The moral difference between state violence and suicide bombing is not self-evident.
Evidence
The logic of martyrdom proceeds along different lines. It is epitomized by the figure of the “suicide bomber,” which itself raises a number of questions. What intrinsic difference is there between killing with a missile helicopter or a tank and killing with one’s own body? Does the distinction between the arms used to inflict death prevent the establishment of a system of general exchange between the manner of killing and the manner of dying? — Achille Mbembe, Necropolitics, 153
Categorization
- QUESTION: A genuinely open question worth chasing: what constitutes the analytic difference between distance-killing and body-killing, and why does the reading habitually treat them as morally distinct?
- DEEPTHINKING: The challenge to the privileged moral status of distance weaponry (missiles, tanks) over body-borne violence is a dense, paradigm-shifting inversion worth sitting with.
- XREF: connects to: Human morality is contingent rather than invariant across circumstances. — Nicolas Baumard, A mutualistic approach to morality: The…, 390; Moral value is assigned externally to actions, not intrinsic to them. — Zygmunt Bauman, Modernity and the Holocaust, 84
Related
- In suicide bombing the body itself becomes the weapon, not merely its concealment. (similarity 0.78)
Broader Connections
- Moral value is assigned externally to actions, not intrinsic to them.
#corroborates(0.78) — Zygmunt Bauman, Modernity and the Holocaust, 84 - Human morality is contingent rather than invariant across circumstances.
#expands(0.72) — Nicolas Baumard, A mutualistic approach to morality, 390