Nicoline van Harskamp - DeLVe | Institute for Duration, Location and ...

GDJE SE SVE TEK TREBA DOGODITI / WHERE EVERYTHING IS YET TO HAPPEN
between two (or more) bad options in a given situation. The general case is the structuring
principle in an economy of ethical calculations, manifested in attempts to reduce or
lessen the bad and increase the good. Both cases affirm an economic model embedded
at the heart of ethics according to which, in absence of the possibility to avoid all harm,
various forms of misfortune must be calculated against each other (as if they were algorithms
in a mathematical minimum problem), evaluated, and acted upon. The principle
of the lesser evil implies that there is no way out of calculations.
As a dilemma, the “lesser evil” is presented as the necessity of a choice of action in situations
where the available options are or seem to be limited. It is a dilemma in the classical
Greek sense of the word – when each of the two options presented to the tragic hero
necessarily lead to different forms of suffering. The dilemma implies a closed system in
which the options presented for choice could not be questioned or negotiated. Regardless
of what option is chosen, accepting the terms of the question leaves the (political)
power that presented this ‘choice’ unchallenged and even reinforced. It is in accepting
the parameters as given that the lesser evil argument is properly ideological. The
dilemma, if we are still to think in its terms, should thus not only be about which of the
bad options to choose, but whether to choose at all and thus accept the very terms of the
question. When asked to choose between the two horns of an angry bull, Robert Pirsig
suggested alternatives: one can “refuse to enter the arena”, “throw sand in the bull’s
eyes”, or even “sing the bull to sleep”. 7
The “Perpetrators of Lesser Evils”
The term “lesser evil” has recently been prominently invoked in the context of attempts
to moderate the excesses of western states, in particular in relation to attempts
to govern the economics of violence in the context of the ‘War on Terror’, and in private
organizations’ attempts to manoeuvre through the paradoxes and complicities of
human rights action and humanitarian aid. More specifically, the “lesser evil” has been
most often invoked at the very intersection of these two spheres of action – military
and humanitarian. In relation to the ‘global War on Terror’, the terms of this argument
were recently articulated in a book titled The Lesser Evil by human rights scholar and
now deputy leader of the Liberal Party of Canada, Michael Ignatieff. In his book, Ignatieff
suggests that liberal states should establish mechanisms to regulate the breach of some
rights and allow their security services to engage in forms of extrajuridical violence – in
his eyes, “lesser evils” – in order to fend off or minimize potential ‘greater evils’, such
as further terror attacks on civilians of the western states. His conception of the “lesser
evil” is presented as a balancing act because its flexible regime of exceptions should be
regulated through a process of “adversarial scrutiny of an open democratic system” and
is thus also aimed to prevent the transformation, through the ‘temporary’ primacy given
to the security services, of the liberal state into a totalitarian one. 8 Ignatieff calls for the
security officials of liberal democracies to become the “perpetrators of lesser evils”. 9
These postmodern perpetrators (the “lesser evil” should surely replace the “banality of
evil” as the contemporary form of perpetration of crimes of state) should weigh various
types of destructive measures in a utilitarian fashion, in relation not to the damage they
produce but to the harm they purportedly prevent. The calculation, however, is obvi-