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The Morality of Conquest

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  02 April 2024

Tzvetan Todorov

Extract

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One of the great problems of our time is how to behave toward a society that is different from our own. Rather than deal with this question in the abstract, I should like to present a particular case, truly exemplary: that of the first encounter between Europeans and Americans and, more specifically, the most spectacular illustration of it, the conquest of Mexico. By “exemplary” I do not at all mean that the behavior of our ancestors should be imitated; we know that the immediate result of that encounter was an extermination of human beings in proportions that had never been seen before and have never been attained afterward, in spite of the efforts made in this regard in the twentieth century. The conquest of America is exemplary in that it produced many varied and elaborated attitudes and that it gave rise to a wealth of texts that allow us to envisage the problem in all its complexity.

Type
Research Article
Information
Diogenes , Volume 32 , Issue 125 , January 1984 , pp. 89 - 102
Copyright
Copyright © 1984 Fédération Internationale des Sociétés de Philosophie / International Federation of Philosophical Societies (FISP)

References

1 For Mes Pensées the numbers between parentheses refer first, to the chronologi cal classification of the Nagel edition (Paris, 1950-1955); second, preceded by "Bkn" to the systematic classification of Barkhausen, also used in the editions of Pléiade and Intégrale. For l'Esprit des lois, the Roman numeral indicates the book; the Arab numeral, the chapter.