolution against terrorism was ignored. NOTE{See my _Necessary Illusions_ (Boston: South End, 1989), chap. 4; my essay in Alex George, ed., _Western State Terrorism_ (Cambridge: Polity/Blackwell, 1991).}

Reagan's 1985 condemnation referred specifically to terrorism in the Middle East, selected as the lead story of 1985 in an AP poll. But for Secretary of State George Shultz, the administration moderate, the most "alarming" manifestation of "state-sponsored terrorism," a plague spread by "depraved opponents of civilization itself" in "a return to barbarism in the modern age," was frighteningly close to home. There is "a cancer, right here in our land mass," Shultz informed Congress, threatening to conquer the hemisphere in a "revolution without borders," an interesting fabrication exposed at once but regularly reiterated with appropriate shudders. NOTE{Shultz, "Terrorism: The Challenge to the Democracies," June 24, 1984 (State Dept. Current Policy No. 589); "Terrorism and the Modern World," Oct. 25, 1984 (State Department Current Policy No. 629). Shultz's congressional testimony, 1986, 1983, the former part of a major campaign to gain more funding for the contras; see Jack Spence and Eldon Kenworthy in Thomas Walker, ed., _Reagan versus the Sandinistas_ (Boulder, London: Westview, 1987).}

So severe was the threat that on Law Day (1 May) 1985, the President announced an embargo "in response to the emergency situation created by the Nicaraguan Government's aggressive activities in Central America." He also declared a national emergency, renewed annually, because "the policies and actions of the Government of Nicaragua constitute an unusual and extraordinary threat to the national security and foreign policy of the United States."

"The terrorists -- and the other states that aid and abet them -- serve as grim reminders that democracy is fragile and needs to be guarded with vigilance," Shultz warned. We must "cut [the Nicaraguan cancer] out," and not by gentle means: "Negotiations are a euphemism for capitulation if the shadow of power is not cast across the bargaining table," Shultz declared, condemning those who advocate "utopian, legalistic means like outside mediation, the United Nations, and the World Court, while ignoring the power element of the equation." The US was exercising "the power element of the equation" with mercenary forces based in Honduras, under Negroponte's supervision, and successfully blocking the "utopian, legalistic means" pursued by the World Court and the Latin American Contadora nations -- as Washington continued to do until its terrorist wars were won. NOTE{Shultz, "Moral Principles and Strategic Interests," April 14, 1986 (State Department, Current Policy No. 820).}

Reagan's condemnation of the "evil scourge" was issued at a meeting in Washington with Israeli Prime Minister Shimon Peres, who arrived to join in the call to extirpate the evil shortly after he had sent his bombers to attack Tunis, killing 75 people with smart bombs that tore them to shreds among other atrocities recorded by the prominent Israeli journalist Amnon Kapeliouk on the scene. Washington cooperated by failing to warn its ally Tunisia that the bombers were on the way. Shultz informed Israeli Foreign Minister Yitzhak Shamir that Washington "had considerable sympathy for the Israeli action," but drew back when the Security Council unanimously denounced the bombing as an "act of armed aggression" (US abstaining).NOTE{_NYT_, Oct. 17, 18; Kapeliouk, _Yediot Ahronot_, Nov. 15, 1985. Foreknowledge, _Los Angeles Times_, Oct. 3; Geoffrey Jansen, _Middle East International_, Oct 11, 1985. Bernard Gwertzman, _NYT_, Oct. 2, 7, 1985.}

A second candidate for most extreme act of Mideast international terrorism in the peak year of 1985 is a car-bombing in Beirut on March 8 that killed 80 people and wounded 256. The bomb was placed outside a Mosque, timed to explode when worshipers left. "About 250 girls and women in flowing black chadors, pouring out of Friday prayers at the Imam Rida Mosque, took the brunt of the blast," Nora Boustany reported. The bomb also "burned babies in their beds," killed children "as they walked home from the mosque," and "devastated the main street of the densely populated" West Beirut suburb. The target was a Shi'ite leader accused of complicity in terrorism, but he escaped. The crime was organized by the CIA and its Saudi clients with the assistance of British intelligence. NOTE{Boustany, _Washington Post Weekly_, March 14, 1988; Bob Woodward, _Veil_ (Simon & Schuster, 1987, 396f.).}

The only other competitor for the prize is the "Iron Fist" operations that Peres directed in March in occupied Lebanon, reaching new depths of "calculated brutality and arbitrary murder," a Western diplomat familiar with the area observed, as Israel Defense Forces (IDF) shelled villages, carted off the male population, killed dozens of villagers in addition to many massacred by the IDF's paramilitary associates, shelled hospitals and took patients away for "interrogation," along with numerous other atrocities. NOTE{_Guardian_, March 6, 1985. For details and sources, see my "Middle East Terrorism and the American Ideological System," in _Pirates and Emperors_ (New York: Claremont 1986; Montreal: Black Rose, 1988), reprinted in Edward Said and Christopher Hitchens, eds., _Blaming the Victims_ (London: Verso, 1988).} The IDF high command described the targets as "terrorist villagers." The operations against them must continue, the military correspondent of the _Jerusalem Post_ (Hirsh Goodman) added, because the IDF must "maintain order and security" in occupied Lebanon despite "the price the inhabitants will have to pay."

Like Israel's invasion of Lebanon 3 years earlier, leaving some 18,000 killed, these actions and others in Lebanon were not undertaken in self-defense but rather for political ends, as recognized at once in Israel. The same was true, almost entirely, of those that followed, up to Peres's murderous invasion of 1996. But all relied crucially on US military and diplomatic support. Accordingly, they too do not enter the annals of international terrorism.

In brief, there was nothing odd about the proclamations of the leading co-conspirators in Mideast international terrorism, which therefore passed without comment at the peak moment of horror at the "return to barbarism."

The well-remembered prize-winner for 1985 is the hijacking of the _Achille Lauro_ and brutal murder of a passenger, Leon Klinghoffer, doubtless a vile terrorist act, and surely not justified by the claim that it was in retaliation for the far worse Tunis atrocities and a pre-emptive effort to deter others. Adopting moral truisms, the same holds of our own acts of retaliation or pre-emption.

Evidently, we have to qualify the definition of "terrorism" given in official sources: the term applies only to terrorism against _us_, not the terrorism we carry out against _them_. The practice is conventional, even among the most extreme mass murderers: the Nazis were protecting the population from terrorist partisans directed from abroad, while the Japanese were laboring selflessly to create an "earthly paradise" as they fought off the "Chinese bandits" terrorizing the peaceful people of Manchuria and their legitimate government. Exceptions would be hard to find.

The same convention applies to the war to exterminate the Nicaraguan cancer. On Law Day 1984, President Reagan proclaimed that without law there can be only "chaos and disorder." The day before, he had announced that the US would disregard the proceedings of the International Court of Justice, which went on to condemn his administration for its "unlawful use of force," ordering it to terminate these international terrorist crimes and pay substantial reparations to Nicaragua (June 1986). The Court decision was dismissed with contempt, as was a subsequent Security Council resolution calling on all states to observe international law (vetoed by the US) and repeated General Assembly resolutions (US and Israel opposed, in one case joined by El Salvador).

As the Court decision was announced, Congress substantially increased funding for the mercenary forces engaged in "the unlawful use of force." Shortly after, the US command directed them to attack "soft targets" -- undefended civilian targets -- and to avoid combat with the Nicaraguan army, as they could do, thanks to US control of the skies and the sophisticated communication equipment provided to the terrorist forces. The tactic was considered reasonable by prominent commentators as long as it satisfied "the test of cost-benefit analysis," an analysis of "the amount of blood and misery that will be poured in, and the likelihood that democracy will emerge at the other end" -- "democracy" as Western elites understand the term, an interpretation illustrated graphically in the region. NOTE{For details, see my _Culture of Terrorism_ (Boston: South End, 1988), 77f.}

State Department Legal Advisor Abraham Sofaer explained why the US was entitled to reject ICJ jurisdiction. In earlier years, most members of the UN "were aligned with the United States and shared its views regarding world order." But since decolonization a "majority often opposes the United States on important international questions." Accordingly, we must "reserve to ourselves the power to determine" how we will act and which matters fall "essentially within the domestic jurisdiction of the United States, as determined by the United States" -- in this case, the terrorist acts against Nicaragua condemned by the Court and the Security Council. For similar reasons, since the 1960s the US has been far in the lead in vetoing Security Council resolutions on a wide range of issues, Britain second, France a distant third.NOTE{Sofaer, _The United States and the World Court_ (State Dept. Current Policy 769), Dec. 1985.}

Washington waged its "war on terrorism" by creating an international terror network of unprecedented scale, and employing it worldwide, with lethal and long-lasting effects. In Central America, terror guided and supported by the US reached its most extreme levels in countries where the state security forces themselves were the immediate agents of international terrorism. The effects were reviewed in a 1994 conference organized by Salvadoran Jesuits, whose experiences had been particularly gruesome. NOTE{Juan Hern ndez Pico, _Env¡o_ (Universidad Centroamericana, Managua), March 1994.} The conference report takes particular note of the effects of the residual "culture of terror...in domesticating the expectations of the majority vis-a-vis alternatives different to those of the powerful," an important observation on the efficacy of state terror that generalizes broadly. In Latin America, the 11 September atrocities were harshly condemned, but commonly with the observation that they are nothing new. They may be described as "Armageddon," the research journal of the Jesuit university in Managua observed, but Nicaragua has "lived its own Armageddon in excruciating slow motion" under US assault "and is now submerged in its dismal aftermath," and others fared far worse under the vast plague of state terror that swept through the continent from the early 1960s, much of it traceable to Washington. NOTE{_Env¡o_, Oct. 2001. For a judicious review of the aftermath, see Thomas Walker and Ariel Armony, eds., _Repression, Resistance, and Democratic Transition in Central America_ (Wilmington: Scholarly Resources, 2000).}

It is hardly surprising that Washington's call for support in its war of revenge for 11 Sept. had little resonance in Latin America. An international Gallup poll found that support for military force rather than extradition ranged from 2% (Mexico) to 11% (Venezuela and Colombia). Condemnations of the 11 Sept. terror were regularly accompanied by recollections of their own suffering, for example, the death of perhaps thousands of poor people (Western crimes, therefore unexamined) when George Bush I bombed the barrio Chorillo in Panama in December 1989 in Operation Just Cause, undertaken to kidnap a disobedient thug who was sentenced to life imprisonment in Florida for crimes mostly committed while he was on the CIA payroll. NOTE{_Env¡o_, Oct. 2001; Panamanian journalist Ricardo Stevens, NACLA _Report on the Americas_, Nov/Dec 2001.}

The record continues to the present without essential change, apart from modification of pretexts and tactics. The list of leading recipients of US arms yields ample evidence, familiar to those acquainted with international human rights reports.

It therefore comes as no surprise that President Bush informed Afghans that bombing will continue until they hand over people the US suspects of terrorism (rebuffing requests for evidence and tentative offers of negotiation). Or, when new war aims were added after three weeks of bombing, that Admiral Sir Michael Boyce, chief of the British Defense Staff, warned Afghans that US-UK attacks will continue "until the people of the country themselves recognize that this is going to go on until they get the leadership changed." NOTE {Patrick Tyler and Elisabeth Bumiller, _NYT_, Oct. 12; Michael Gordon, _NYT_, Oct. 28, 2001; both p. 1.} In other words, the US and UK will persist in "the calculated use of violence to attain goals that are political... in nature...": international terrorism in the technical sense, but excluded from the canon by the standard convention. The rationale is essentially that of the US-Israel international terrorist operations in Lebanon. Admiral Boyce is virtually repeating the words of the eminent Israeli statesman Abba Eban, as Reagan declared the first war on terrorism. Replying to Prime Minister Menachem Begin's account of atrocities in Lebanon committed under the Labor government in the style "of regimes which neither Mr. Begin nor I would dare to mention by name," Eban acknowledged the accuracy of the account, but added the standard justification: "there was a rational prospect, ultimately fulfilled, that affected populations would exert pressure for the cessation of hostilities." NOTE{_Jerusalem Post_, Aug. 16, 1981.}

These concepts are conventional, as is the resort to terrorism when deemed appropriate. Furthermore, its success is openly celebrated. The devastation caused by US terror operations in Nicaragua was described quite frankly, leaving Americans "United in Joy" at their successful outcome, the press proclaimed. The massacre of hundreds of thousands of Indonesians in 1965, mostly landless peasants, was greeted with unconstrained euphoria, along with praise for Washington for concealing its own critical role, which might have embarrassed the "Indonesian moderates" who had cleansed their society in a "staggering mass slaughter" (_New York Times_) that the CIA compared to the crimes of Stalin, Hitler, and Mao. NOTE{For extensive review, see my _Necessary Illusions_ and _Deterring Democracy_ (London: Verso, 1991) (Nicaragua); _Year 501_ (Boston: South End, 1993) (Indonesia).} There are many other examples. One might wonder why Osama bin Laden's disgraceful exultation over the atrocities of 11 Sept. occasioned indignant surprise. But that would be an error, based on failure to distinguish their terror, which is evil, from ours, which is noble, the operative principle throughout history.

If we keep to official definitions, it is a serious error to describe terrorism as the weapon of the weak. Like most weapons, it is wielded to far greater effect by the strong. But then it is not terror; rather, "counter terror," or "low intensity warfare," or "self-defense"; and if successful, "rational" and "pragmatic," and an occasion to be "united in joy."

Let us turn to the question of proper response to the crime, bearing in mind the governing moral truism. If, for example, Admiral Boyce's dictum is legitimate, then victims of Western state terrorism are entitled to act accordingly. That conclusion is, properly, regarded as outrageous. Therefore the principle is outrageous when applied to official enemies, even more so when we recognize that the actions were undertaken with the expectation that they would place huge numbers of people at grave risk. No knowledgeable authority seriously questioned the UN estimate that "7.5 million Afghans will need food over the winter -- 2.5 million more than on Sept. 11," NOTE{Elisabeth Bumiller and Elizabeth Becker, _NYT_, Oct. 17, 2001.} a 50% increase as a result of the threat of bombing, then the actuality, with a toll that will never be investigated if history is any guide.

A different proposal, put forth by the Vatican among others, was spelled out by military historian Michael Howard: "a police operation conducted under the auspices of the United Nations...against a criminal conspiracy whose members should be hunted down and brought before an international court, where they would receive a fair trial and, if found guilty, be awarded an appropriate sentence." NOTE{_Foreign Affairs_, Jan/Feb 2002; talk of Oct. 30. See Tania Branigan, _Guardian_, Oct. 31, 2001.} Though never contemplated, the proposal seems reasonable. If so, then it would be reasonable if applied to Western state terrorism, something that could also never be contemplated, though for opposite reasons.

The war in Afghanistan has commonly been described as a "just war," indeed evidently so. There have been some attempts to frame a concept of "just war" that might support the judgment. We may therefore ask how these proposals fare when evaluated in terms of the same moral truism. I have yet to see one that does not instantly collapse: application of the proposed concept to Western state terrorism would be considered unthinkable, if not despicable. For example, we might ask how the proposals would apply to the one case that is uncontroversial in the light of the judgments of the highest international authorities, Washington's war against Nicaragua; uncontroversial, that is, among those who have some commitment to international law and treaty obligations. It is an instructive experiment.

Similar questions arise in connection with other aspects of the wars on terrorism. There has been debate over whether the US-UK war in Afghanistan was authorized by ambiguous Security Council resolutions, but it is beside the point. The US surely could have obtained clear and unambiguous authorization, not for attractive reasons (consider why Russia and China eagerly joined the coalition, hardly obscure). But that course was rejected, presumably because it would suggest that there is some higher authority to which the US should defer, a condition that a state with overwhelming power is not likely to accept. There is even a name for that stance in the literature of diplomacy and international relations: establishing "credibility," a standard official justification for the resort to violence, the bombing of Serbia, to mention a recent example. The refusal to consider negotiated transfer of the suspected perpetrators presumably had the same grounds.

The moral truism applies to such matters as well. The US refuses to extradite terrorists even when their guilt has been well established. One current case involves Emmanuel Constant, the leader of the Haitian paramilitary forces that were responsible for thousands of brutal killings in the early 1990s under the military junta, which Washington officially opposed but tacitly supported, publicly undermining the OAS embargo and secretly authorizing oil shipments. Constant was sentenced in absentia by a Haitian court. The elected government has repeatedly called on the US to extradite him, again on September 30, 2001, while Taliban initiatives to negotiate transfer of bin Laden were being dismissed with contempt. Haiti's request was again ignored, probably because of concerns about what Constant might reveal about ties to the US government during the period of the terror. Do we therefore conclude that Haiti has the right to use force to compel his extradition, following as best it can Washington's model in Afghanistan? The very idea is outrageous, yielding another prima facie violation of the moral truism.

It is all too easy to add illustrations. NOTE{For a sample, see George, _op. cit._. Exceptions are rare, and the reactions they elicit are not without interest.} Consider Cuba, probably the main target of international terrorism since 1959, remarkable in scale and character, some of it exposed in declassified documents on Kennedy's Operation Mongoose and continuing to the late 1990s. Cold War pretexts were ritually offered as long as that was possible, but internally the story was the one commonly unearthed on inquiry. It was recounted in secret by Arthur Schlesinger, reporting the conclusions of JFK's Latin American mission to the incoming President: the Cuban threat is "the spread of the Castro idea of taking matters into one's own hands," which might stimulate the "poor and underprivileged" in other countries, who "are now demanding opportunities for a decent living" -- the "virus" or "rotten apple" effect, as it is called in high places The Cold War connection was that "the Soviet Union hovers in the wings, flourishing large development loans and presenting itself as the model for achieving modernization in a single generation." NOTE{_FRUS_, 1961-63, vol. XII, American Republics, 13f., 33.}

True, these exploits of international terrorism -- which were quite serious -- are excluded by the standard convention. But suppose we keep to the official definition. In accord with the theories of "just war" and proper response, how has Cuba been entitled to react?

It is fair enough to denounce international terrorism as a plague spread by "depraved opponents of civilization itself." The commitment to "drive the evil from the world" can even be taken seriously, if it satisfies moral truisms -- not, it would seem, an entirely unreasonable thought.

Ken Booth & Tim Dunne (eds.), Worlds in Collision: Terror and the Future of Global Order, Palgrave, Mcmillan, May, 2002