There is always a risk of anthropocentrism here if one assumes that the distinctively human life is valuable-or most valuable-or is the only way to think the problem of value. It becomes a question for ethics, I think, not only when we ask the personal question, what makes my own life bearable, but when we ask, from a position of power, and from the point of view of distributive justice, what makes, or ought to make, the lives of others bearable? Somewhere in the answer we find ourselves not only committed to a certain view of what life is, and what it should be, but also of what constitutes the human, the distinctively human life, and what does not. If that makes them all philosophers, then that is a conclusion I am happy to embrace. It is posed in various idioms all the time by people in various walks of life. It is not merely a question for philosophers. “What makes for a livable world is no idle question. ![]() Precarious Life: The Powers of Mourning and Violence On one level, I think I have lost “you” only to discover that “I” have gone missing as well.” Who “am” I, without you? When we lose some of these ties by which we are constituted, we do not know who we are or what to do. If I lose you, under these conditions, then I not only mourn the loss, but I become inscrutable to myself. ![]() It is not as if an “I” exists independently over here and then simply loses a “you” over there, especially if the attachment to “you” is part of what composes who “I” am. But maybe when we undergo what we do, something about who we are is revealed, something that delineates the ties we have to others, that shows us that these ties constitute what we are, ties or bonds that compose us. ![]() “When we lose certain people, or when we are dispossessed from a place, or a community, we may simply feel that we are undergoing something temporary, that mourning will be over and some restoration of prior order will be achieved.
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