George Cotkin

On his book Morality’s Muddy Waters: Ethical Quandaries in Modern America

Cover Interview of May 02, 2010

In a nutshell

Morality’s Muddy Waters, as the subtitle suggests, worries about ethical quandaries in recent American history. I like my history and morality muddy, so to speak. Rather than a dry philosophical approach, the book looks at morality in action.

This project began five years ago on a gentle evening after viewing Hotel Rwanda, the film documenting genocide. I decided immediately to cease working on a book about American cultural criticism. I was shaken to the core of my being, and I had to do something that would address inhumanity, in its varied forms. I think that Morality’s Muddy Waters achieves this end, although without moral hectoring or absolutes.

I am an historian with a philosophical bent. My book is narrative in nature with a desire to draw from historical research insight into what we are to do at present when faced with perplexing moral challenges.

Too often, we shy away from the concept of evil. But evil demands a voice as a descriptive and analytical term. So that is where I begin. Next, issues as varied as the bombing of civilian areas in the Second World War, the My Lai massacre, and the death penalty are examined for their moral cloudiness.

Some presume that the best way of overcoming moral passivity and evil may be through empathy. As I show in one chapter, empathy can be invaluable, the necessary first step towards moral comprehension and action. Alas, empathy can also lead us astray, as in our decision to invade Iraq.

I hope that after following my narratives of trial and tribulation in matters of morality you come away with more questions than answers. That, it seems to me, constitutes the essence of good history, and the start of better moral thinking.

history / philosophy / race / ethics / wwii / war / obama barack / bush george w / morality / iraq /

[T]he Holocaust transformed our whole way of thinking about war and heroism. War is no longer a proving ground for heroism in the same way it used to be. Instead, war now is something that we must avoid at all costs—because genocides often take place under the cover of war. We are no longer all potential soldiers (though we are that too), but we are all potential victims of the traumas war creates. This, at least, is one important development in the way Western populations envision war, even if it does not always predominate in the thinking of our political leaders.

Carolyn J. Dean,
Interview of February 01, 2011

The dominant premise in evolution and economics is that a person is being loyal to natural law if he or she attends to self’s interest and welfare before being concerned with the needs and demands of family or community. The public does not realize that this statement is not an established scientific principle but an ethical preference. Nonetheless, this belief has created a moral confusion among North Americans and Europeans because the evolution of our species was accompanied by the disposition to worry about kin and the collectives to which one belongs.

Jerome Kagan,
Interview of September 17, 2009