The banality of goodness
By being too distant and dispassionate could our writers, judges, social theorists and others in the public space be accused of not bestowing requisite warmth and empathy in their actions and pronouncements? Is it in other words proper to apply the above praxis of detachment in all human encounters that call for the use of both judgement and empathy and compassion? T he defendant is one of six accused of not having gone to the aid of several hundred women prisoners locked into a church that was later bombed by the Allies. All defendants were women guards at a Nazi satellite concentration camp near Auschwitz. Photo: Edward Onslow Ford , Justice , partie d'un monument au maharajah de Mysore During a moment in the trial the defendant does not apparently know what she should or could have done differently. She therefore poses that question to the judge asking him what he would have done. The judge replies that there are matters “one could not get drawn into”. By using the