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Emergencies and Politics
In this book, Tom Sorell argues that emergencies can justify types of
action that would normally be regarded as wrong. Beginning with the
ethics of emergencies facing individuals, he explores the range of effec-
tive and legitimate private emergency response and its relation to public
institutions, such as national governments. He develops a theory of the
response of governments to public emergencies which indicates the possi-
bility of a democratic politics that is liberal but that takes seriously threats
to life and limb from public disorder, crime or terrorism. Informed by
Hobbes, Schmitt and Walzer but departing substantially from them, the
book widens the justiﬁcation for recourse to normally forbidden measures,
without resorting to illiberal politics. This book will interest students of
politics, philosophy, international relations and law.
tom sorellis Professor of Politics and Philosophy at Warwick Univer-
sity. From 2008–2012, he led the European Union FP7 Security project
DETECTER (on the ethics and human rights issues surrounding the use of
detection technologies in counter-terrorism), and is now leader of several
Work Packages in the current SURVEILLE project (2012–2015). He is
Principal Investigator of the major AHRC project, ‘Responsibilities, Ethics
and the Financial Crisis’ (FinCris) running from 2012–2015 and also con-
tributes to the FP7 IT project ACCOMPANY on robotics and care com-
panions. He has published monographs in history of philosophy, especially
on Hobbes and Descartes; moral and political philosophy; epistemology
and philosophy of science; as well as several distinct areas of applied ethics.

EmergenciesandPolitics
A Sober Hobbesian Approach
tom sorell
University of Warwick

University Printing House, Cambridge CB2 8BS, United Kingdom
Published in the United States of America by Cambridge University Press, New York
Cambridge University Press is part of the University of Cambridge.
It furthers the University’s mission by disseminating knowledge in the pursuit of
education, learning and research at the highest international levels of excellence.
www.cambridge.org
Information on this title:www.cambridge.org/9781107044319
CTom Sorell 2013
This publication is in copyright. Subject to statutory exception
and to the provisions of relevant collective licensing agreements,
no reproduction of any part may take place without the written
permission of Cambridge University Press.
First published 2013
Printed in the United Kingdom by Clays, St Ives plc
A catalogue record for this publication is available from the British Library
Library of Congress Cataloguing in Publication data
Sorell, Tom.
Emergencies and politics : a sober Hobbesian approach / Tom Sorell.
pages cm
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN 978-1-107-04431-9 (hardback)
1. War and emergency powers – Philosophy. 2. Democracy. 3. Liberalism.
4. Rule of law. 5. Hobbes, Thomas, 1588–1679. I. Title.
JF256.S67 2013
363.3401 – dc23 2013016804
ISBN 978-1-107-04431-9 Hardback
Cambridge University Press has no responsibility for the persistence or accuracy of
URLs for external or third-party internet websites referred to in this publication,
and does not guarantee that any content on such websites is, or will remain,
accurate or appropriate.

For Brenda and Conor McHugh

Contents
Preface page ix
Acknowledgements xix
1 Private emergencies and institutions 1
Private emergencies and excusable wrongdoing 3
Emergencies and moral latitude 7
Emergencies and harm 14
Ethics for private emergencies 16
2 Public emergencies, black holes and sober
Hobbesianism 22
From private to public emergencies 22
Black holes and the state of nature 25
From unreconstructed to sober Hobbesianism 28
3 Liberalism with Hobbesian sobriety 55
Institutions as legitimized by individuals’ reasons for action61
Rights grounded in interests 64
Autonomy and social forms 67
Reason and critical abilities 70
The strains in Raz 74
4 Can liberal emergency response address threats to
peoples and civilizations? 85
The liberal domestication of emergency 85
Schmitt: Can there be a liberal domestication of
emergency?
93
Second thoughts about the high points of politics,
homogeneous nations and ‘civilizations’
109
Beyond the national and the tribal? 116
5 Liberalism and emergency response: national
community 121
National community 122
vii

viii Contents
Emergency and community 124
Unassimilated minorities 129
National autonomy, relativism and fundamentalism 134
Emergency response in liberalism with Hobbesian sobriety139
6 Legislating for emergencies and legislating in
emergencies 148
The old normal, the new normal and the abnormal 153
Normal vs. abnormal again: domestic and international
law
165
7 International security, human security and emergency176
Thick and thin conceptions of security 176
Human security vs. state security 180
Foreign emergency: humanitarian intervention 187
International emergency: the case of climate change 191
Conclusion 202
Index 207

Preface
Emergencies are situations, often unforeseen, in which there is a risk
of great harm or loss, and a need to act quickly and decisively if the
harm or loss is to be averted or minimized. An agent may be faced
with a risk of great harm or loss to himself, or great harm or loss to
others, sometimes a whole citizenry. The agent may be an individual,
acting in an unofﬁcial capacity, or a government or public agency. Is it
morally permissible for agents of any of these kinds to avert harm or
loss by means that morality or liberal politics would normally prohibit?
Should they always intervene? And when they can successfully avert or
limit the harm, are they permitted to do so at all costs, including moral
costs? If the only way of saving many lives is by lying, or stealing, or
resorting to violence, should the relevant agents lie, steal, or resort to
violence? Are there certain things, such as the inﬂiction of torture, that
are unthinkable means of saving even large numbers of lives? Finally,
are there certain things that institutional agents may do in coping
with a public emergency that individuals are never permitted to do
in confronting a private emergency? These are among the normative
moral and political questions raised in this book.
With many other writers, I argue that emergencies can justify types
of action that would normally be regarded as wrong. Especially where
what is at stake is life or lives, and there is no other way, the moral
overridingness of saving life makes lying or stealing or resorting to
violence to save a life permissible, and sometimes obligatory – other
things being equal (Chapter 1). The escape clause is necessary because
there are emergencies and emergencies. If the reason one is faced with
the demand to save a life is that one has negligently put that life in
danger, then the need for doubtful means to bring off a rescue is partly
of the agent’s own making. In that case, the usual excusability of the
wrong that has to be done to meet the emergency may be undercut
altogether or at least reduced. In general, emergencies just waiting to
happen because they have negligently been allowed to develop excuse
ix

x Preface
less wrongdoing than unavoidable emergencies. Emergencies that have
been allowed to develop include emergencies that have been sought
out, e.g., by devotees of ‘extreme’ sports, or by people who like ﬁghting.
The overridingness of saving life and of not putting life in jeopardy
creates a presumption in favour not only of intervening in an emer-
gency but also of preventing it altogether. There is also a presumption
in favour of what I call ‘domesticating’ emergencies, at least in many
cases (Chapter 1). Emergencies are domesticated when types of rou-
tine are developed forcontainingthe more familiar types of imminent
harm or loss efﬁciently rather than preventing them. In the case of pub-
lic emergencies in developed countries, these routines are the respon-
sibility of specialized emergency services. The repeatedly rehearsed
techniques of ﬁreﬁghters and drills by the rest of us have succeeded in
minimizing the effects of conﬂagrations in factories, schools and hotels,
for example, and comparable procedures of ambulance personnel now
prevent deaths from heart attacks.
The worse an avoidable emergency is, the more stringent the obliga-
tion to prevent or domesticate it. The worst of the avoidable emergen-
cies are what can be called ‘public emergencies’ – threats to life facing
signiﬁcant numbers of people or whole populations. The reasons these
are the worst emergencies are that they involve signiﬁcant harm to
large numbers of people and that they can trigger a general descent
into ruthlessness that I call a moral ‘black hole’. This is a situation
in which most of a large number of people behave as if everything is
permitted. Although public emergencies are more likely to give rise to
black holes than private ones, black holes do notnecessarilyattend
public emergencies, and their relative rarity in fact makes them weak
reasons for avoiding emergencies. Still, the large-scale harm threat-
ened by public emergencies is by itself a reason to domesticate them
or prevent them. Another is that public emergencies multiply private
emergencies to which individuals are often unequal, and in which they
sometimes have to play God.
Chapter 1discusses the ethics of private emergency – emergency
facing individuals – and indicates a connection between effective and
legitimate private emergency response and the existence of public,
including political, institutions. Chapters 2 to 5 develop a theory of the
response of governments to public emergencies. In an earlier version
of the book, I tried to bring the full range of public emergencies within
the scope of the theory, but to make it manageable, the discussion is

Preface xi
now mostly conﬁned to political emergencies. The theory developed
combines materials from Hobbes and Raz to indicate the possibility
of a democratic politics that is (thinly) liberal but that takes more seri-
ously than other liberalisms threats from disorder or crime or terrorism
to life and limb. The theory is Hobbesian, but with many departures
from the unreconstructed Hobbes. Being liberal, the account invites
objections from theorists who think that questions about emergency
response are nothing less than the undoing of liberalism. It invites
objections in particular from critics of liberalism who have themselves
appropriated Hobbes for the articulation and defence of anilliberal
politics (seeChapter 4).
The responsibility for preventing public emergencies, or contain-
ing them when they cannot be prevented, has traditionally fallen on
nation-states and their specialized protective institutions, including
police forces, armies, rescue and health services, and agencies for such
things as food hygiene and building standards. Governments have an
obligation not only to respond to threats facing citizens but to mini-
mize the need for private rescue and for individuals to play God. In
this way emergency politics – the theory of the obligations of legitimate
public institutions – takes up the slack left by emergency ethics. Not
only politics at the level of individual nations is implicated. Suprana-
tional institutions are also increasingly assigned a role in emergency
response.
Political theory and law usually take war, internal or external, to
be the prototype of the public emergency, and this will be the type of
emergency that gets most attention in this book. According to some
theorists, internal war is to be prevented by rigorous legal controls on
aggression, and war in the international arena is to be prevented by
strategic alliances, shows for the beneﬁt of non-allies of a willingness
and ability to repel invasion, and, in recent times, by the development
and enforcement of international law.
What happens when preventive measures fail and war is about to
break out or has already started? In that case, political theory and law
alike have traditionally placed the power to mobilize force in a head
of state or a committee with dictatorial powers, these powers to be
retained not only to meet an existing emergency but according to some
theorists, for as long as there is a threat of one. Theorists divide over
whether a signiﬁcant threat of war is permanent or temporary. The
view that the threat of war and the corresponding need for dictatorship
are at most temporary is close to common sense, and eventually I will

xii Preface
endorse it. But the opposing view is the more interesting of the two
philosophically, and there is a considerable amount to be learned from
seeing what is wrong with it.
Thomas Hobbes is the main early modern source of the view that
human beings are by nature warlike, and that highly centralized,
unlimited power is needed all the time to keep these warlike ten-
dencies in check (Chapter 2). A more recent variation on this posi-
tion is due to Carl Schmitt.
1
Up to a point inﬂuenced by Hobbes,
Schmitt’s view (Chapter 4) also reﬂects aspects of the constitutional
crises of the Weimar period in Germany. Hobbes and Schmitt agree
on more than the point that a public emergency needs a strong
response from a government with uniﬁed decision making. They
also agree that the purpose and correct form of a state innormal
times is to be drawn from the requirements for a state response to
emergency.
There is something of value in this point of agreement between
Hobbes and Schmitt. Emergency makes vivid the worth of a unitary,
central authority that can quickly translate decision into action. But
emergency can also put in an unﬂattering light the divided and pro-
tracted decision making of peacetime. Divided decision making is incip-
ient war, according to Hobbes, and the purpose of the state is to avoid
war. Again according to Hobbes, behaving as a citizen is best seen as
an exercise in self-preservation, so that there is something irrational
about disturbing the peace or unsettling a government that is good at
maintaining order. Someone who accepts the responsibilities of gov-
ernment is supposed to decide in a more impartial way than citizens
what their protection requires, and citizenship requires deference to
that co-ordinating and dispassionate directing intelligence. The design
of the state is to be dictated by the overriding goal of public safety,
a goal that everyone would agree to adopt if they were clear-headed
about the consequences of not doing so.
For Schmitt, on the other hand, government is not for public safety.
It is for energizing a popular will and, for example, enabling it to realize
in history a certain sort of mythic self-image in the face of enemies. The
1
Schmitt’s views have been rediscovered and widely discussed since 9/11. He is
only one of a range of European thinkers in the 1920s and 1930s who brought
Hobbes’s ideas to bear on the political instability of the period. See L. Foisneau,
J.-C. Merle and Tom Sorell, eds.Leviathan Between the Wars: Hobbes’s Impact
on Early Twentieth Century Political Philosophy(Frankfurt: Peter Lang, 2005).
Schmitt was a consistent admirer of Hobbes, although a critical one.

Preface xiii
vehicle for energizing a people is a personal will in tune with a people’s
will, the sort of personal will given authority when dictatorial powers
are conferred on a political leader in an emergency. If Schmitt is right,
emergency makes vivid the superiority of decision to debate even in
a non-emergency situation. Even in normal times, according to him,
decision concentrated in a dictator is a better channel for a people’s
will (and so for democracy) than the rational debates of a parliament:
for one thing, these debates force matters that people would or ought
to be willing to die for into the distorting mould of values that can be
balanced against one another and decided between coolly after rational
debate.
There is an important difference between these two appreciations
of dictatorship, and one that seems to me to show that, of the two,
the unreconstructed Hobbesian one is much to be preferred. I have
in mind Hobbes’s implied critique of a kind of fundamentalism that
Schmitt positively requires in a dictator. Hobbes nowhere claims that
the commonwealth should be dedicated to values that deﬁne its citizens
as a people in history. On the contrary, he denies that citizens ought
to be willing to ﬁght to the death for such values. Both personal and
group fundamentalism are things that the commonwealth is bound to
discourage, precisely because they lead to violent conﬂict (Chapter 2).
The purpose of the commonwealth is nothing other than the preserva-
tion of life and productive activity, and ﬁghts to the death in any cause
other than collective self-defence or survival are outlawed. Authorized
dictatorship is the medium by which the goal of the security of each
can be pursued without being sidetracked by disagreement. When each
citizen agrees to be guided in their public behaviour
2
by the laws of
the sovereign, according to Hobbes, each agrees not to let practical
decisions be biased by the self, the present and the pleasurable. Dicta-
torship is supposed to embody public and impersonal judgement, and
is supposed to be a means of reducing a plurality of conﬂicting security
plans to a single co-ordinated plan. Not only does this plan rise above
the selves of each of the many and the demands of the present time:
2
In hisThe Leviathan in the State Theory of Thomas Hobbes(1938) Schmitt
criticizes Hobbes for undermining his own lessons about the extent and
absoluteness of state power by limiting its scope with a distinction between
interior acts of will and belief and outward behaviour. Schmitt and Hobbes are
on the same side, however, in preferring decision to debate and unity to
plurality in the body politic.

xiv Preface
it rises above various illusions about destiny that come from shared
myths and religions.
Hobbes’s position, in fact, tells against three kinds of fundamental-
ism: the fundamentalism of an individual who would rather ﬁght to the
death than sacriﬁce his personal values, goals or self-image; the fun-
damentalism of a leader dedicated to realizing a possibly myth-based
will of the people, as in Schmitt; and the milder fundamentalism of
people and governments who would rather ﬁght to the death than give
up the continuity of a network of shared practices that deﬁnes them
as a community when that community is threatened militarily. This
milder fundamentalism (Chapter 5) does not necessarily have associ-
ations with mythic destinies, but it does accord great importance to a
sort of continuity which confers unity and identity on a people that the
state represents. According to this milder fundamentalism, defended in
our own day by Michael Walzer, a supreme emergency is constituted
not only by a large-scale threat to life but also by this combined with
a threat to a long-established collectivewayof life. It does not take
a dictator to safeguard such a way of life. A democratic government
could do it. But, according to Walzer, such a government has to be pre-
pared to go to great lengths in the defence of the continuity of practices
that binds them together historically. ‘Going to great lengths’ means
not only ﬁghting to the death, but if necessary ﬁghting ruthlessly –
in deﬁance of the scruples felt by the government in normal times.
According to Walzer, ruthless self-defence is legitimately open even to
undemocratic governments defending communities that are strongly
hierarchical and inegalitarian.
This is not a book about Hobbes and Schmitt, or a book about
Hobbes, Schmitt and Walzer. It is a book about right or permissi-
ble responses to private emergency and to an important subclass of
public emergencies, a book that is informed by Hobbes, Schmitt and
Walzer but which strikes out in a direction none of them takes. Public
emergency is harder than private emergency to respond to, and, in
the form of large scale violent conﬂict both within a jurisdiction and
internationally, it gets most of the attention in the book. A modiﬁed
Hobbesian approach to public emergency is developed and applied.
It is a liberalized but very thinly liberalized Hobbesian position. This
position stands up to criticisms of liberal emergency response made by
Schmitt and is much more faithful to the unreconstructed Hobbes than
Schmitt’s own views, inﬂuenced though they are by Hobbes. The thinly

Preface xv
liberalized Hobbesian position is also superior to other positions, such
as Walzer’s, that justify strong emergency response by reference to
the value of community, as opposed to the values of survival and the
avoidance of serious harm. What is more, it can be applied to problems
of emergency response facing individual jurisdictions (Chapter 6)as
well as the international order (Chapter 7).
I agree with Hobbes that the state has to be divorced from fun-
damentalisms, even of the mild kind, and that the value of security
deﬁnes some of the interests that the state must protect before oth-
ers. However, Hobbes was wrong to think that government should be
a permanent, authorized dictatorship for collective self-preservation.
Permanentdictatorship is not a necessary form of government, because
contrary to Hobbes, government is not a response to an emergency
permanently in the ofﬁng when human beings live together. Hobbes
makes too many forms of disagreement count as latent war, and he
exaggerates the degree to which the sources of the disagreement are
written into human nature. According to Hobbes, individuals are not
cut out by nature for rising above the passionate pursuit of short-term
gratiﬁcation in the present, and the only way to avoid the conﬂict that
results is for them to agree, out of fear, to be governed by a uniﬁed
source of decision separate from themselves.
Detachment from passions is accomplished by the delegation of deci-
sion making. Delegation to whom? Hobbes’s answer is, ‘A person or
assembly willing to rule in the interest of the safety of the many’.
According to Hobbes, the sovereign can be a human individual with
passions, but if he is to do his job he has to detach himself from these
passions in order to identify with the vital interests of his subjects.
Hobbes does not think this isbeyonda would-be head of state. So,
even according to Hobbes, human detachment from the passions is
sometimes possible. This is the key to a more sober Hobbesianism
than is to be found in Hobbes. The concession that detached prac-
tical reasoning is sometimes possible for individuals, taken together
with the implausibility of saying that all disagreement among sub-
jects is incipient war, opens the way to a form of government that
can be democratic to the extent that each citizen can detach him-
self from the practical biases that Hobbes identiﬁes. Sodictatorship
falls out as unnecessary as a condition of a state that is organized
around the value of security. Security can instead attract democratic
deference.

xvi Preface
A neo-Hobbesian position is possible, then, that escapes some of the
implausibility of the Hobbesian original. But it, too, turns out to be
unacceptable (Chapter 3). According to the neo-Hobbesian position,
security is the organizing goal of a state contracted for by individu-
als whose citizenly decisions proceed from suitable detachment. Again,
liberties are what law silently permits when law is tailored to what secu-
rity requires. The problem is that security is not a credibleorganizing
value of life in the state, and liberty is improperly conceived as what is
permitted by law geared to security. Security is more of aconstrainton
an organizing value, namely that of leading one’s life autonomously,
and liberty facilitates autonomy. Another way of putting the point is
by saying that a liberalism with some concessions to Hobbes is better
than neo-Hobbesianism.
A version of liberalism that can make these concessions and that
incorporates the right general understanding of practical reason is
Raz’s (Chapter 3). What I call liberalism with Hobbesian sobriety
is Raz’s liberalism, with some of its security provisions emphasized,
and with some of its communitarian elements and some of its outlying
claims about personal well-being subtracted. The essence of liberal-
ism with Hobbesian sobriety (I sometimes use the phrase ‘Hobbesian
sobriety’ for short) is that, while other things than security of life and
limb can and do matter enormously to people, including – to take Raz’s
examples – marriage, parenting, the practice of many occupations and
professions and some of the things that are prized by fundamental-
ists of different kinds, security of life is a condition of many or most.
Security thus makes sense asafundamental – not necessarilythefun-
damental – value for a state in which an indeﬁnite range of other
things – organized by the value of leading one’s life autonomously –
also matter. By the same token, things that are inconsistent with secu-
rity are prima facie ineligible as things a state can be dedicated to.
More precisely, where security would seem to a detached liberal-
democratic judgement to be undermined by a practice or an institution
that matters to some people, then that isprima faciea good reason for
suspending the practice or institution, sometimes by making it illegal.
Though some of the things that conﬂict with security become visible
only in emergencies, the fact that states should be designed so as to
minimize these conﬂicts is relevant even in normal times. In this way
emergency can be a guide to the design of the state outside periods
of emergency. The normal institutional setup, including the scheme

Preface xvii
of non-emergency law, has to discourage practices that contribute to
collective insecurity of life and limb. These practices include familiar
forms of criminality, but they also extend to fundamentalisms pursued
by both individuals and governments.
The case for liberalism with Hobbesian sobriety having been made
in Chapters 2 to 5, the theory is applied in the ﬁnal two chapters
to state responses to domestic emergency – primarily in the form of
counter-terrorism and public order offences – (Chapter 6), and interna-
tional humanitarian intervention and the over-consumption that partly
causes climate change (Chapter 7).
Liberalism with Hobbesian sobriety takes over from Hobbes the idea
that to be a good law, a law addressing a security threat has to be nec-
essary: many illiberal prohibitions that have actually been introduced
in the name of security – including several associated with the ‘War on
Terror’ – may in fact be unnecessary or even self-defeating as security
measures (Chapter 6). They may add nothing to already existing mea-
sures or create a backlash that itself increases insecurity. In recognizing
this, liberalism with Hobbesian sobriety makes available a non-liberal
basis for opposing security measures: namely the existence of a reason
to think they would be ineffective or indirectly disabling of security.
The democratic character of liberalism with Hobbesian sobriety, and
its emphasis on detachment as a desideratum of good judgement, fur-
ther constrain the introduction of the most illiberal security measures
to meet emergency. Measures that seem inconsistent with the formal
equality of citizens, measures that seem to be inconsistent in applica-
tion with the equal status of citizens, are objectionable from the point
of view of liberalism with Hobbesian sobriety, even though the value
of equality before the law can be acknowledged by regimes that limit
liberties.
The sober Hobbesian account supports dirty-handed government
action in the face of emergency when the threat is big enough and
imminent enough, but because it connects emergency with threats to
life and limb, it does not support dirty-handed action in defence of
ways of life simply. On the contrary, it affords resources for criti-
cal detachment from ways of life outside periods of emergency, espe-
cially where they are illiberal or at odds with personal security. Again,
although liberalism with Hobbesian sobriety calls for detachment on
the part of the many who are co-citizens and subject to a shared coer-
cive legal order, it does not call for cosmopolitan detachment. The

xviii Preface
security of co-citizens matters more to a liberal government than the
security of other people, and, when the security of co-citizens conﬂicts
with cosmopolitan aid or foreign humanitarian intervention, that is a
reason for omitting that aid or that intervention. This means that lib-
eralism with Hobbesian sobriety conﬂicts with the non-statist ‘human
security’ approach that has become inﬂuential in some international
institutions and among some academic writings on international rela-
tions. This conﬂict is not necessarily to the discredit of an approach
inﬂuenced by Hobbes, since ‘human security’ seems to inﬂate or revise
the concept of security in ways that are objectionable (Chapter 7).
Sober Hobbesianism also applies informatively to two kinds of emer-
gencies in international relations: militarized repression or expulsion
of some of a foreign population by its government, and the evolving
global climate change emergency (Chapter 7).
I started thinking about emergency in writing a previous book,
Moral Theory and Anomaly.
3
There I took up the question of whether
moral theories and the conventional morality that they systematize
are sometimes inapplicable. Emergencies ﬁt in with that topic, because
they can seem to be situations in which conventional morality lapses,
and in which systematizations of conventional morality cease to be
applicable in turn. The present book gives reasons for thinking that
emergencies are entirely accessible to conventional morality and moral
theory, while also admitting that they engage a section of conventional
morality and moral theory whose applications are not every day. Emer-
gency often involves threats to life and so engages with precepts about
saving life and not taking life that do not have to be applied routinely
in well-ordered, prosperous and peaceful places. But the fact that they
do not have to be applied routinely does not mean that their overrid-
ingness cannot be recognized even in normal times. Emergencies do
not typically create a moral black hole in which suddenly everything is
permitted. Still less do emergencies operate in such a way that things
done in them are neither right nor wrong. Instead, emergencies point
to the priority of saving life and minimizing serious harm among the
reasons for action on which morality concentrates.
3
(Oxford: Blackwell, 2000).

Acknowledgements
Portions of Chapters 1 and 3 previously appeared in my ‘Morality and
emergency’Proceedings of Aristotelian Society103 (2002) pp. 21–
37; and ‘Schmitt, Hobbes, and the politics of emergency’Filozofski
Vestnik26 (2003) pp. 223–242. Sections ofChapter 5are to appear in
L. Foisneau, J. C. Velasco Arroyo, C. H. Hiebaum (ed.),Open Democ-
racies(Hamburg: Springer, 2013). Many people have been exposed to
material from this book since 2005. Of these I wish to thank Lou
Cabrera, John Guelke and Jethro Butler for going through previous
versions of the whole typescript, as well as a number of anonymous
referees. Among audiences I would like particularly to single out that
provided by the staff seminar at the University of Gothenburg in 2006.
xix

1Private emergencies and institutions
Moral training and behaviour in keeping with it are geared to the
normal case. Most of us have been taught not to lie, but as preparation
for the sort of life in which telling the truth does not put one’s life at
risk. We are told to keep our promises, but against a background
in which breaking promises does not normally make the difference
between death and survival. Where situations facing agents overturn
these understandings, it is not so clear what they ought to do. Thus,
no one would criticize an Albanian in Kosovo for having lied about his
ethnic background to a Serb soldier during the Balkan conﬂict; and no
one would blame someone who has promised to look after someone
else’s groceries for eating them when she ﬁnds herself stranded and
disabled far from any help.In extremis, ordinary moral obligations
either lapse or may excusably be broken. Doing the right thing is
supposed to interfere signiﬁcantly with well-being or survival only
exceptionally, and moral training does not normally treat cases in
which there is a risk of suffering violence or death in the same way as
situations in which the costs of doing the right thing are negligible or
non-existent. A hero or a saint might die before breaking an ordinary
moral obligation, evenin extremis, but that would not show that the
ordinary moral obligationhadto be discharged, evenin extremis.
Someone who failed to do so could be blameless.
My interest in emergency is an interest in a special case of a depar-
ture from what moral training and conventional morality in our sort
of community take as normal.
1
An emergency is a situation, often
unforeseen, in which there is a risk of great harm or loss and a need
to act immediately or decisively if the loss or harm is to be averted or
minimized. There are important differences between, on the one hand,
public emergencies – emergencies facing whole states or large numbers
1
This theme is anticipated in myMoral Theory and Anomaly(Oxford:
Blackwell, 2000), esp. pp. 182–186.
1

2 Private emergencies and institutions
of people, which are usually the responsibility of public agencies and
their ofﬁcials – and, on the other hand, emergencies confronting indi-
viduals in a private capacity. I shall start with an emergency that crops
up in an individual life, where the one who has to do something is
a person acting in their own right or in a private role and not as an
ofﬁcial. I shall discuss criteria for excusing and not excusing normally
wrong acts done to face emergencies in private life, and with how far
it is urgent to prevent or avoid emergencies that can be prevented or
avoided.
I shall argue that not every kind ofprivateemergency is morally
necessary to avoid, even where doing so is quite easy. This relative
lack of urgency is connected to the presence of, or need to develop,
public institutions and practices that ‘domesticate’ emergencies – make
their ill effects manageable. If the public institutions exist, they tend
to reduce the dangers faced personally by individuals in emergencies.
If they do not exist, then people need to face danger in a controlled
way in order to create them, keep them effective, or make themselves
able to cope without them. If no one took any life-threatening risks,
that would not eliminate emergency, and it would disable emergency
response. Prevention and avoidance are clearly obligatory not in rela-
tion to occasional or disciplined risk-taking on the part of individuals,
but in relation to foreseeable, large-scale emergencies facing a citizenry
or population. This is because of the numbers of lives threatened, the
moral priority of life-saving, the likelihood of overwhelming emer-
gency services, if they exist, and the status of the right to security on
the part of citizens.
Public emergencies not only threaten lives in their own right: they
multiply private emergencies – with their moral and other demands
on the sometimes very helpless people who survive them. Among the
moral demands is that of playing God in personal decisions about res-
cue where not everyone can be helped. The conclusion I will eventually
reach in this chapter is that in order for the moral demands of even pri-
vate emergency response to be tractable, public institutions in general
and public institutions for public emergency response in particular are
morally compulsory. Because of the role of institutions, the ethics even
ofprivateemergency engages emergencypolitics– the theory of which
institutions are needed to address different kinds of large-scale threats
to large numbers of people. Public emergencies will get the lion’s share
of attention in this book. But I begin with private emergencies.

Private emergencies and excusable wrongdoing 3
Private emergencies and excusable wrongdoing
Emergencies are both practically and theoretically challenging. To
begin with theory, emergencies seem to create exceptions to moral pre-
cepts, and moral precepts are sometimes thought to be distinguished
as a class by admitting ofnoexceptions. They are sometimes thought
to be categorical or unconditional and addressed to all rational agents.
That way of understanding moral precepts may be open to the charge
of hyper-rigorism, but it is at any rate familiar in moral philosophy,
with no less respectable an advocate than Kant. On Kant’s view, if it
is wrong to lie, thenno oneoughteverto lie, not even to protect an
innocent person from a murderer.
2
Kant associated immorality with
putting the satisfaction of one’s desires or the pursuit of one’s own
happiness before duty, and with taking oneself to be somehow exempt
from requirements that everyone else is under. Consistency and univer-
sality are written into morality, according to Kant, and help to explain
its inescapability. Attempts to reduce its universality to mere general-
ity, or to make the demands of morality conditional on other things,
are, for him, invitations to immorality.
What about the challenges that emergencies pose for moralprac-
tice? At least three such challenges can be identiﬁed. First, emergen-
cies present agents with life and death decisions – the most serious
that arise in personal morality. Although many agents living in well-
resourced, well-ordered countries never face such decisions personally
at all, or face them only because they have chosen to enter certain
professions, life and death decisions can in principle crop up in any
life. Second, emergencies present agents with decisions that have to
be made urgently. Third, they present a heightened demand for doing
something effective, not merely for doingsomething, and doing itnow.
The need to be effective in a short time makes agents less discriminat-
ing about means; so, in a good cause, things can be done that, in
different circumstances, the very same agents would have considered
ﬂatly wrong.
To ﬁx ideas, let us consider an example. An elderly man and his
adult son are out for a walk after a visit to a pub. The elderly man
has a heart condition and starts to experience chest pains. There is no
2
On the Supposed Right to Lie from Altruistic Motives, Akademie, ed. vol. viii,
p. 427.

4 Private emergencies and institutions
quick means of summoning an ambulance, which may in any case take
too long to get there. The son breaks into the nearest car, jump starts
the engine, and drives his father to the nearest accident and emergency
department, breaking the speed limit dangerously, and nearly running
over a child along the way. How are we to judge the agent in such
a case? Probably not unsympathetically. Admittedly, he has damaged
and stolen other people’s property and nearly killed someone, but only
because he thought he had to act quickly to save his father’s life. What
is more, he has succeeded in getting his father to people who are in a
position to save his life if the chest pains are a heart attack. What is
even more, he has shown presence of mind and ingenuity in a situation
where other people might have panicked or succumbed to indecision.
Far from having done anything wrong, it might be said, he has done
only what is necessary in an emergency.
This reading of the example is far from condemning the son’s
actions, but it does not imply that those actions are beyond criticism.
If a child had been killed in the attempt to rescue the father, then the
whole episode would probably count as a tragic failure even if the
father survived. The son might even have deserved punishment. The
excusing power of emergency, then, is not absolute. It seems to run up
against a limit when a life is taken in order to save a life or lives, a
point that will be addressed at greater length later on in this chapter.
But conceding this much does not take one very far back into Kant’s
territory. For example, if the son had had to lie in order to get the
car, instead of breaking into it, that would have taken very little away
from a successful rescue, and would have added very little material for
blame to a failed rescue. The reason is that the lie is a one-off, that it
is produced in a one-off good cause, and that the bad of a one-off lie
is typically much smaller than the bad of anyone’s losing their life.
That said, there are types of factor that, intuitively, seem to reduce
the excusing power of emergency even when rigorism is completely
abandoned. In the example before us, it makes a difference whether
the chest pains were an emergency that, as the phrase has it, was ‘just
waiting to happen’. Suppose that the father has a history of heart
problems. When he complains of chest pains after the visit to the pub,
they are at ﬁrst dismissed as indigestion by the son. Suppose that the
son had been asked by the father to bring along a car, in case the
father started to feel unwell, and the son could not be bothered to ﬁnd
a parking space, so that he had no transport when there was a sudden

Private emergencies and excusable wrongdoing 5
need for it. Then perhaps he is not so admirable after all. He made
things worse by not having been prepared.
In general, the more an emergency is foreseeable, and preventable
by morally harmless and undaunting precautions, the less thead hoc
wrongdoing involved in coping with the emergency is justiﬁable or
excusable, all things considered.
3
This principle explains judgements
in the version of the example where the son is casual about the father’s
heart condition, and it explains our unwillingness to excuse totally
those people whose presence of mind in an emergency is counterbal-
anced by their bringing about the emergency. Someone who ignores
weather advice to climbers to stay off a dangerous peak and then pre-
dictably gets into life-threatening trouble when he climbs that peak
probably places an unjustiﬁable burden on the rescue services, even if
he has to display immense courage and resourcefulness to get himself
to a place where the emergency services can help him.
There are cases that straddle the boundary between emergencies
waiting to happen and blameless action in a morally tainted environ-
ment. A whites-only neighbourhood will sometimes be dangerous for
non-whites entering it; however, many of the non-whites in the neigh-
bourhood only mind their own business while they are there. Is the
fact they simply enter the area, when they know what kind of neigh-
bourhood it is, an emergency waiting to happen? If they are assaulted,
3
The distinction between justiﬁcation and excuse in criminal law defences is
relevant here. There is an excuse for an action if, though contrary to the law,
the agent could not help performing it. An action is justiﬁed, on the other hand,
if, even though it is contrary to law, and the agent is fully responsible, it is for a
highly valuable social purpose, and therefore not to be punished. ‘I only did it
to save a life’ can be such a reason even where what is done is criminal. My
category of excusable action is closer to justiﬁed action in the legal sense than
the category of action for which there are excuses in law. What I am getting at
is a type of action that, though normally morally wrong relative to its typical
purposes, can exceptionally be done for some morally good and indeed
overriding purpose. People often lie to save face, or escape condemnation they
deserve, or to manipulate others for their own purposes. When, atypically, a lie
is told only to save a life, and the lie could not otherwise be avoided, it does not
cease to be a lie. It may even achieve its good purpose by manipulating
someone. In this way it has some of the character of the typical lie, including
part of what makes a lie bad. But the lie is excusable because the obligation
to save life overrides the obligation not to manipulate someone, when
manipulation is a means of saving a life. For a general account that is broadly
congenial to my approach, see Marcia Baron, ‘Justiﬁcations and excuses’Ohio
State Journal of Criminal Law2 (2005), pp. 387–406.

6 Private emergencies and institutions
or face an attack, do they contribute to the emergency? In such a case
it is what taints the environment that makes for the emergency waiting
to happen. The normally blameless action of walking along minding
one’s own business is, if tainted at all, tainted by what taints the neigh-
bourhood – racism. If a non-white entering a whites-only area is on
its own an emergency waiting to happen, it is an emergency for which
the preventive treatment is whatever cures racism, rather than avoiding
action on the part of non-whites. It is a borderline case of an emergency
just waiting to happen. When I speak in what follows of ‘emergencies
waiting to happen’, these border-line cases will be disregarded.
Emergencies waiting to happen in the preferred sense can be dis-
tinguished from unexpected emergencies and from sought-out emer-
gencies. If emergencies just waiting to happen excuse less than wholly
unexpected emergencies excuse, then emergencies that are sought out
excuse least of all, if they excuse anything. Someone who, for the thrill
of it,onlyclimbs mountains when climbers are warned strenuously
against it, and who frequently has to call in the rescue services; some-
one who, for the thrill of it, penetrates no-go areas in periods of war
but then feels no scruples about asking others to face great danger in
order to get him out; such a person probably does not act excusably
at all, even though he will lose his life if he does not call others to the
rescue.
Emergencies that no one could reasonably have expected – let me
refer to them simply as ‘unexpected emergencies’– are at the other end
of the spectrum. Why do they excuse as much as they do, morally? For
at least two reasons. First, avoiding or minimizing signiﬁcant harm is
morally important, and emergencies are cases where signiﬁcant harm
has to be avoided or minimized. Second, the importance of minimizing
signiﬁcant harm is usually reﬂected in the appropriateness of longer
and more careful practical deliberation than usual – precisely what
unexpected emergency rules out. In unexpected emergencies one is
usually forced to decide quickly when the stakes are high. So there is
less to be said against whatever it occurs to the agent to do – so long as
what the agent does makes sense as a means of rescue or minimizing
harm. Again, the usual mechanism for deciding quickly is disabled
in unexpected emergencies. The usual mechanism – habit – would
probably lead tobadchoices. One’s habitual aversion to breaking into
things and stealing, for example, is just whatshouldn’tbe engaged
when one has to decide how to get treatment for someone else’s heart

Emergencies and moral latitude 7
attack, and breaking and entering a car provides a quick solution.
One’s usual inclination to run a mile from blood and gore is just what
shouldn’t be acted upon where there is a chance of being helpful at
the scene of a road accident. Unless an emergency is of adomesticated
type,
4
one has often to think quicklyandin an unaccustomed way
in order to respond to it. Since these things are very difﬁcult, it is
excusable to be ineffectual in an emergency. The more effective one is,
the greater the achievement, and the more that can be excused in the
means chosen.
Emergencies and moral latitude
Is it morally urgent for emergency to be avoided where it is predictable,
and domesticated where it is not? The same factors that give emergen-
cies their excusing power make them likely to produce major harm
if they are not avoided, and it seems reasonable to claim that major
harm that can be avoided altogether (as opposed to minimized after
the fact) should be. Furthermore, there is something about the prospect
of an overwhelming emergency that may be corrosive of conventional
morality, and that may require potentially overwhelming emergencies
in particular to be domesticated. The greater the harm and the more
imminent it seems, the more it may appear to an agent caught up in
an emergency thatanythinggoes. Not just anything that may avert the
harm, but anything the agent can do to make it less bad for himself.
This is what I mean by the corrosiveness of overwhelming emergency.
A man who dressed as a woman or as a crew member in order to board
4
Not all unexpected emergencies are equally daunting, because in many
countries there are publicly recognized routines for dealing with standard
emergencies, and some unexpected emergencies are standard. Lifeboat drills on
ships; ﬁre drills in schools; ﬁrst-aid training; the practice of giving safety
instructions to passengers at the beginning of ﬂights: these keep us from being
mired in dither if the worst happens. In many developed countries, all of these
drills co-exist with construction and maintenance standards that soften the
effects of the relevant emergency and that lengthen the time available to reduce
the danger or get away from it. Taken together, the drills and standards work
todomesticateemergencies. Although they do not take the threat of harm out
of emergencies, they keep us from being at a loss in the face of them. Designing
public buildings with lots of ﬁre escapes does not necessarily make the
occurrence of a ﬁre any less of a danger, but having the ﬁre escapes and going
through ﬁre drills makes available a mechanism for dealing with at any rate a
medium-sized ﬁre more or less automatically.

8 Private emergencies and institutions
a lifeboat on theTitanicprobably did not do all he could to maximize
the smallish-looking chances of survival of the women and children,
but perhaps that did not seem to matter when his own prospects were
so bleak. If any of us were suddenly to be told that a violent tidal wave
was about to produce an overwhelming ﬂood, or that a giant piece of
space debris was days away from striking the earth and devastating it,
it might seem as if anything gratifying that could be done in the time
left was permitted, no matter how many scruples that gratifying thing
might normally engage.
In what follows, I shall ﬁrst investigate the question of whether over-
whelming emergency is urgent to prevent because it seems to license a
radical permissiveness. I shall express scepticism about this suggestion.
Then I shall come back to the question of whether the large-scale harm
threatened by emergency makes it compulsory to avoid. My answer
is, ‘Not necessarily’, if the emergency is private and small scale: facing
emergencies can be part of becoming personally more capable and use-
ful; it can also be part of the process of domestication. Even engaging
in activities that are dangerous enough to be mistaken for cases of ask-
ing for trouble may be excusable or justiﬁed if it increases private and
public capability for emergency response. The strength of the case for
avoiding emergencies that can be avoided increases with the numbers
of lives threatened and the scale of injury that they bring with them. At
the same time, the requirement that large-scale emergencies be avoided
bypublicinstitutions, and not by the heroic efforts of individuals or
groups, becomes inescapable. In this sense the ethics of emergency
seems inseparable from politics, and not just emergency politics.
Let us go back to the tidal wave and the prospective annihilating
collision of the earth with the space debris. If one knows the end
is virtually certain to be near, one may clutch at any pleasure while
one can and perhaps feel thoroughly justiﬁed in doing so. And emer-
gencies like the tidal wave or the impending collision with the space
debris impose such death sentences on large populations. Whether one
actuallyisjustiﬁed in taking the corresponding liberties is a hard ques-
tion to answer if the end of the world really is nigh, or is reasonably
believed to be. It must depend on the liberty being taken. Credit card
fraud or theft before the collision with the space debris takes place is
one thing; rape or torture is another. But much of everyday bourgeois
morality could seem pointless if the emergency were imminent enough,
enveloping enough, and ﬁnal enough. The moral black hole that some

Emergencies and moral latitude 9
emergencies can threaten to suck us into may seem even more repulsive
than the desperate measures that emergencies justify or excuse when
desperate measures are a way of minimizing the harm they bring. So
perhaps emergency is urgent to domesticate twice over: ﬁrst, because
it can produce a black hole; second, and more mundanely, because it
is better to avoid the situation of having to cope, probably hurriedly
and ineffectually, with a signiﬁcant harm.
I doubt that every kind of unexpected emergency is morally urgent
to try and avoid, and I doubt in particular that unexpected private
emergency is always the site of a black hole. By a ‘black hole’ I mean
primarily a situation in which many or all interacting agents at a place
and time lose the scruples inculcated into them for behaviour in normal
times. They behave as if under the policy that everything is permitted.
Since emergencies appear even from the standpoint of theory to gener-
ate permissions or exceptions to the moral injunctions of conventional
morality, the phenomenon of the black hole cannot really be detached
from the theoretical question of whether, evenin extremis, the reasons
for doing what morality requires still have authority. I shall suggest
that the danger of the black hole and a scepticism about the author-
ity of moral reasons in desperate circumstances are both likely to be
exaggerated.
Fears of a black hole may make sense where what is in question is
an overwhelmingpublicemergency, as when a state is in the midst
of an unexpected all-out military attack. In that case it might seem to
an agent that there was no alternative to a policy of every man for
himself, or no real objection to a policy of anything goes. If that is
so, then there is an important reason for preventing attack or being
equal to it –apartfrom the loss of life it leads to. Again, if a state of
all-out war is what we would be reduced to by the collapse of political
institutions, as in Hobbes’s prototype of the general emergency, then
perhaps what has to be seen to before anything else is the security
of those institutions, which may involve elaborate mechanisms for
defending the economic, transportation, and communication systems,
and not only the channels through which legitimate political authority
ﬂows. It may well be more urgent to devise these mechanisms – and
therefore domesticate general emergency – than to do anything else,
a point I shall return to. But many smaller scale emergencies are not
like this, and the moral danger they pose is not that of encouraging the
idea that all things are permitted or that it is every man for himself.

10 Private emergencies and institutions
Legal cases that ostensibly occasion a necessity defence against
a charge of murder are relevant here. In one of the most famous,
R v. Dudley and Stephens,
5
three men and a boy were cast adrift in
an open boat with very little food and water. After 18 days, when all
were starving and the boy was the closest of the four to death, two of
the men killed him, and all three fed on the body. The third man had
previously pleaded with the other two not to kill the boy. Four days
later, and nearly on the point of death, the three men were rescued.
Though the jury found that they could not have survived except by
their acts of cannibalism, the judgement in the case was that the killing
of the boy was not necessary and that it therefore amounted to mur-
der. According to the decision of Judge Coleridge, the boy was killed
because he was the weakest and offered no resistance, but any of the
men was appropriate to kill if the boy were, Judge Coleridge held. If
the decision to kill was always to be left to the subjective judgement
of the people affected in a case where all but one could survive, the
judgement continued, the weakest would have the least good chance,
when what they deserved was an equal chance. Again according to the
judgement, it was possible, in some sense, that all three could have
been picked up before any died, so that it was unnecessary for anyone
to be killed.
The judgement seems to impose a very high standard of reasonable-
ness on starving men, and if the question is not the legal one of the
classiﬁcation of the killing as murder but the moral one of the excus-
ability of the killing, I think that itwasexcusable. On the facts the two
men who killed the cabin-boy did not resort to the desperate measures
they took unduly quickly or casually, nor did they immediately hit
upon a plan of killing the weakest in the group. They had proposed
drawing lots. In any case, it is asking a great deal for someonein
extremisto view his own death as no more of a misfortune than that
of the other people in the boat with him.
6
Things stand differently,
of course, if what is at stake is not survival itself but mere freedom
from hunger. But after 18 days, it is plausible that survival was indeed
5
[1884]Q.B.D. 273.
6
There is apparently a tradition in English law of regarding the killing of the
innocent, even in the cause of saving a loved one, as legally indefensible. Hale’s
Pleas of the Crown(1736) and Blackstone’sCommentaries on the Laws of
England(1857) both state that a man under duress ought rather to die himself
than kill an innocent. Seewww.lawteacher.net/Criminal/Duress%201.htm.

Emergencies and moral latitude 11
at stake. This does not seem to be a case of everything being permit-
ted or of the two men having done what they did out of convenience
rather than desperation. It is true that the behaviour of the third man
shows that more scrupulousness was possible. But the question before
us is whether the process leading up to the killing of the boy showed no
scruples at all on the part of the two who killed him. The answer seems
to be ‘No’. The same conclusion seems to ﬁt where normally forbidden
steps are taken not to save oneself, but others, in an emergency.
7
The
intuition that emergency strips people quickly of their moral scruples
or inhibitions does not seem to be borne out in all real cases of private
emergency.
8
By the same token, it does not seem urgent to domesti-
cate private emergencies on the ground that they necessarily grease a
slippery slope or create a moral back hole.
More generally, the following can be said. Even where normally
forbidden things are done in emergencies to save lives, the normally
7
InJustiﬁcation and Excuse in the Criminal Law(London: Stevens and Sons,
1989), J. C. Smith gives an example drawn from the disaster involving the
sinking of the ferry,Herald of Free Enterpriseat Zeebruge:
At the inquest . . . evidence was given by one of the passengers...,a
corporal in the army, that he and a number of other people, apparently
dozens of them, were in the water and in danger of drowning. But they were
near the bottom of a rope ladder which they might climb to safety. On the
ladder, petriﬁed with cold or fear, or both, was a young man unable to move
up or down. No one could get past him. The corporal shouted at him for
10 minutes with no effect. Eventually he instructed someone else who was
nearer to the young man to push him off the ladder. The young man then
was pushed off and fell into the water, and, so far as is known, was never
seen again. The corporal and others were then able to climb the ladder to
safety.
At the coroner’s inquest, the coroner pointed out that there was no evidence as
to the identity or eventual fate of the young man:
There simply isn’t any evidence[that he man on the ladder was killed], but
even if there were, I would suggest to you that killing in a reasonable act of
what is known as self-preservation, but also includes, in my judgement, the
preservation of other lives, such killing is not necessarily murder at all . . .
Even if itismurder, it seems morally excusable, because it was only done when
other means of removing the man from the escape route had been tried, and
because it was done not to save the life only of the one who pushed the ladder
man into the water, but to clear an escape route for other, no less innocent
victims of the ferry disaster than the petriﬁed ﬁgure on the ladder.
8
See David Alexander,Principles of Emergency Planning and Management
(New York: Oxford University Press, 2002), p. 226.

12 Private emergencies and institutions
forbidden things are not necessarily done under the general policy that
anything goes. Instead, the value of life or of warding off great harm
asserts itself, and people can do normally forbidden things to save life
or avert great harm. Someone who eats some else’s groceriesonlyto
ward off extreme hunger, or who breaks into a caronlyto drive a
mortally ill person to hospital, is respecting the moral injunction to
save life, and the morally defensible policy of making the life-saving
action take precedence over others where they conﬂict. Such an agent
is not doing whatever he feels like doing or whatever he thinks will
beneﬁt himself before others. So there is not necessarily a break from
conventional morality in emergency situations. Instead, the normally
latent overridingness of life-saving, and of preventing or minimizing
great harm, becomes salient, and people take shortcuts over moral
territory that conventional morality normally puts out of bounds. The
shortcuts do not constitute a breakdown of morality but reﬂect instead
the precedence given by morality to the sort of value that is most
at stake in emergencies. It is true that people sometimes act to save
life by shortcuts when the shortcuts are not required. But this is not
an argument againstevertaking shortcuts, because in some cases, a
legitimately overriding end can be pursued in no other way.
Now in the cabin-boy case, people took a life to save theirown
lives. Does this mean they behaved ruthlessly or self-indulgently? No.
They did not take advantage of an emergency situation to satisfy a
long-suppressed hankering for experience of cannibalism. Nor did they
kill the cabin-boy for some reason other than survival, say hatred or
greed. It is true that they put their own survival before the cabin-boy’s.
But everyone involved was reasonably believed to be on the point of
death. The cabin-boy’s companions were desperate, and they thought
the cabin-boy’s survival was in some sense (the sense embodied in a
willingness to draw lots) as valuable as theirs was. Theirs was a case in
which the value of life might have been better respected by everyone’s
waiting to die rather than taking a life. But the value of life was not
ignoredby the plan of drawing lots, or even by taking the cabin-boy’s
life only as a last resort, when it was reasonable to believe he would
die anyway. Even here the writ of ordinary morality still ran.
9
9
InEthics for Disaster(Lanham, NJ: Rowman and Littleﬁeld, 2009), p. 45f
Naomi Zack follows Jonathan Bennett in connecting the survival of ordinary
morality in emergency situations with the operation of sympathy and the

Emergencies and moral latitude 13
Is it possible to draw any general principles from the cases we have
been considering? The following seems plausible:
ϕ-ing in an emergency is wrong ifϕ-ing is normally wrong, but it is excusable
if
ϕ-ing is reasonably thought by the agent to be the only way to save life or
prevent great harm in an emergency, and the agent only
ϕ’s in an emergency
for the sake of saving life or preventing great harm.
This covers the cabin-boy case and the cases constructed at the begin-
ning of the chapter. It implies that conventional morality is applicable
to emergencies, and it restricts revisions of the judgements of conven-
tional morality even in emergency situations. It gives some support to
the man in theTitanicwho does not think that women and children
deserve to survive more than he does, though it still leaves open the
thought that it is wrong for such a man to take away from the far more
vulnerable a head start in the ﬁght for survival. Where the vulnerability
is more or less equal, things are not so clear.
A new principle, however, is needed to address the most extreme
sort of emergency. Consider again the example of an asteroid or space
debris on the point of devastating Earth. Although there are efforts
currently being made in America to prepare for even this sort of dis-
aster, it seems to me to defy any possible human domestication. If it is
bound to defeat us, and we are caught up in it, facing the destruction
of the world, are all bets off? Does it start to be truethenthat anything
goes? No. An impending collision with an asteroid would not make
inapplicable or pointless all of conventional morality, but it would cer-
tainly undermine some institutions with moral signiﬁcance: long-term
debt repayment, will making, polices of eating and drinking geared to
the assumption of a long future ahead of one and so on. In particular,
forgetting about one’s credit card bill and mortgage payments, which is
wrong for several reasons in non-emergency situations, might cease to
have any moral importance at all in the face of the advancing asteroid.
In general,
ϕ-ing in an emergency is not wrong if emergency conditions undermine an
institution on which
ϕ-ing essentially depends, even ifϕ-ing is normally
wrong.
possession of virtue. Although that account may ﬁt some cases, it does not ﬁt
this one, as the use of the device of the lottery shows. The use of that device is
not, however, contemptible.

14 Private emergencies and institutions
‘Defaulting on one’s debt payments’ is one likely substitution for ‘ϕ’;
there will be many others – all affected by a sudden huge reduction in
the horizon of survival.
Still, neither of the principles outlined is very permissive. The canni-
bal who sees his chance in the boat with the cabin-boy cannot only be
indulging his taste for human ﬂesh if his action of killing the cabin-boy
for food is to be permissible. And many acts, such as rape for the sake
of personal pleasure, or torture or intimidation for the same reason,
are left nowhere near the threshold of permissibility. On the contrary,
these things seem to remain wrong no matter what.
Emergencies and harm
So much for the thought that in emergencies anything goes and that
they have to be avoided in order to keep one’s distance from a moral
black hole. What about the other ground for supposing that it is urgent
to domesticate emergencies: namely that emergencies often threaten
signiﬁcant harm and that because signiﬁcant harm is always urgent to
prevent, steps should be taken to keep well away from emergencies?
Even this suggestion is disputable. After all, certain leisure pursuits,
even when not engaged in recklessly, place one at the top of high
cliffs or in the midst of raging rivers – dangerous places if any are.
Training and the care taken by agents on each occasion can bring it
about that not every mountaineering outing and not every white water
rafting holiday is an emergency waiting to happen, but surely there is
no clear borderline between an emergency waiting to happen and the
responsible pursuit of pastimes with signiﬁcant danger in them. A proof
that avoidable and signiﬁcant dangers ought to be avoided threatens
to outlaw not only emergencies waiting to happen, butanyactivity
in which signiﬁcant danger is present but contained. That conclusion
seems much too sweeping to be acceptable.
Indeed, from a certain angle, the apparent need to avoid emergen-
cies waiting to happen can seem a contemptible surrender to timidity,
gutlessness, or the inertness of the couch potato. In other words, it
might be thought that what ties together the imperative of domesticat-
ing general emergency and of preventing emergencies that are waiting
to happen is the repulsiveness for ordinary morality of facing life in
any form that is bigger than we are. On this view, emergency can
be understood as untamed life or nature breaking out of the conﬁnes

Emergencies and harm 15
erected by human prudence, and, instead of being the outlying case for
moral guidance, with the safe and everyday occupying the centre of
our attention, emergency is what we each ought to aspire to be equal
to. So we should not avoid it, and perhaps should live life closer to it.
This position seems wrong to me, but it contains a good point. It
seems wrong, because it conﬂicts with the intuitive distinctions between
unexpected emergencies, emergencies waiting to happen and sought-
out emergencies. Indeed, it turns upside down the intuitive valuation
of the sought-out emergency as the case that excuses least or noth-
ing. But it is right in this sense – that emergency can and ought to
be domesticated only within limits. There is an important place in
human life for a capacity to face dangerad hoc, and some of the risky
recreations develop this capacity. That does not mean that just any-
thing dangerous is in place in the pursuit of a dangerous recreation.
Someone who mountaineers while roaring drunk or skydives with-
out much attention to the condition of his parachute is adding danger
extraneous to what the skill of mountaineering or skydiving is designed
for, or disabling himself for confronting the danger proper to moun-
taineering and skydiving. But the arguments against exposing oneself
to the extraneous dangers are not arguments against pursuing the dan-
gerous recreations themselves. It is not as if pursuing the dangerous
recreations themselves is disabling. On the contrary, the skills required
to pursue them can make one more conﬁdent and disciplined in the rest
of life, not to mention physically stronger, and more useful to others
who need help.
The case of dangerous sports, then, does not abolish, or erode
unduly, the distinction between emergencies waiting to happen and
sought-out emergencies. But it does show that what is normally an
emergency waiting to happen – placing oneself at the edge of a cliff –
is not always one. There is probably no skill relative to which moun-
taineering while drunk is part of testing that skill, and so mountaineer-
ing while drunk isalwaysa sought-out emergency, the kind it is inex-
cusable to bring about. In general, if a danger cannot be met intelligibly
by an intelligible skill, it is an emergency waiting to happen and is not
justiﬁed by the good of becoming a more capable and resilient human
being. If the danger can be met by a skill, on the other hand, it may be
justiﬁable to do something that carries that danger despite its appear-
ing to be no more than an emergency waiting to happen, and despite
the fact that the relevant skill can never be entirely safely exercised.

16 Private emergencies and institutions
The fact that skills that enable one to face danger are valuable does
not mean that there is nothing to be said or not much to be said for
the domestication of emergency. On the contrary, cultivating the skill
is itself a way of domesticating an emergency. It is a way of making
emergency easier to cope with even when it is not preventable. In
the form it takes when it is a kind of self-help, the domestication of
emergency can also help others, for it can reduce the need for dangerous
rescue. There is scope for this sort of domestication in ordinary life and
not only in the sphere of extreme sports. When one keeps a ﬁrst aid
box at home, one domesticates certain kinds of medical emergencies.
When one installs smoke alarms, one domesticates a ﬁre emergency.
When one carries an extra tyre or other spare parts, one domesticates
the emergency of car breakdown in a remote area.
Ethics for private emergencies
Within the context of which moral theory does the preceding dis-
cussion make sense? It should already be clear that no simple deon-
tological or consequentialist theory will play the required role. Act-
consequentialism does not ﬁt the principles, since it will often entail
that some of the actions that the principles say are merely excusable are
ﬂatly right. For example, breaking into the car to get one’s father to the
hospital is likely to be ﬂatly right according to act-consequentialism.
Rule consequentialism arrives less quickly at the judgement that it
is right, acknowledging the cost involved in breaking the rule that
normally people shouldn’t damage property. But in the end rule util-
itarianism will hold that where one cannot do both, acting to save a
life is more important than refraining from breaking into a car. My
approach is intended to square with the idea that ordinary moral-
ity does not go into abeyance in emergencies: it does so by classify-
ing responses to emergency that violate precepts of ordinary morality
sometimes as wrong but excusable. The approach is more permissive
than some versions of deontology, since it insists that the need to
save life and prevent great harm can be overriding, even where acting
accordingly involves behaviour that would conventionally count as
immoral. As we have seen, not every deontologist agrees that lying
to save a life is excusable, or that violating one moral precept is less
wrong than violating another. So-called threshold deontology makes
room for departures in an emergency from and ordinary morality that

Ethics for private emergencies 17
is normally supposed to be exacting, and so threshold deontology is
in keeping with the approach followed here. But it seems to bead hoc
and seems to conﬁne deontology to non-emergency situations, aban-
doning the idea that moral precepts are unconditional and universal in
application.
A theory that appears to make room for my sort of approach without
the appearance of accommodating emergenciesad hocis Scanlon’s
contractualism.
10
According to Scanlon, actions are wrong if they are
prohibited by a principle no one could reasonably reject, and the life-
protecting and aid-promoting precepts of conventional morality are
such that no one could reject them. Grounds for rejecting principles in
Scanlon’s account are the burdens such principles impose on particular
agents, but the weight of the burdens is diminished, and the scope for
rejectability correspondingly limited, if different choices on the part
of the agent could have made the burdens less. There is a connection
between this way of thinking and what I claimed was the relative
intolerability, intuitively, of a rescuer’s dirtying his or her hands to
meet entirely avoidable emergencies. The fact that one gratuitously
puts one’s own life in danger weakens one’s ground for rejecting a
principle that permits rescuers to save someone else’s life before one’s
own. The fact that one gratuitously puts one’s own life in danger also
weakens one’s basis for rejecting a principle that outlaws conventional
wrongdoing even where one’s own life depends on it.
Not playing God
We introduced the question of whether the domestication of emer-
gency is morally required by asking whether it is always necessary
to prevent a preventable emergency. The fact that emergency makes
signiﬁcant harm imminent is one reason for thinking that prevention
isrequired, where it is practically possible. But harm is not all there
is to it. There is also the fact that emergencies sometimes confront
agents with conﬂicting demands for rescue, that is, demands that can-
not simultaneously be met. Although the cabin-boy case shows that
10
What We Owe to Each Other(Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press,
1998). Parﬁt’s approach inOn What Matters(Oxford University Press, 2011)
is similarly an attempt to rise above the deontology/consequentialism
distinction.

18 Private emergencies and institutions
in real emergencies individual agents can ﬁnd ways of giving lives in
danger equal weight – say by drawing lots – one can also understand,
and perhaps even admire, agents who recoil at deciding between lives
at all, and who refuse to do so. These agents do not want to play God
at the best of times, let alone at the worst of times. For them it is one
thing in an emergency situation to take a life in self-defence: it is quite
another to have to decide on the survival of others when one’s own
life is not threatened at all.
Highly artiﬁcial cases along these lines are familiar from the huge
philosophical literature on the so-called trolley problem.
11
In a trolley
problem, an agent not personally at risk of injury or death is put in a
position to save several others, who will die if nothing is done. Agents
in trolley cases are always relatively resourceless individuals – they can
save lives only by throwing the switch, and potential victims are always
entirely helpless. In the trolley world there are no rescue institutions,
and the persons typically in need of rescue are inert. What the agent
has to do is well within his capacities: throwing a switch to divert a
runaway trolley. What makes this situation a moral problem is that
throwing the switch victimizes someone else: an innocent person in
the path of the diverted trolley will be killed if the others are to be
saved. Throwing the switch costs one innocent life but saves several
others. What is more, the agent foresees this cost. Should he throw
the switch? In the trolley problem literature, the principal issue is
usually that of whether the utilitarian answer to this question – that it
would be wrong for the agentnotto throw the switch – is intuitively
acceptable.
In the context of the present discussion we already have in operation
a principle that implies that it would beexcusablefor the agent to
throw the switch knowing that someone will die. Utilitarianism, on
the other hand, implies that it is not merely excusable to throw the
switch, but wrong not to. It is true that rule utilitarianism arrives at
this conclusion while giving weight to the consideration that normally
killing is to be omitted, but this rule permits exceptions in cases of
life-threatening emergency, and the trolley problem situation is such a
case. In further variations on the trolley case also commonly discussed
11
The term is due to Philippa Foot. See her ‘The problem of abortion and the
doctrine of double effect’ in her collectionVirtues and Vices(Oxford:
Blackwell, 1978). See also Judith Jarvis Thomson ‘Killing, letting die, and the
trolley problem’,The Monist59 (1976) 204–217 and ‘The trolley problem’,
94Yale Law Journal(1985) 1395–1415.

Ethics for private emergencies 19
in the literature, the agent can save the several only by going and
placing an innocent bystander in harm’s way. Intuitively, this is worse
than merely omitting to rescue an innocent bystander, or even doing
something that foreseeably causes a death without that death being
aimed at. But utilitarianism tends to treat the two the same.
According to the principles already introduced, even action that
goes disastrously wrong in an emergency can sometimes be excused,
because the conditions for practical deliberation in emergencies are
usually so unfavourable, and because even an inept action done for
the sake of saving a life or many lives is not contemptible. Against that
background, throwing the switch is excusable, though it is done in the
knowledge that it will kill. But is ‘excusable’ the right classiﬁcation?
Contractualism positivelysupportsthe switch being thrown, other
things being equal. Scanlon says about a parallel case that the principle
of beneﬁting the most is consistent about the value of lives at stake
in the trolley case, so that the victim cannot complain that his life
is given less weight than those of the second and third people who
would be saved if the switch were thrown. The second life is the
tie-breaker.
12
In delivering this verdict contractualism comes close to
rule utilitarianism’s verdict that it is wrongnotto throw the switch.
Contractualism does of course acknowledge a cost when one person’s
life is taken to save three. But so long as the burdens imposed on
people by competing principles are taken into account, contractualism
can agree that the switch should be thrown.
13
Shouldn’t an acceptable moral theory have something to say fornot
throwing the switch? The excusability principles we have considered
apply only to emergency response that goes wrong in some way. They
do not apply to therefusalto respond when responding involves killing
someone. But consider the precept,
Maximize life-saving but never by killing.
This might be the principle followed by someone who thought killing
for any purpose except self-defence was playing God, and who did not
want to play God.
12
What We Owe to Each Other(Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press,
1998), p. 243.
13
For doubts about the adequacy of the contractualist justiﬁcation in trolley
cases from someone who also thinks that numbers can be given weight in a
theory of practical reason, see Raz, ‘Numbers with and without
contractualism’Ratio16 (2003), pp. 346–367.

20 Private emergencies and institutions
Such an agent might not want unilaterally to pass a death sentence
on an innocent person, even for the sake of saving three innocent
persons in a trolley problem. Since emergency sometimes forces us
into this position, is that a further reason for trying to prevent it or
domesticate it? Perhaps it is a reason for trying to place the obligation
of maximizing life-saving on neutral and impartialinstitutionswith a
publicly conferred discretion to maximize lives saved while minimizing
lives taken.
Institutions
Since politically conferred discretion takes away the objection to uni-
lateral life and death decisions in emergencies, and since principles of
neutrality and impartiality minimize arbitrariness and discrimination
in the supply of life-saving resources, no one plays God when an insti-
tution acts in a trolley problem case, not even the individual in charge,
if there is one. No one plays God, because death sentences are both
non-arbitrary and authorized. To the extent that the relevant principles
of neutrality and impartiality come from liberal democratic politics,
liberal democratic politics reduces the demands of private emergency
response. Not only do public rescue services free people from playing
God; they can be deployed on a scale that increases the number of
rescues that can be mounted simultaneously. This does not mean an
end to trolley problems, but it increases the number of life-sacriﬁcing
responses to them that the victims can be understood to authorize.
14
14
The suggestion coheres with the distinction between private and public
morality drawn with a different question in mind by Thomas Nagel in
‘Ruthlessness in public life’, reprinted in Nagel’sMortal Questions(Cambridge
University Press, 1979), pp. 60–75: ‘Public institutions are designed to serve
purposes larger than those of particular individuals or families. They tend to
pursue the interests of masses of people . . . In addition, public acts are diffused
over many actors and sub-institutions; there is a division of labour both in
executionandindecision....Someofthesameagent-centredrestrictionson
means will apply to public action as to private. But some of them will be
weaker, permitting the employment of coercive, manipulative or obstructive
methods that would not be allowable for individuals’ (83–84). The greater
latitude of public institutions is connected to their obligations to produce
certain consequences for their publics – which individuals do not have; and
consequently their not being able permissibly to opt out of occasions for
producing those consequences; as in emergency response. It can be obligatory
for rescue services sometimes to do things like pulling the switch in the face of

Ethics for private emergencies 21
I am claiming that the ground for domesticating private emergency
in trolley problem cases is partly to be drawn from the grounds for
having legitimate public institutions,ratherthan grounds for every
well-intentioned free agent who can to take on the role of rescuer.
Or, to put it another way, discretionary private emergency response
raises questions of legitimacy about rescues more directly than other
practical questions and other agents, and forms of reasoning that are
relevant to emergencies are more appropriate to public institutions
than to individuals. In other words, there is a sense in which the range
of emergencies threatening many lives and having to be confronted by
unaccountable agents should – morally should – be kept to a minimum.
Public emergency response is to be preferred to private and not only
when an emergency affects a large population.
If the need for public accountability is great where the means of
rescue are limited but the need for rescue is urgent, it is even greater
where the means of preventing imminent harm or loss of life on a large
scale seems to be not just wrong but so absolutely prohibited that their
use would seem to be inexcusable. Torture in the service of large-scale
rescue or prevention of a large-scale terrorist attack is a case in point. In
order for it not to be unthinkable, great vital interests must be at stake:
interests in survival itself for large numbers of people, for example.
But, in addition, the agent making that judgement should occupy a
role in a set of legitimate institutions that are normally constrained to
treat torture as unthinkable. There can be no question of privatizing
the judgement, because of the loss of connection that would entail
between the public and a legitimate security institution, as opposed to
the public and an effective, well-meaning vigilante. I shall have more
to say about institutions and security inChapter 3.
competing demands for rescue, but because of the other institutions – judicial
ones, notably – that constrain rescue services in liberal democracies, carrying
out these obligations is not insensitive to the rights of the people whose lives
are lost when switches are pulled. These people can even grant discretion to
the institutions to maximize life-saving when to maximize involves the sacriﬁce
of some of the discretion-granters.

2Public emergencies, black holes and
sober Hobbesianism
From private to public emergencies
In considering whether it is always morally urgent to prevent pre-
ventable emergencies or domesticate the others, I suggested that the
answer was ‘Not necessarily’ for private emergencies, but probably
‘Yes’ in the case of overwhelming public emergencies. For example,
violent civil war involving genocide is not only an occasion for great
harm; it is also an occasion for the serious rupture of moral conven-
tions, and of co-operative relations more generally. When riots break
out, people not only ﬁght, but they opportunistically commit property
crimes while the police or army are trying to deal with violence.
1
Loot-
ing is commonplace, for example. When public disorder is widespread
and lasts more than a few hours or a few days, there are big movements
of people to places where the authorities are unable to feed, shelter or
care medically for them. Houses that are abandoned come to be occu-
pied by others or are looted and destroyed. In this way, displaced
people become stranded in a no-man’s-land. Economic arrangements
are disrupted; rumours multiply and are hard to discredit. People can
be separated, with no means of regaining contact. In these circum-
stances, it is easy to feel deeply cut off, with all connections to people
and things that are dear or familiar lost or at risk. In these circum-
stances, it is natural to distrust others and to keep what one has for
those one knows best. It is natural to take pre-emptive action against
potential attackers or competitors, there being no recourse to the public
authorities that are supposed to protect one in normal times. Vulner-
ability and poverty increase, but without an enlargement of sympa-
thy that might be prompted by vulnerability and poverty in normal
times. Competition is introduced into the struggle for survival, and
1
This may correspond to breakdown of what Scanlon calls ‘informal politics’ in
‘The Difﬁculty of Tolerance’, reprinted inThe Difﬁculty of Tolerance: Essays in
Political Philosophy(Cambridge University Press, 2003).
22

From private to public emergencies 23
with that, action in self-defence may become the rule rather than the
exception.
In this way, there can quickly develop a collective slide into a sort of
free-for-all. When this happens a public emergency can also multiply
private emergencies. Each person or many individual people can face
a situation in which his or her life is at risk, but without having the
survival skills necessary to cope. Nor are these skills easy to acquire at
the same time as one has the set of inhibitions inculcated by conven-
tional morality under conditions of order and plenty. Again, people
may be faced with urgent demands for rescue and have no life-saving
skills. Military training may help, but even the skills it inculcates usu-
ally depend on being directed by a commander. In other words, there
may be nothing to prepare one for the demands of survival in Rwanda
or even in a New Orleans under water after Hurricane Katrina. To
cope, people routinely have to do things that in normal times would
seem either ruthless or heroic. These are the sort of facts that seem
to make it morally urgent to prevent general, public emergencies, or
to cut them as short as possible where they do occur.
2
If they are not
prevented or curtailed, it is plausible to say, people will be sucked into
a black hole.
Although this line of thought is plausible, and up to a point correct,
it homogenizes emergencies, and it does not separate out domesticating
measures fromad hoccurtailment measures. To undo the homogeniza-
tion, some comments are in order about the variety of emergencies, and
how this variety should register in a moral and political philosophy of
emergency.
An attractive ﬁrst distinction is between natural disasters and emer-
gencies arising from political disorder. This distinction has draw-
backs for an entirely general treatment of emergency,
3
but given the
2
Here I think I ﬁnd a point of agreement with David Wiggins, who thinks that
emergencies alert us to an unusual category of moral concern for virtuous
agents, a concern to preserve the very conditions under which human
civilization can survive and ordinary morality can make its normal demands. I
think Wiggins homogenizes the category of emergencies more than I do, and
that his account suffers as a result. See hisEthics: Twelve Lectures on the
Philosophy of Morality(London: Penguin, 2006), pp. 250ff, esp. p. 259.
3
Many of the questions raised by public emergency depend on factors that cut
across the distinction between natural and civil emergency: e.g. the character of
the public agencies that an emergency confronts, the character and strength of
social custom before the emergency, especially customs of self-help, mutual help

24 Public emergencies, black holes and sober Hobbesianism
concentration in this book on political emergencies, it is hard to get
away from. War, international or civil, and public disorder will be
the main phenomena referred to. It is not immediately clear, however,
that these are always sites for a fully-formed black hole. Even during
a world war, previously strong states do not necessarily cease to func-
tion, and civil society does not necessarily weaken. Nor are science and
culture and economic production necessarily casualties of war. On the
contrary, war can stimulate scientiﬁc advance, and music and art can
come to be valued more than in peacetime. Even interpersonal rela-
tions can seem more valuable. More than 60 years after the war, there
is still nostalgia in Britain for the ‘Dunkirk Spirit’ and the solidarity in
straitened circumstances that is remembered to have prevailed between
1939 and 1945. Nor was the British state weak on account of being
enveloped in war.
As for the typically weak states of our own day, when they are tipped
over into fully-ﬂedged anarchy by civil war or disaster, the absence of
localauthority is not always sufﬁcient for a black hole. In a globalized
world, public attention and institutions are spread wide, and there are
international agencies whose standards can be exported with a relief
effort to ﬁll the vacancy left locally by a defunct government. This
means that black holes may not provide an argument separate from
and non-aggression, and the extent of the emergency in time and space. A more
important distinction than that between natural and civil emergency may be
that between mild and severe emergencies – relative to a scale of harm and
numbers of people. Then there is the distinction between emergencies facing
weak and dysfunctional states on the one hand, and strong, resource-rich ones
on the other. It may come closer to a black hole for thousands of very poor
inhabitants of already weak states to be made refugees by civil war or natural
disaster or both. In that sort of case, the background shortages of shelter, food
and medicine in normal times can easily degenerate into total dispossession and
serious injury after a disaster. The relatively recent earthquake in Haiti is an
illustration. In cases like that, the idea that a black hole is in the ofﬁng is
undeniably compelling, though its extent in time and space may be relatively
small. New Orleans immediately after Katrina arguably witnessed short-lived
black holes as well, again in areas that were already very deprived by American
standards. The black holes there formed after substantial evacuation left many
caught up in the ﬂooding in relative isolation and great vulnerability. Even then
the black holes were short-lived. But these extreme cases are quite different
from local rioting in small sections of fully functioning, well-resourced Western
cities, or seasonal ﬂoods in a relatively sparsely populated rural area within an
efﬁcient and wealthy state. In cases like these, notwithstanding the scope for
local mayhem, the sudden degeneration of a comfortable way of life – with the
normal decencies – into a black hole seems highly unlikely.

Black holes and the state of nature 25
harm for urgent domestication and curtailment. In the world as we
have it, even with its extremes of poverty and its host of failed states
and weak regimes, black holes may not be big enough where they occur
to provide special arguments for avoiding or minimizing emergencies.
It may be that injury and illness and the loss of shelter, food and water
that comes with emergencies are the more crucial considerations.
It is harder than it seems to identify even global emergencies whose
effects might be pervasive enough to break down all moral order every-
where. Severe climate change or pandemic or widespread nuclear war
would constitute severe emergencies in the sense that they might create
injury, illness, displacement and isolation on a massive scale. But it
seems implausible to me to claim that dispositions to help or not to
harm that are second nature in many cultures, if not universally, would
vanish instantly in survivors of those cultures, and that a tsunami or
an earthquake would be enough instantly to turn people with scru-
ples into sociopaths. We could of course reﬂect on a possible world
in which the only survivors of a disaster were existing sociopaths, and
here I think we would have our black hole. But that possible world
seems very remote from the actual one.
Black holes and the state of nature
There are nevertheless respectable exponents of the view that govern-
ment in its various forms is essentially a response to the threat of the
black hole and that all politics is emergency politics. The black hole
is a focal point of controversy in the early social contract tradition,
since Hobbes presents the state of nature as a black hole, and other
social contract theorists, sometimes reacting against Hobbes, think
of the state of nature either as idyllic or at least as a condition that
permits moral behaviour. In the social contract theories of Hobbes,
Locke and others, the state of nature is the human condition before
there was a state order, and the condition that human beings would
be returned to if an existing state were to dissolve. Although social
contract theorists as a body are far from unanimous in claiming that
the state of nature is at the extreme of permissiveness, Hobbes at least
held that in the pre-political state people have the right – the right of
nature – to do anything that seems to them to promote their own self-
defence and more general well-being. According to Hobbes, until there
is a common standard that everyone recognizes – a standard available

26 Public emergencies, black holes and sober Hobbesianism
only when one erects a government – each is a law unto himself, and
there is no gainsaying what anyone decides is necessary for survival
or for general disadvantage. Worse, given the way the passions oper-
ate, human beings will naturally make practical decisions that give too
much weight to the self, the present and the pleasurable. These biases
themselves start wars and interfere with preventing them.
On the Hobbesian view,
4
the state of nature is an extreme emer-
gency – all out war – in which the concept of justice has no footing,
and the unique alternative and antidote to it is the voluntary submis-
sion of each of a majority of local warriors to an authoritative public
judge of what must be done by everyone to stay alive and enjoy a mod-
est well-being. A public authority is established when each transfers
the right of judging for himself, and each makes himself the vehicle of
the will of a common authority. Either submission is total, according
to Hobbes, or people never really surrender the right to rule them-
selves, in which case one bargains for the return of total war, with
its black hole. Or, in other words, one must choose between war and
authorized dictatorship.
The state in which each is a law unto himself needs to be abandoned,
according to Hobbes, because it is likely to be fatal. Where anything
is permitted that seems to any agent to be advantageous to him, it can
seem permissible to take life, and it will be easy to lose life. Everyone
necessarily has an aversion to death; this is why total emergency with its
black hole must be avoided, according to Hobbes. Kant also thinks the
state of nature must be abandoned, on the ground that in the state of
nature there is no distinction between whatseemsright and good to an
agent, and whatisright and good.
5
In the state of nature there will be
no rationally authoritative judgements of the good, only judgements
that are deferred to because the people making them are powerful.
Like Hobbes, Kant thinks the state of nature is a black hole, and again
like Hobbes, Kant thinks that a black hole is what states dissolve into
when they are broken by civil war. This is why, yet again like Hobbes,
he is so uncompromising in his condemnation of rebellion.
6
4
This must be assembled not only from Hobbes’s political treatises,Elements of
Law, De cive, and Leviathan, but from other writings, such asChapter 1ofDe
corpore, where the beneﬁts of (his) political science are expounded.
5
Metaphysics of Morals, Mary Gregor, trans. (Cambridge University Press,
1991), p. 124, Ak, VI 312.
6
For a different interpretation that in my view seriously understates Kant’s
Hobbesianism, see C. Korsgaard, ‘Taking the law into our own hands: Kant on

Black holes and the state of nature 27
Kant and Hobbes seem to me to be wrong to identify the state of
nature with a black hole in their different ways, and wrong to think
that the collapse of a state always puts former citizens in a condition of
life- threatening enmity, or in a state where the distinction between real
and apparent right disappears, bringing about a morally inchoate life
among those living in one place. Accordingly, both seem to me to be
wrong to put rebellion beyond the pale.
7
But there is something right
in the illiberalism of the two theories in this connection. In Kant, it is
illiberalism about actions that would undercut the conditions of public
right. In Hobbes, it is illiberalism about actions that would undercut
the agreed purpose of the state, which is public safety, not to mention
the natural law imperative of self-preservation. An authority erected
for thesakeof public safety, Hobbes says, cannot tolerate actions
that directly endanger life. Or, in other words, the Hobbesian state
recognizes a right to life. This is the pre-eminent, maybe the sole, right
of citizens, and it is the right that is most directly violated by actions
that return a people to the state of nature.
One does not have to be a Hobbesian to think that a right to life is
pre-eminent. On the contrary, this is the kernel of truth in the unre-
constructed Hobbesian position. Characteristically, Hobbes argues for
this position in ways that vastly exaggerate the range of life-threatening
actions, and that inﬂate the number of prohibitions and institutions
that sovereigns should devise to address threats to life from violence.
Eliminating the exaggeration leads to the liberalization and democ-
ratization of the Hobbesian contract. But there remains within this
new setup a proper acknowledgement of the need for institutions –
Hobbes emphasises unitary government, an armed force answerable
to the sovereign, educational institutions, a church subservient to the
state, and mechanisms for governing the domestic economy and inter-
national trade – that counteract the threat of internal violence and
external conquest.
There is also a recognition of a particular threat to security that
Hobbes – albeit in a characteristically overstated way – properly calls
attention to. This is the effect on otherwise unaggressive and prudent
the right to revolution’, in A. Reath, B. Herman and C. Korsgaard (eds),
Reclaiming the History of Ethics(Cambridge University Press, 1997),
pp. 297–328.
7
For a very different line of criticism, see Thomas E Hill, ‘A Kantian perspective
on political violence’, reprinted in Hill’s collection,Respect, Pluralism and
Justice(New York: Oxford University Press, 2000), pp. 200–236.

28 Public emergencies, black holes and sober Hobbesianism
people of a few who do not share the normal fear of death, and who are
willing to sacriﬁce their lives out of bravado or for arguably irrational
purposes. Hobbes was particularly concerned with the operation of
glory, which might lead someone to take mortal offence at some minor
or even imaginary slight, with fatal consequences.
8
He also saw the
dangers of religious delusion, which might make someone think he
was on a divinely appointed mission that could lead to martyrdom.
Fundamentalism, in particular counter-cultural fundamentalism, is a
threat to security that even a more sober Hobbesianism identiﬁes, and
hostility to its unreasonableness is implicit in forms of contractualism
otherwise at variance with Hobbes.
In the rest of the chapter, I try to extract a more sober Hobbesianism
from the excesses of unreconstructed Hobbesianism. That will put
me in a position to argue in the rest of the book that an acceptable
account of emergency response has to be consistent with Hobbes’s
insights about the pre-eminence of the right to life and also the danger
posed by people who value some things more than their own lives.
In this chapter, those insights are subtracted from an unreconstructed
Hobbesianism that lays too much stress on black holes as reasons for
avoiding emergencies, and that associates black holes with too many
kinds of emergencies.
From unreconstructed to sober Hobbesianism
War and authorized dictatorship
To my knowledge, Hobbes does not use the word ‘emergency’ in argu-
ing for strong government
9
or what I have been calling authorized
8
Lev. ch. 13: So that in the nature of man, er ﬁnd three principall causes of
quarrel. First, Competition; Secondly Difﬁdence[i.e, distrust]; Thirdly, Glory.
The ﬁrst, maketh men invade for Gain; the second, for Safety; and the third, for
Reputation. The ﬁrst use Violence, to make themselves Masters of other mens
persons wives, children and cattell; the second, to defend them, the third, for
triﬂes, as a word, a smile, a different opinion, and any other sign of undervalue,
either direct in their Persons, or by reﬂexion, in their Kindred, their Friends,
their Nation, their Profession, or their Name’. Tuck, ed. p. 88.
9
See my ‘Hobbes, Locke and the state of nature’ in S. Hutton and P. Schurmann,
eds.,Studies on Locke: Sources, Contemporaries and Legacy(Dordrecht:
Springer, 2008), pp. 27–44. In this chapter I draw on a big body of work I have
published on Hobbes and Hobbesians. In order not to load the text with
references and citations, I will refer at various places in what follows to items

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Chinesischer Briefumschlag.

Schantungpflug mit Dreigespann.
Die künftige Bedeutung Chinas für
den europäischen Handel.
ngesichts der neuesten Unruhen in China, der ewigen Gefahr, in
der die Fremden dort leben, der großen Opfer an Menschen
und Geld, der kostspieligen militärischen Expeditionen, welche
die Beziehungen Europas mit dem Reiche der Mitte zur Folge gehabt
haben und voraussichtlich noch in Zukunft haben werden, hört man
die Frage: Hat der Handel mit China überhaupt eine so große
Bedeutung, daß er diese Opfer rechtfertigt; wäre es nicht besser,
sich anderen Gebieten zuzuwenden und deren Erschließung
anzustreben?
Wie groß ist dieser Handel? Im Jahre 1898 belief sich im
Gesamtwert die Ein- und Ausfuhr, soweit die in den Vertragshäfen
bestehenden Zollbehörden ihn kontrollieren, auf etwa elfhundert
Millionen Mark. Diese Summe erscheint nicht groß, wenn man

bedenkt, daß der Außenhandel des kleinen Belgien einen Wert von
über zweiundzwanzighundert Millionen besitzt, also das Doppelte des
Außenhandels von China. Selbst Argentinien hat trotz seiner Jugend
als Staat bereits einen Außenhandel von nahezu tausend Millionen
Mark. In einer Reihe anderer Staaten entwickeln sich die
Handelsbeziehungen mit Europa ruhig, ohne besondere
Schwierigkeiten, ohne jedwede Opfer und militärische Expeditionen.
Warum, so hört man fragen, sollen also die Steuerzahler wegen des
verhältnismäßig geringen Handels so tief in den Säckel greifen?
Und dennoch geschieht dies seitens fast aller Seemächte. Neben
dem Deutschen Reiche sind bei den letzten Unruhen England,
Frankreich, Oesterreich-Ungarn, Italien, Rußland, Holland, selbst das
kleine Belgien an der Expedition gegen China beteiligt gewesen,
dazu die Vereinigten Staaten und Japan. Freilich stand dabei
zunächst die Aufgabe im Vordergrunde: Bestrafung des Bruchs des
Völkerrechts durch die Mißhandlung der Gesandten seitens der
chinesischen Machthaber, man könnte besser sagen, der
chinesischen Ohnmachtshaber, Sühne für die vielen Menschenleben,
die schweren Verluste an Hab und Gut der fremden Einwohner. Aber
dabei wurden doch auch geschäftliche Interessen verfolgt, und man
dachte auch an den Nutzen, welchen die Expedition nach dem
Friedensschluß für die verschiedenen Mächte bringen soll.
Ebenso sicher, wie die endliche Niederwerfung Chinas durch die
verbündeten Streitkräfte, ist es auch, daß eine Aufteilung Chinas in
absehbarer Zeit nicht stattfinden wird. Im Gegenteile, statt als
Kriegsbeute verschiedene Provinzen und Länderstriche
einzuheimsen, haben die Mächte alles Interesse daran, das
chinesische Reich intakt zu erhalten und ihm eine feste, starke
Regierung zu geben, sogar unter der Leitung eines Kaisers aus der
gegenwärtig herrschenden Dynastie. Ganz abgesehen von der
Eifersucht unter den Mächten bei einer Aufteilung und der
Unmöglichkeit einer Einigung über die von jeder Macht
beanspruchten Gebiete, hat man sich gewiß schon in jedem
Kabinette gefragt, auf welche Weise und zu welchem Zwecke die
verschiedenen Provinzen des aufgeteilten

Vierhundertmillionenreiches von den Mächten regiert und verwaltet
werden sollten. Es ist ja hinlänglich bekannt, welchen Aufwand an
Geld, Beamten, Militär, Schiffen und dergleichen schon ein
Landgebiet von der Größe einiger hundert Quadratkilometer, etwa
wie Deutsch-China, erfordert. Wie viele Hunderte Millionen,
Zehntausende von Soldaten, Hunderte von Beamten würde erst die
Verwaltung einer ganzen Provinz bedürfen! Es handelt sich bei den
chinesischen Provinzen um Ländergebiete so groß wie Preußen oder
ganz Süddeutschland, mit Einwohnerzahlen von zwanzig bis vierzig
Millionen. Selbst wenn solche Gebiete an die erobernden Reiche
angrenzen würden, wie etwa Nordchina an Sibirien, würden solche
Bissen in Anbetracht der heterogenen feindlichen Bevölkerung nicht
zu verdauen sein. Wie erst, wenn man die ungeheure Entfernung
Chinas von den mitteleuropäischen Reichen in Betracht zieht! Der
Krieg der Amerikaner gegen das im Vergleich mit den Chinesen
verschwindend kleine Völkchen der Philippiner, der Frankreichs
gegen Tonkin und Englands gegen die handvoll Boeren sprechen
deutlicher, als es alle Argumente vermögen.
Und selbst wenn eine solche Verwaltung unter der Anspannung
aller Kräfte doch eingerichtet würde, so würde die Frage entstehen:
wozu? Was ist der Nutzen, den ein solch unsinniges Wagnis hätte?
Die Erschließung der betreffenden Provinz? Die Hebung der Kaufkraft
ihrer Bevölkerung? Die Schaffung eines neuen Absatzgebietes?
Würde das letztere wirklich ausschließlich der Industrie der
betreffenden Kolonialmacht zu gute kommen, dann wäre dies zum
wenigsten etwas Greifbares, obschon viele Jahrzehnte der Aufwand
unverhältnismäßig größer sein würde als der Ertrag. Das Spiel wäre
die Kerzen nicht wert, die man dabei verbrennt. Aber das
ausschließliche Recht der kommerziellen Ausbeutung einer Provinz
würde von anderen Mächten niemals zugestanden werden. Mehrere
haben mit Säbelgerassel erklärt, unter allen Umständen an der
Politik der offenen Thür festzuhalten. Gleiches Recht, gleiche
Handelsfreiheit für alle Mächte ist ihre Politik in Bezug auf den
chinesischen Markt, und eine Macht, welcher es gelingen sollte, eine
Provinz als Kriegsbeute zu ergattern, würde dann einfach nur

anderen Mächten, zunächst den Japanern und Amerikanern, die
Kastanien aus dem Feuer holen. Wohl ist heute und wohl auf
Jahrzehnte hinaus England am chinesischen Handel am meisten
beteiligt, aber der Handelsverkehr Japans und Amerikas mit China
geht mit Riesenschritten vorwärts; sie haben heute schon alle
anderen Mächte, England ausgenommen, überholt, und dank ihrer
günstigen geographischen Lage, geringen Frachtsätzen und anderen
Umständen wird in Zukunft unzweifelhaft ihnen der Hauptanteil am
chinesischen Handel zufallen. Provinzen auf Kosten europäischer
Steuerzahler zu erschließen, oder gar die Verwaltung selbst zu
übernehmen, hieße also, den genannten großen Handelsrivalen in
die Hände arbeiten.
Ueber diese Fragen ist man in den europäischen Kabinetten wohl
schon längst im klaren. Es giebt in China keine Provinzen zu holen,
keine Kolonien zu gründen, und doch besteht unter allen
Industriemächten ein wahrer Wetteifer in Bezug auf China.
Der Grund und Endzweck dieser Bestrebungen ist der Handel,
nicht wie er heute ist, denn schon eingangs wurde angeführt, daß er
im ganzen nur die Summe von elfhundert Millionen erreicht, sondern
der Handel Chinas, wie er sich in Zukunft gestalten wird. Er ist
bisher deshalb nicht bedeutender gewesen, weil zunächst nur eine
kleine Anzahl von Häfen dem Außenhandel geöffnet waren und es
von den wenigsten derselben Verkehrswege nach dem Hinterlande
giebt. Europäische Waren konnten demnach nur kleinen Gebieten zu
entsprechenden Preisen zugängig gemacht werden. Die Chinesen
machen sich diese, wenn sie von ihrem Nutzen überzeugt sind, zu
eigen. Aber sie hegen für die europäischen Errungenschaften,
Maschinen, Dampfschiffe, Eisenbahnen und dergleichen
ebensowenig Bewunderung wie für deren Erfinder und Erzeuger. Es
ist ihnen im Laufe der Jahrhunderte von den benachbarten kleineren
Völkern viel zu viel Weihrauch gestreut worden, sie werden von ihrer
Kindheit an viel zu sehr in dem Glauben ihrer eigenen
Unübertrefflichkeit erhalten, als daß sie den Europäern höhere
Achtung schenken sollten als etwa dem Zauberkünstler, über dessen
Kunststückchen sie staunen. Gerade so wie wir unsere europäische

Kultur für die beste halten, so halten die Chinesen die ihrige für die
beste, und ebensowenig wie wir die unserige mit der chinesischen
vertauschen würden, ebensowenig würden sie die ihrige für die
europäische aufgeben. Ein kleines bewegliches Volk wie die Japaner,
mit großem Verkehr und ausgebreiteter Schiffahrt, war leichter zu
überzeugen, aber auch sie nahmen von den Europäern nur jene
Dinge an, deren praktischer Nutzen ihnen sofort ins Auge sprang,
alles andere ließen sie links liegen. Es kann keinen größeren Irrtum
geben als zu glauben, die Japaner hätten die europäische Kultur
angenommen. Dazu gehört unsern Begriffen nach die christliche
Religion und Moral. Die Japaner sind aber in diesen ethischen
Beziehungen ganz dieselben geblieben, die sie vor der großen
Umwälzung waren. Für Christentum und christliche Moral sind sie
unendlich viel weniger zugänglich als die Chinesen, was die
beiderseitigen Erfolge der Missionen auch beweisen.
Die Chinesen werden ähnlich wie die Japaner zu Werke gehen,
nur unendlich viel langsamer; auch sie werden alle europäischen
Erzeugnisse und Einrichtungen annehmen, sobald sie ihre
Nützlichkeit einsehen lernen. Das beweist die ganze Entwickelung
des chinesischen Handels mit Europa. Aber die große Masse der
Chinesen kennt mit Ausnahme leicht zu transportierender kleiner
Massenartikel die europäischen Produkte überhaupt noch nicht.
Würden sie den Chinesen vor Augen geführt werden, so würden sie
auch bald ausgedehnte Märkte dort finden, denn die Chinesen sind
zu praktische Menschen, zu vorzügliche Geschäftsleute, um den Wert
eines Artikels nicht sofort zu erkennen. Was bisher an europäischen
und amerikanischen Waren eingeführt wurde, kommt also nicht ganz
China zu gute, sondern nur kleineren Gebieten in der Umgebung von
offenen Häfen und längs der Wasserstraßen.
Um nur einige Beispiele hervorzuheben: Ich habe noch am
Hoangho Leute gefunden, die ihre Kleider mit selbstgeschmiedeten
und gefeilten Nähnadeln nähten; mit Staunen betrachteten sie die
glänzenden Näh- und Stecknadeln, die ich ihnen zeigte. Den
Mandarinen im Binnenlande konnte ich kein willkommeneres
Geschenk machen als ein Notizbuch mit Bleistift. Gewöhnt,

ausschließlich mit Pinsel und Tusche zu schreiben, kennen sie auch
die Stahlfeder noch nicht, die sich für die Niederschrift chinesischer
Schriftzeichen auch gar nicht eignet, und wenn ich des Abends in
einer Dorfherberge meine Reisenotizen machte, umdrängten mich
gewöhnlich Dutzende staunender Chinesen, um dem raschen Lauf
meiner Feder auf dem Papier zu folgen. Bleistifte aber eignen sich
für die chinesische Schrift, und die Mandarine konnten sich nicht
genug wundern, daß ein Stift auch ohne Tusche chinesische
Schriftzeichen auf dem Papier hervorbringen kann. Die
Verwunderung stieg jedoch aufs höchste, wenn ich den Bleistift
umdrehte und mit dem am anderen Ende befindlichen Radiergummi
die Schriftzeichen wieder wegputzte. In Städten und Dörfern war ich
ein wanderndes Museum. Die Leute hatten wohl schon zuweilen
Weiße gesehen, denn die Missionare sind bereits in die meisten
Gegenden des Innern vorgedrungen, tragen aber fast ausschließlich
chinesische Tracht. Weiße in Europäertracht, wie ich sie trug, waren
ihnen noch fremd. Sie befühlten neugierig meine Kleider und Stiefel,
besahen Hut und Regenschirm, verwunderten sich in Orten, wo
Feuer noch immer mit Feuerstein und Stahl gemacht wird, über
meine Zündhölzchen und noch mehr über den in Papier gewickelten
Tabak, d. h. Cigaretten, die sogar viele Mandarine noch nicht
kannten. Auf den großen inneren Märkten fand ich gerade so wenig
europäische Artikel wie auf unseren Märkten chinesische, und wo sie
sich dort oder hier vorfinden, werden sie als Kuriosa, nicht als
praktische Waren für den allgemeinen Nutzgebrauch betrachtet.
Eisenwerkzeuge, Lampen, Gerätschaften werden immer noch zum
weitaus größten Teil von den Chinesen selbst gemacht, ebenso
Kleiderstoffe und alle möglichen Gebrauchsartikel. Sie kennen eben
die praktischen Erzeugnisse des Abendlandes, wie gesagt, nur in
beschränkten Bezirken ihres ungeheuren Landes. Wird dieses aber
durch Eisenbahnen und freien Verkehr, ungehinderte Ansiedelung
seitens europäischer Kaufleute, dann Abschaffung der Inlandszölle
den Europäern wirklich erschlossen, wie es früher oder später doch
geschehen wird und muß, dann wird der Absatz all dieser Artikel
nach vielen Millionen berechnet werden müssen.

Gerade in diesen Massenartikeln ist aber die deutsche Industrie
groß. Jetzt schon werden davon nach den wenigen geöffneten
Häfen, von denen vielleicht nur ein Zehntel bis ein Zwanzigstel der
chinesischen Bevölkerung erreicht wird, große Massen ausgeführt.
Wie erst, wenn es sich um ein Absatzgebiet handelt, das auf seinen
elf Millionen Quadratkilometer Fläche vierhundert Millionen
Einwohner zählt! Die Chinesen brennen heute noch größtenteils Oel
in irdenen Lampen; und doch sind Petroleum und Petroleumlampen
bereits wichtige Einfuhrartikel. Eine einzelne Lampe hat freilich
wenig Wert, handelt es sich aber darum, achtzig Millionen
Haushaltungen, so viel wie ganz Europa zählt, mit Lampen zu
versehen, dann gewinnt dieser Artikel eine ganz andere Bedeutung.
Ebenso geht es mit den meisten anderen Artikeln.
Um dafür einen Markt zu gewinnen, müssen die Leute auch die
Mittel haben, alle diese Dinge wirklich zu kaufen. China ist nun
thatsächlich ein Land, das viel größere Mittel und damit Kaufkraft
besitzt, als man gewöhnlich annimmt. Statt daß die Kaufkraft Chinas
erschöpft wäre, könnte man das gerade Gegenteil behaupten.
Niemand würde es beispielsweise einfallen, China mit Ländern wie
Siam oder Marokko zu vergleichen, und doch ist der auswärtige
Handel dieser letzteren im Verhältnis bedeutend größer als jener
Chinas. In Siam entfallen etwa 23 Mark jährlich auf den Kopf, in
Marokko ungefähr 9 Mark 50 Pfennige, in China nur 3 Mark. Im
Jahre 1874 entfielen vom auswärtigen Handel nur 1 Mark 50
Pfennige auf den Kopf. Es ist also eine Steigerung auf das Doppelte
innerhalb eines Vierteljahrhunderts zu verzeichnen. Ist es
anzunehmen, daß China als einziges Reich der Erde dabei stehen
bleiben und nicht weiter fortschreiten wird?

Das Grab des Confucius.
❏
GRÖSSERES BILD
Freilich sind die großen Massen der Chinesen arm, und in Zeiten
von Ueberschwemmungen oder Dürre leben Millionen Menschen im
größten Elend. In viel größerem Maße ist dies in Indien der Fall.
Land und Bevölkerung sind dort viel ärmer als in China, dabei auch
nur halb so groß, und doch ist der auswärtige Handel von Jahr zu
Jahr gestiegen, bis er heute an dreieinhalb Milliarden Mark erreicht
hat, mehr als das Dreifache von China. Man hat eben die Hilfsquellen
Indiens entwickelt und dem Lande Eisenbahnen, moderne
Verkehrsmittel gegeben. In China sind alle Bedingungen für den
blühendsten Handel, für den reichsten Absatz an Waren aller Art
vorhanden, das Land verfügt selbst über ganz bedeutendes
Großkapital, und Geld ist nach Hunderten von Millionen Mark im
Verkehr. Der einheimische, chinesische Binnenhandel besitzt
ungeachtet der primitiven Verkehrsmittel, der Dschunken auf dem

Wasser, Kamele, Maultiere und Schubkarren auf dem Lande einen
Umfang, von dem man sich kaum eine Vorstellung machen kann. In
Schantung allein sind mehrere hunderttausend Kulis als
Schubkarrenführer beschäftigt und Jahr aus Jahr ein mit Frachten
unterwegs. Flüsse und Kanäle wimmeln von Fahrzeugen,
Frachtbooten aller Art. In den Großstädten, darunter viele mit
Hunderttausenden von Einwohnern, Orte, die man in Europa kaum
dem Namen nach kennt, herrscht Wohlstand und Reichtum, giebt es
ausgebreitete Industrien, Bankhäuser, Großkaufleute, Postämter,
Verkehrsanstalten, alles natürlich nach chinesischem Schnitt. Ich
habe all dies in meinem Buche „Schantung und Deutsch-China”
(Verlag von J. J. Weber, Leipzig) mit allen wissenswerten
Einzelheiten geschildert.
Indessen, diese schon vorhandene Kaufkraft kann noch
verdoppelt, verdreifacht werden, wenn es einmal dazu kommt, die
geradezu unerschöpflichen Hilfsquellen, welche noch im Schoße der
Erde schlummern, zu öffnen. Welche Massen von Gold bergen die
Höhen der Mandschurei und die „goldenen Hügel” nördlich von
Peking, die aus verschiedenen Gründen nur zum Teil und das auch
nur auf die primitivste Art von den Chinesen ausgebeutet werden!
Welche Silbermengen bergen Schantung, Schansi, Tschili, Honan,
und doch sind die Mehrzahl der Silberlager noch gar nicht eröffnet!
Aber wichtiger als Gold und Silber sind die schwarzen Diamanten,
die Kohlen. Schansi, diese ungemein wichtige, an die deutsche
Interessensphäre Schantung grenzende Provinz hat in seinem
südlichen, an den Hoangho grenzenden Teil Kohlenlager, wo über
sechshundert Millionen Tonnen der besten Anthrazitkohle der
Ausbeute harren. Dort, ebenso wie in ungeheuren Kohlenlagern des
benachbarten Honan liegen zwischen den Kohlenschichten solche
von vortrefflichem Eisenerz. Dasselbe gilt, wenn auch in geringerem
Umfange, von Schantung, und in allen diesen Gebieten wird wohl
Kohle schon gewonnen, hat sich auch eine sehr beträchtliche
Eisenindustrie schon entwickelt, aber alles mit den primitivsten
Mitteln und bedrückt durch die beutesüchtigen Mandarine.

Welcher Ausdehnung sind ferner die Thee- und Seidenkultur in
China noch fähig! Und vor allem unter europäischer Anweisung die
Industrie, wenn man in Rechnung zieht, welche Millionen fleißiger,
flinker, genügsamer Arbeiter den Chinesen zur Verfügung stehen!
Werden diese in dem ungeheuren Reiche schlummernden Schätze
und Kräfte geweckt, dann wird es kein größeres und dankbareres
Absatzgebiet auf Erden geben als China. Dieses wird den
Industrieländern der Alten und Neuen Welt stets erhalten bleiben.
Vielfach kommt zwar die Befürchtung zum Ausdruck, China könnte
das alte Europa einmal, wenn es zu modernem Leben und Schaffen
erwacht ist, erdrücken. Diese Befürchtung ist unbegründet. Zunächst
wird es noch vieler Jahrzehnte bedürfen, ehe an einen wirksamen
Wettbewerb Chinas ernstlich gedacht werden kann; während Europa
diese ganze Zwischenzeit vor sich hat, entwickeln sich auch hier die
Industrien immer mehr, es entstehen immer neue Industriezweige,
neue Artikel, in welchen die europäischen Industrieländer den
Chinesen voraus bleiben werden. Der zeitliche Abstand, um welchen
China in seiner Entwicklung hinter Europa zurückgeblieben ist, kann
nicht leicht ausgeglichen werden. Weder China noch Japan wird
Europa bei den hier fortwährend auftauchenden neuen Erfindungen
einholen können, sie werden in dieser Hinsicht für absehbare Zeit
von Europa abhängig bleiben.
Aus dem Gesagten kann man ersehen, daß der Handel Chinas
noch tief in den Kinderschuhen steckt, aber er schreitet doch rasch
voran, und wenn alle Mächte sich so sehr um China bemühen, so
geschieht es, um sich bei Zeiten einen Platz dort zu sichern. Im
Jahre 1766 haben 23 fremde Schiffe hingereicht, den auswärtigen
Handel Chinas zu bewältigen; im Jahre 1830 waren schon 150
Schiffe dazu erforderlich; im Jahre 1898 erreichte der Schiffsverkehr
in den chinesischen Häfen die Riesenzahl von 43000 Dampfern und
9000 Segelschiffen mit zusammen 34 Millionen Tonnen Gehalt. Vor
einem halben Jahrhundert war der Wert des Außenhandels weniger
als hundert Millionen Mark. Heute hat er elfhundert Millionen
erreicht, d. h. soweit er auf europäischen Schiffen und in den dreißig
offenen Vertragshäfen sich abwickelt. Welche Unmassen

ausländischer Waren in den anderen Häfen des Reiches und in den
21000 chinesischen Schiffen mit acht Millionen Tonnen Gehalt dazu
kommen, entzieht sich der Beurteilung; der Gesamtwert des
Außenhandels kann aber jährlich nicht geringer sein als anderthalb
Milliarden Mark.
Wohl kann dieser Außenhandel in dem einen oder anderen Jahre
durch außergewöhnliche Ursachen, wie Kriege oder geschäftliche
Krisen in Europa, durch Währungsschwankungen oder vor allem
durch Kriege, Revolutionen und dergleichen in China selbst zeitweilig
eine Verminderung erfahren; er wird aber im ganzen und großen
stetig zunehmen, und diese Weiterentwicklung zu hemmen, haben
weder die reaktionären Mandarine, noch die Regierung die Macht.
Ein Blick in die Vergangenheit eröffnet dem Auge auch die Zukunft.
Wie lagen die Verhältnisse in China noch vor sechs Jahrzehnten, zur
Zeit des berühmten Opiumkrieges? Das Innere Chinas war jedem
Europäer verschlossen, und in den wenigen Häfen, in denen sie sich
aufhalten durften, waren sie den strengsten, mitunter schmachvollen
Beschränkungen unterworfen.
Wäre es damals jemandem eingefallen, zu prophezeien, daß
fünfzig Jahre später europäische Großstädte auf chinesischem Boden
stehen würden, daß die Flüsse von europäischen Dampfern
befahren, Eisenbahnen, Telegraphen das Land durchziehen würden,
man hätte ihn für verrückt gehalten. Die Wirklichkeit von heute
übertrifft sogar solche Prophezeiungen; dreißig seiner größten und
wichtigsten Häfen sind europäischen Kaufleuten und Ansiedlern
erschlossen, aus Shanghai und Hongkong sind europäische
Großstädte geworden, in denen man mit derselben Sicherheit und
Bequemlichkeit wohnt, als lägen sie in Europa. Telegraphenlinien
verbinden die Hauptstadt mit den Provinzen, Kabel die Inseln mit
dem Festlande; zwischen Tientsin und Shanghaikwan, Tientsin und
Peking, Shanghai und Woosung u. s. w. verkehren Eisenbahnzüge.
Die einzelnen Küstenpunkte von Tongkin bis hinauf in die
Mandschurei sind durch regelmäßige Dampferlinien unter fremden
Flaggen miteinander verbunden; auf den Hauptflüssen verkehren
europäische Dampfer, und die Hauptwasserstraße des chinesischen

Reiches, der Jangtsekiang, ist eine Hanptverkehrsstraße des
europäischen Handels geworden bis hinauf gegen die tibetanischen
Grenzdistrikte für Handelsschiffe aller Flaggen, vornehmlich auch der
deutschen Flagge. Das so lange verschlossene sagenhafte Peking ist
heute der Sitz der europäischen Gesandten, die mit den höchsten
Beamten des Riesenreiches verkehren und von dem Kaiser in seinem
eigenen Palaste empfangen werden. In Peking befinden sich Kirchen,
Klöster, Schulen und Universitäten, die letztern chinesische
Unternehmungen, aber mit europäischen Lehrkräften. Die Armee hat
europäische Instruktoren, moderne Arsenale stehen unter
europäischer Leitung, ebenso der ganze Telegraphen-, Post- und
Zolldienst mit Beamten, welchen die höchsten chinesischen
Auszeichnungen verliehen worden sind. Wer hätte das vor dreißig
oder vierzig Jahren zu hoffen gewagt?
Die Wirren der letzten Zeit sind vorübergehend, die Kugel ist
einmal ins Rollen gekommen und, wie gesagt, nicht mehr
aufzuhalten. Der Aufstand gegen die Fremden und ihre Kultur,
welche sie dem alten China bringen wollen, scheint wie ein letztes
Aufraffen der Reaktionäre, der alten Partei der Mandarine und
Litteraten, der Geheimgesellschaften und des von ihnen abhängigen
Gesindels, zusammen immer noch bedeutend genug, daß die
schwache Regierung sich ihnen nicht wiedersetzen konnte. Ihnen
gegenüber steht aber eine ganz bedeutende Partei von aufgeklärten
Leuten, welche in den offenen Häfen oder in Singapore, Hongkong,
Batavia moderne Bildung und Kultur kennen gelernt haben, dann der
ganze großenteils vom Auslande abhängige Kaufmannstand in den
Handelsstädten. Dazu kommen auch zahlreiche Mandarine und ein
großer Teil des gebildeten Teils des Volkes. Wenn diese nicht offen
für die Erschließung des Reiches eintreten, so ist es teils aus Furcht
vor der Regierung einerseits, die ihre Absichten niemals klar und
offen zum Ausdruck bringt, und vor den Geheimgesellschaften
anderseits, welche fremdenfreundlichen Mandarinen gleich mit dem
Mordstahl zu Leibe gehen. Ich habe in den verschiedenen Städten
des Innern mit Hunderten von Mandarinen und anderen aufgeklärten
gebildeten Leuten gesprochen und aus ihren Aeußerungen diesen

Eindruck gewonnen. Dazu kommt noch bei ihnen die Furcht, daß
durch die Eröffnung des Reiches die politische Selbständigkeit
desselben verloren gehen könnte. So gern sie die europäischen
Industrien verwerten möchten, sie haben doch eine ganz
ausgesprochene Vaterlandsliebe, die in dem Grundsatz gipfelt:
„China für die Chinesen”. Ich hatte Gelegenheit, Einblick zu
bekommen in die Berichte, welche seitens der Zentralregierung von
den Provinzgouverneuren über die projektierten Eisenbahnen
eingeholt wurden. In diesen Berichten kommen Aeußerungen vor,
wie: „Zum Bau der Bahnen können wir chinesisches Material
benutzen, zur Ausführung von Arbeiten können Leute aus unserem
Volke herangezogen werden. Die Gehälter der etwa in Dienst zu
stellenden Europäer würden doch nur einen beschränkten Betrag
ausmachen” .... „Das nötige Eisenbahnmaterial vom Auslande zu
beziehen, wäre zu umständlich und kostspielig. Unser Eisen ist für
Schienen ganz geeignet. Wenn sie auch vielleicht teurer zu stehen
kämen, so wären sie doch unsere Landeserzeugnisse”.... „Nur für die
erste Strecke würde ich empfehlen, Eisenmaterial aus dem Auslande
zu beziehen, bis die Hochöfen und Hüttenwerke für die Fabrikation
unserer Schienen fertig sind. Dann sollte lediglich einheimisches
Eisen verwendet werden, damit die Entwicklung des
Eisenbahnnetzes unserer eigenen Industrie zum Vorteil gereiche”....
„Wir sollten für den Eisenbahnbau keine ausländischen Gelder
aufnehmen, sondern ebenso wie die chinesische
Dampfergesellschaft dreißig Millionen Taels im Inlande aufgebracht
hat, eine inländische Anleihe aufnehmen. Eurer Majestät möchte ich
das allerunterthänigste Gesuch unterbreiten, alle Anträge, die
fremde Anleihen bezwecken, kurzweg abzulehnen, um das Unwesen
der ausländischen Banken und Geschäftsvermittler, dieses Ratten-
und Heuschreckenungeziefers, das uns aufzehrt, zu vermeiden”...
„Wollen wir Bahnen bauen, so müssen wir uns die Erbauer aus
unserem eigenen Volke durch Schulen und ausländische Lehrer
selbst heranziehen”.... „Wir wollen fremdes Kapital und fremde Arbeit
von unseren Eisenbahnunternehmungen ausschließen”....

In diesen Gutachten sprechen die Provinzgouverneure auch die
Ueberzeugung aus, daß die Eisenbahnen dem Handel und Wohlstand
der Chinesen förderlich sein und überdies die Ausländer von diesem
Handel verdrängen werden. Das zeigen unter anderen folgende
Stellen in den Berichten: „Der Handel, der jetzt auf fremden Schiffen
erfolgt, würde wieder den Landweg einschlagen und den Fremden
den Gewinn wegnehmen zu gunsten unserer Bevölkerung. Wenn
aber den Fremden kein Gewinn mehr bei uns in Aussicht steht, so
werden sie die Sache bald aufgeben und nach Hause
zurückkehren”... „Eure Majestät würden durch die Eisenbahnen und
die durch sie wachsende Ausfuhr chinesischer Erzeugnisse den Staat
und die Nation auf eine sichere Grundlage stellen und nicht den
fremden Händlern ein Mittel zum Wettbewerb und zu größerem
Gewinn verschaffen”... „Eisenbahnen fördern den Handel, die
Maschinen, die Industrie; durch sie wird man die Erzeugnisse des
Landes aus entfernten Gegenden zu versenden im stande sein. Die
Eisenbahnen sollen uns helfen, durch Eröffnung der verschlossenen
Quellen unserer Reichtümer die Verluste wieder gut zu machen,
welche wir durch die Ausfuhr unseres Kapitals erlitten haben.”
Wie man sieht, wird in diesen Berichten der Fremdenhaß,
welcher die Chinesen kennzeichnet, auch durch die höchsten
Reichsbeamten in offizieller Weise zum Ausdruck gebracht.
Fremdenhaß ist die bisherige Richtschnur der ganzen Beziehungen
Chinas zum Auslande gewesen; nur in geringem Grade bei der
Landbevölkerung vorhanden, steigt er mit den höheren
Gesellschaftsklassen und wird zum Fanatismus bei den Litteraten,
sowie bei der Mehrzahl der Machthaber. Er liegt auch den ganzen
jüngsten Unruhen zu Grunde und ist, wenn man die Sache mit
kaltem Blute betrachtet, begreiflich. Man denke sich doch in einem
europäischen Reiche die wichtigsten Häfen in chinesischem Besitz
und den dortigen Welthandel in chinesischen Händen; man denke
sich chinesische Dampfer auf den europäischen Hauptströmen,
Eisenbahnen, industrielle Anlagen mit chinesischem Kapital gebaut,
durch Chinesen verwaltet, in den Hauptstädten chinesische
Missionare, den unteren Volksklassen von Buddha und Confucius

erzählend, und alles das unter dem Schutze chinesischer Gesandten
in den Hauptstädten der europäischen Reiche, mit chinesischen
Kanonen und Kriegsschiffen an den Grenzen, welche alle Begehren
der Gesandten unterstützen. Gewiß würde sich der Haß gegen die
chinesischen Eindringlinge ganz gewaltig regen, und man würde
alles einsetzen, um sie wieder hinauszuwerfen. Nun dünken sich die
Chinesen auf einer viel höheren Kulturstufe, als die der Europäer; sie
sind stolz auf ihre uralte Zivilisation, die sich Jahrtausende lang
bewährt und alle anderen überdauert habe. In ihrem Dünkel
betrachten sie die Fremdlinge als ebenso „minderwertige” Wesen,
wie wir die Chinesen betrachten, und hegen ihnen gegenüber
denselben Haß, den wir gegen sie empfinden würden, wenn sie
unsere Heimatländer kommerziell ausbeuten würden.
Indessen, diese Gefühle der Chinesen können nicht geschont
werden, zumal sie selbst mit Europa und Amerika in den
mannigfaltigsten Verkehr getreten sind. China muß entwickelt,
erschlossen werden, und dazu ist es nötig, daß China die
erdrückende Macht Europas und die große Ueberlegenheit seiner
Kultur noch eingehender kennen und fühlen lernt. Es giebt China
gegenüber kein Zurück mehr, sondern nur ein Vorwärts. China wird
militärisch niedergezwungen werden, wie schon mehrmals zuvor. Ist
das geschehen, dann soll wieder Friede herrschen. Damit aber die
alten Fehler der Friedensabschlüsse mit China vermieden werden, ist
es erforderlich, daß genügende Macht auch in Zukunft über die
Erfüllung der Friedensbedingungen wache. Eine der vornehmsten
der letzteren wird es sein müssen, daß Angehörige aller Nationen
ungehindert in China verkehren dürfen; es soll keine „Vertragshäfen”
mehr geben; jede Stadt soll offen sein; Flüsse und Kanäle müssen
frei sein für die Schiffahrt der Flaggen aller Länder; es sollen keine
„Interessensphären” für verschiedene Staaten mehr geschaffen
werden; ganz China soll eine Interessensphäre sein für die ganze
Welt und damit auch für sich selbst. Es darf nicht geduldet werden,
daß beispielsweise ausschließliche Absichten Englands auf das ganze
Jangtsekiangthal, das Rückgrat des chinesischen Reiches, zur
Ausführung kommen. Hongkong, Macao, Tsingtau und andere

bestehende feste Besitzungen fremder Mächte werden als solche
bestehen bleiben, neue aber sollen nicht dazu kommen.
Wieviel von diesen Wünschen zur Durchführung kommen kann,
steht dahin. Es wird dies mehr von den Mächten, als von China
abhängen, am meisten von England, das schon jetzt bestrebt ist,
eine Sonderstellung einzunehmen und seine eigenen Ziele zu
verfolgen. Die größten Gewinner aber werden jene Mächte sein,
welche als jüngste auf der chinesischen Bildfläche erschienen sind,
Amerika und Japan. Alle Konzessionen Chinas kommen zunächst
diesen beiden Mächten zu gute; ihr Einfluß und ihr Handel sind, wie
bemerkt, in den letzten Jahren rascher gestiegen als die irgend
welcher anderer Staaten. Das bringt ihre geographische Lage und
ihre Entwickelung mit sich und kann nicht geändert werden. Von den
europäischen Mächten ist am chinesischen Handel nächst England
das Deutsche Reich am meisten beteiligt. Hoffentlich wird der Friede
diese Beziehungen zwischen Deutschland und China zu noch
einträglicheren machen!
Brücke über den Sze-shui-fluß in Yentschou-fu.

Zweiter Teil:
Japan.

Der Hafen von Nagasaki.
❏
GRÖSSERES BILD

❏
GRÖSSERES BILD

Nagasaki, die Heimat von Fräulein
Chrysanthemum.
räulein Chrysanthemum, diese eigenartige, possierliche
Schönheit aus dem fernsten Osten, hat vor etwa dreißig
Jahren in Europa ihren Einzug gehalten, einen Einzug, der
einem Triumphzuge glich durch den ganzen Kontinent. Europa fand
Gefallen an ihrem bepuderten und bemalten Rokokogesichtchen, an
ihren feinen, geschlitzten schwarzen Augen mit den hochgezogenen
Brauen, an ihrem kirschrot geschminkten, stets lächelnden Munde,
an ihren drolligen Stellungen und Bewegungen. Sie trug faltenreiche,
bunte, blumengestickte Kleider, und ihr reiches, glänzendschwarzes
Haar schmückten papierene Schmetterlinge. Ihrem Köpfchen diente
gewöhnlich ein großer, bunter japanischer Papierschirm als Folie, wie
ein Heiligenschein, aber ein solcher für die Heiligen der fremden
Götterwelt.
Eine so frische, anmutige, naiv-natürliche Erscheinung hatte das
alte Europa schon lange nicht mehr gesehen. Sie war neu und kam
sozusagen über Nacht in die Mode. Man brachte sie auf die
Operettenbühne und das Puppentheater, man malte sie auf Fächer,
Vasen und Wandschirme, man modellierte sie in Porzellan und
Bronze, man schnitt sie aus Holz, und heute ist sie in Millionen von
Exemplaren in ganz Europa zu finden, von Spanien bis Rußland, von
Norwegen bis Griechenland, in Herrscherpalästen wie in
bescheidenen Wohnungen. Keine Primadonna hat sich jemals
solchen Ruhmes erfreut wie dieses kleine, putzige, drollige Fräulein
Chrysanthemum.
Sie stammt aus Japan und mußte von dort wohl auswandern und
sich eine neue Heimat suchen, denn in ihrem Vaterlande ist sie in
den letzten Jahrzehnten allmählich aus der Mode gekommen. Sie hat
dort lange genug regiert, Jahrtausende lang. Und während sie Japan
verlassen mußte, um so vielen Menschen bei uns in Europa die

Köpfe zu verdrehen, hat in ihrer alten Heimat eine andere Dame
ihren Platz eingenommen und verdreht den Japanern die Köpfe:
Prinzessin Mode aus Paris oder Wien oder sonst welchem
Geburtsort, in seidenen, tief ausgeschnittenen Schleppkleidern, mit
Puffenärmeln und Handschuhen, mit gewaltigen Hüten und seidenen
Strümpfen. Der Hof und die elegante Welt im Lande des
Sonnenaufgangs frönen nunmehr dieser abendländischen Prinzessin
Mode. Fräulein Chrysanthemum aber ist dort leider verschwunden;
nur in der Provinz hält sie noch Hof, und unter jenen Städten, die ihr
bis auf den heutigen Tag die Treue am meisten bewahrt haben, ist
Nagasaki.
Nagasaki ist die südlichste große Hafenstadt des japanischen
Inselreiches und dabei wohl auch die entzückendste. Nirgends paßt
Fräulein Chrysanthemum besser hinein; die eine erscheint für die
andere wie geschaffen, sie ergänzen sich gegenseitig, und deshalb
sind sie einander wohl auch so lange treu geblieben.
Wer von dem ungeheuren, düsteren chinesischen Reiche nach
Japan fährt, der kommt in Nagasaki mitten in eine neue Welt hinein,
in die Welt der Feen. Die Landschaften, die sich dem Reisenden bei
der Einfahrt in den tief eingeschnittenen Fjord von Nagasaki zeigen,
sind von klassischer Schönheit, ideale olympische Landschaften, die
man sich nur von den griechischen Göttern oder von den Schwestern
von Fräulein Chrysanthemum bevölkert denken kann. Der Name
Fjord erinnert an die kalten, nackten Meereseinschnitte des
nebeligen Norwegens mit ihren Schneeflocken und Gletschern und
ihren düsteren menschlichen Ansiedelungen in den Thälern; der
Fjord von Nagasaki ist das gerade Gegenteil davon. Während dort
die Natur majestätisch, allgewaltig, drohend und erdrückend auftritt,
schmiegt sie sich hier lieblich und zärtlich an den tiefblauen, klaren,
stillen Wasserspiegel, der sich meilenweit ins Herz der Insel Kiuschiu,
einem wahren Phäakenlande, hineinzieht. Prächtige Felspartien,
sanft ansteigende Berge mit üppigstem Baumwuchs, zierliche,
reinliche Dörfchen an den Ufern; Gärten ringsum, daran
anschließend wohlgepflegte Reisfelder, so zierlich und schön
gehalten, als dienten sie den japanischen Phäaken, ihren

Bewohnern, nur als Spielerei; hier und dort ragen Felseninseln aus
der blauen Wasserfläche hoch empor, malerisch in der Form, mit
kühnen Nadeln und Spitzen, und jede derselben gekrönt von ebenso
malerischen Fichten oder hochaufstrebenden Kryptomerien;
blühende Schlinggewächse klettern an den gelben Felsmauern
empor und spiegeln sich in der glatten Wasserfläche ebenso treu
und natürlich wieder; aus dem Grün blickt hier und dort ein
Tempelchen hervor, und auf den Felsen erheben sich brennrote
Pagoden. Dutzende dieser Inselchen sind in den Fjord
hineingestreut, und zwischen ihnen ziehen still und traumhaft die
malerisch geschwungenen Boote mit blendend weißen Segeln wie
Schwäne einher. Nirgends in der weiten Welt habe ich so ideal
schöne Landschaften gesehen wie hier rings um das japanische
Inselreich. Fast erscheint es wie eine Profanation, daß die
schnaubenden, schwarzen, Kohlenrauch pustenden Dampferkolosse
mitten durch diese Feenwelt fahren, daß prosaische stählerne
Schiffsschrauben die blauen Wasserfluten aufwühlen, daß noch viel
prosaischere Matter-of-fact-Menschen in die Heimat von Fräulein
Chrysanthemum hineingedampft kommen.
Dort, ganz im Hintergrunde des Fjords, eingesattelt zwischen den
hohen, bewaldeten, tempelgekrönten Bergen liegt diese Heimat,
Nagasaki.
Die Dämmerung ist angebrochen, die grauen, einförmigen
Dächer der niedrigen, zierlichen Holzhäuschen der Stadt sind kaum
von dem Grün der Bäume zu unterscheiden. Bald erscheinen rings
um den Hafen Lichter, rot, blau, weiß, in allen möglichen Farben der
Papierlampions; sie werden immer zahlreicher und flimmern endlich
in vielen Tausenden in den Straßen vor den Häusern, an den offenen
Veranden auf; sie ziehen sich die umliegenden Anhöhen hoch hinauf
bis zu den Tempeln; aus der Ferne dringen die Klänge der Samisen
schwach zu uns herüber, dazwischen Gelächter und Gesang, wie von
dem fröhlichen Treiben eines sommernächtlichen Gartenfestes.
Früh morgens werde ich durch ähnlichen Gesang, ähnliches
Gelächter aus meinen Träumen geweckt, in denen zierliche Musmis

und Tänzerinnen im Gewande Chrysanthemums die wichtigste Rolle
gespielt haben. Durch das kleine runde Fensterchen meiner
Schiffskabine blickte lächelnd Chrysanthemum selbst herein. Ja, das
ist sie! Dieselben schalkhaften Schlitzaugen, derselbe rosige Mund.
Aber welcher Anzug, welche Gestalt! Und wie kam sie nur an meine
Kabinenluke, die doch gewiß mehr als sechs Meter über dem
Wasserspiegel erhaben ist? Nun sehe ich es; ein großes, plumpes
Kohlenboot, mit Kohlen schwer beladen, liegt an der Seite unseres
Schiffes, und einige hohe, bis aufs untere Verdeck reichende Leitern
sind an das Schiff angelehnt worden. Auf den Sprossen dieser
Leitern sitzen von oben bis unten lauter Chrysanthemen und gucken
neugierig durch die Kabinenluken. Sie sind alle gleich gekleidet: nicht
in die schönen, vielfarbigen, faltenreichen Kimonos, sondern sie
tragen enganliegende, bis etwas über die Knie reichende Hosen und
lose, vorne nur notdürftig schließende Jacken aus dunkelblauem
Stoff, ohne irgendwelche Unterkleider. Die Füße sind nackt, dafür
umhüllen buntgestreifte Kopftücher den Kopf und lassen nur die
hübschen, frischen, freundlichen Gesichtchen frei. Ein Kohlenschiff
nach dem andern legt sich an unsere Seite, ganze Reihen von
Leitern stehen nun nebeneinander, viele Dutzende von kleinen
putzigen, prallen japanischen Mädchen sitzen auf den Sprossen, alle
lächeln, schäkern und schwatzen miteinander. Die älteste mag kaum
siebzehn, achtzehn Jahre zählen. Unten in den Kohlenschiffen
werden endlich große Körbe mit Steinkohlen gefüllt und den
Mädchen, die zu unterst auf der Leiter stehen, gereicht. Diese heben
sie über ihre Köpfchen zu den nächsten Sprossen empor, und so
passieren sie von Hand zu Hand, bis sie auf das Verdeck kommen.
Dort nehmen andere Mädchen die Körbe in Empfang, schütten den
Inhalt in den Kohlenschacht und schleudern die leeren Körbe mit
kräftigem Schwung auf die Kohlenschiffe zurück. Der Kohlenstaub
bedeckt sie bald vom Kopf bis zum Fuß, schwärzt die Gesichter, die
winzigen Händchen und die Brüste, denn sie haben der Hitze wegen
die Jäckchen geöffnet. Darunter erkennt man nicht einmal mehr das
stereotype Lächeln, und gar bald sehen sie aus wie kleine,
kohlschwarze Teufelchen. Man sollte es kaum für möglich halten!
Diese zarten, blutjungen Geschöpfchen, die höchstens zum

Guitarrezupfen, zu Spiel und Tanz geboren scheinen, sind in diesem
Lande der Phäaken Lastenträger, Kohlenarbeiter!
Um den Bug unseres Riesenschiffes tummeln sich dicht neben
und zwischen den rußigen, schmutzigen Kohlenbarken hindurch
blendend weiße, so rein gescheuerte Sampans (Ruderboote) herum,
daß man glauben könnte, sie wären alle erst vor einer Stunde aus
den Werkstätten gekommen. Halbnackte Japaner mit
bronzefarbigen, sehnigen Gliedern handhaben sie geschickt und
führen die Passagiere des Dampfers ans Land. Ein langes Ruder ist
am Steuer befestigt, und mit diesem machen sie ähnliche
Bewegungen wie der Fisch mit seinen Schwanzflossen. Die Japaner
haben bei ihren kleinen Fahrzeugen die Kunst der Fortbewegung den
Fischen abgelauscht. Vor mir dehnt sich auf der Ostseite der weiten
paradiesischen Bucht eine lange Reihe einstöckiger Häuser in
europäischem Stil aus, die das europäische Settlement von Nagasaki
bilden. Dieser reizende Hafen gehört nämlich mit vier anderen zu
den für Europäer offenen Häfen des japanischen Reiches, und auf
dem wenige Hektare großen Flächenraum, den die Japaner den
Weißen zur Verfügung gestellt haben, dürfen sie ihre Häuser bauen,
ihren Geschäften nachgehen. Nagasaki ist der älteste dieser Häfen,
denn schon vor beinahe dreihundert Jahren hatten die damaligen
Herren der Ozeane, die Holländer, die Bewilligung erhalten, hier ein
Settlement zu gründen. Davon ist freilich nichts mehr vorhanden. Die
den Hafen entlang laufende Bundstraße hat nur moderne,
bescheidene Häuser aufzuweisen, ebenso ihre Parallelstraße
landeinwärts und die Verbindungsgassen, in denen die Chinesen ihre
Wohnungen aufgeschlagen haben. Kaum hundert Europäer, die
Konsuln der fremden Mächte mit eingerechnet, wohnen hier, aber
doch haben sie ihren eigenen Klub mit Billard-, Spiel- und Lesesälen,
wo man sich irgendwo im Herzen von Europa, nur nicht in Japan
fühlen könnte. Weiter südlich gegen das Meer zu liegt, versteckt
zwischen üppigen Gartenanlagen, ein bescheidenes Hotel, dessen
Name Bellevue durch die wunderbare Aussicht auf das japanische
Nagasaki sehr wohl begründet ist.

An der Landungsstelle erwarten ganze Batterien von Rickshaws
die ankommenden Reisenden. Weiß der Leser, was eine Rickshaw
ist? Wahrscheinlich nicht, sonst hätte er sie schon längst in Europa
zur Einführung gebracht. Die Rickshaw ist das bequemste,
angenehmste, schnellste und billigste Fuhrwerk, das je zur
Beförderung der Menschen erschaffen wurde. Helios hätte in keinem
bequemeren zur Sonne, der Teufel in keinem luftigeren zur Hölle
fahren können. Die Rickshaw ist eine offene, niedrige Viktoria ohne
Kutschersitz, auf zwei Rädern und für einen Menschen Raum
gewährend, der sie mit derselben Leichtigkeit besteigt, als wolle er
sich in einen Armstuhl setzen. Vorn ist eine Gabeldeichsel
angebracht. Ein japanischer Kuli stellt sich dazwischen, hebt die
Deichsel mit den Händen auf und galoppiert mit der Rickshaw und
ihrem Insassen davon. Der gewöhnliche Fahrpreis für eine Fahrt ist
zehn bis zwanzig Pfennige, und die Miete für einen halben Tag von
sechs Stunden beläuft sich auf fünfzig Pfennige (fünfundzwanzig
Sen). Deshalb fällt es in Japan auch keinem Europäer ein zu gehen.
Die Rickshaw ist ihr allgemeines Beförderungsmittel. Jede Rickshaw
und jeder dazugehörige Kuli hat seine Nummer, gerade so wie
unsere Droschken, und alle stehen unter polizeilicher Kontrolle.
Nummer 415 ist leider nicht zu sehen. Ich hätte gar zu gerne
Nummer 415 gewählt, denn wer Pierre Lotis Madame Chrysanthème
gelesen hat, der weiß, daß 415 Pierre Lotis Schwager war. Indessen
Nummer vier hat eben so kräftige Lungen und eben so kräftige
Beine. Kaum sitze ich in seiner Rickshaw, so läuft er auch schon im
Galopp von dannen. Die Frühlingshitze ist groß, und auf die Gefahr
hin, von einem schlitzäugigen Polizisten eingesteckt zu werden, hat
sich Nummer vier seiner zwei Kleidungsstücke, ähnlich wie sie die
vorgeschilderten Kohlenjungfrauen tragen, entledigt. Um den
Anstand einigermaßen zu wahren, thut er es seinen
Rickshawkollegen gleich und legt um den Leib einen weißen
Leinwandstreifen, so groß wie eine weiße Ballkravatte. Sein
muskelreicher Rücken glänzt von Schweiß wie polierte Bronze; das
Wasser läuft ihm von den Schultern und Beinen herunter, er keucht
und pustet, aber die Beine tragen ihn und seinen Wagen und mich

federleicht den Bund entlang nach dem alten japanischen Stadtteil,
dem eigentlichen Nagasaki.
Der erste Eindruck, den die langen, engen Gäßchen mit den
bescheidenen, einstöckigen Häuschen jetzt in den späten
Vormittagsstunden machen, ist enttäuschend. Straßen auf, Straßen
ab dasselbe ewige Einerlei; gutes, mit peinlicher Sorgfalt
reingehaltenes Pflaster, mit dem Trottoir nicht längs der Häuser,
sondern in der Mitte der Straße; Matten- und Leinwanddächer
schützen die langen Reihen von Kaufläden gegen die brennende
Sonnenhitze; die Kaufläden nehmen die ganzen Häuserfronten ein,
die weder Thüren noch Fenster haben; der ganze verfügbare Raum
ist mit Waren der verschiedensten Gattung belegt, hier kostbare
Bronzen und Porzellane, dort Rüstungen, Schwerter und Helme,
daran anstoßend Papierwaren, Lampions, Schmetterlinge, Drachen;
dann wieder Seidenwaren oder allerhand Artikel aus Schildpatt, eine
der Hauptindustrien von Nagasaki. Ebensowenig wie nach vorne,
haben die hölzernen Häuschen nach hinten eine Mauer; während ich
durch die Straßen fliege, kann ich das Innere der Häuser von einem
Ende zum andern sehen; alles ist offen, auf den ungemein reinlichen
Strohmatten des erhöhten Fußbodens kauern schläfrige Japaner,
Männlein und Weiblein, der Hitze wegen in tiefem Negligé, und
rauchen ihre winzigen Pfeifchen, mit Köpfen, die kaum groß genug
sind, um unseren zartesten Damen als Fingerhut zu dienen; oder sie
schlafen, auf die Matten hingestreckt, einen Holzklotz als Kissen
unter dem Kopf; oder sie hocken auf ihren Waden, die beliebteste
Stellung, und schlürfen Thee aus winzigen Täßchen, den Theetopf
vor sich auf dem Boden. Mitten durch die Häuser durch gewahre ich
hier und dort ein winziges Gärtchen mit kurios gebogenen und
verschlungenen Fichten, mit Wassertümpeln und winzigen Brücken
darüber; auf den tischgroßen Rasenflächen stehen allerhand Bronze-
und Steinfiguren, die reine Spielerei, denn viele der Gärtchen
nehmen nicht mehr Raum ein als eines unserer europäischen
Wohnzimmer. Plätze, Squares, öffentliche Gärten giebt es in dem
alten Nagasaki keine; alles ist uralt, klein, niedlich und, was mich
seltsam, aber angenehm berührte, durchaus japanisch. Von der

Modernisierung des alten Japan, die sich dem Besucher von
Yokohama, Osaka, Tokio und anderen Städten so unangenehm
aufdrängt, sind in Nagasaki nur wenige Spuren zu sehen, und doch
war gerade dieser Hafen den Kaukasiern schon über zwei
Jahrhunderte geöffnet, als die anderen jedem Europäer noch
hermetisch verschlossen waren. Damals, im alten Japan, war
Nagasaki der moderne, europäische Hafen; jetzt im modernen,
europäischen Japan ist Nagasaki derjenige, der am meisten Alt-
Japan bewahrt hat. Nirgends sieht man in den Kaufläden so gute,
alte Prachtstücke der japanischen Kunst wie hier; nirgends so echtes
und schönes Satsuma- und Hizenporzellan; alte Seidenstoffe und
Stickereien, Rüstungen und Bronzen. Man könnte sein Vermögen
opfern, um all diese entzückenden Produkte einer fremdartigen
Kunst zusammenzukaufen; trete ich in einen Kaufladen, flugs liegen
die Händler, Vater, Mutter und Tochter, vor mir auf allen Vieren und
berühren aus lauter Artigkeit mit der Stirn den Boden, und während
der Papa die kostbarsten Stücke aus Schachteln und Papier,
Baumwolle und Seidentüchern herauswickelt, um sie mir zu zeigen,
bereitet ein Fräulein Chrysanthemum, seine Tochter, mit ihren zarten
Fingerchen Thee und überreicht mir kniend eine Tasse. Dabei ist sie
so niedlich und hübsch und lächelt so einschmeichelnd kokett, daß
man viel eher vor ihr auf die Knie fallen möchte.
Am jenseitigen Ende der eigenartigen alten Stadt mit ihren
schnurgeraden, sich rechtwinklig schneidenden Straßen, die wohl
noch selten, wenn überhaupt jemals, von einem Lastwagen oder
einer Equipage befahren worden sind, zieht sich die Vorstadt
Dschudschendschi die reich mit alten Kampferbäumen besetzten
Höhen empor. Dort, in einem der niedlichen Häuschen mit den
offenen Veranden und den hübschen Gärten mit blühenden
Wisterias, hat auch Pierre Loti mit seiner Frau Chrysanthème
gewohnt; welches der Häuschen es wohl sein mag? Gegen die
Meeresbucht zu sind die Berghänge mit Tausenden von
Grabdenkmälern, alten, mit Farnkraut und Myrten überwucherten
Steinen bedeckt, und zwischen beiden führt eine wundervolle
Treppenanlage mit gewaltigen steinernen Thorbogen die Anhöhen

empor zu dem berühmten Osuwatempel, einem der schönsten
Shintotempel Japans. Nummer vier macht vor der Riesentreppe Halt,
wischt sich mit den Händen den triefenden Schweiß von den
Gliedern und ladet mich ein, den Tempel zu besuchen.
Es ist eher eine ganze Reihe von Tempeln, die dort oben inmitten
eines Waldes von kolossalsten Kampferbäumen und Kryptomerien
vor langer, langer Zeit errichtet wurden: kleine, einfache Holzhäuser
mit schweren, grauen, bemoosten Dächern und weiten, von Galerien
umgebenen Vorhöfen, in denen fromme Daimios im Laufe der
Jahrhunderte Opferlaternen, steinerne Wasserbecken, Drachen- und
Götzengestalten, ja sogar ein bronzenes Pferd haben aufstellen
lassen. Das letztere ist eine Berühmtheit Japans, wohl wegen seiner
für dortige Verhältnisse selten schönen Ausführung. Pierre Loti
behauptete, es wäre aus Jade (Nephritstein), indessen sein
reizendes Buch Madame Chrysanthème ist so voll von
Unrichtigkeiten, daß man ihm auch wohl das steinerne Pferd
hingehen lassen muß. Nur seine Chrysanthème, diese Gattin auf
Zeit, hat er richtig geschildert, dann auch die Tänzerinnen und
Sängerinnen.
Bei jedem Treppenabsatz haben die Japaner hier Tempelchen
und Shintoschreine errichtet; über jedem Thor sind die
charakteristischen Neujahrs-Hanfseile gespannt, mit langen,
herabhängenden Papierfetzen, zur Abwehr der bösen Geister. Die
Treppe scheint gar kein Ende zu nehmen. Weißgekleidete Priester
mit kahlgeschorenen Schädeln huschen in den Gängen auf und
nieder, verschwinden hinter weißen Vorhängen; andere halten eben
unter allerhand geheimnisvollem Zeremoniell ihren Götterdienst;
wieder andere ruhen in den Nischen und Seitengebäuden und
schmauchen ihre Pfeifchen, deren Rauch sich mit jenem der
Weihrauchhölzchen vermengt, die in ungezählten Mengen vor den
bronzenen, steinernen und hölzernen Götzenbildern brennen.
Zur Linken führt ein Thor nach einem großen schattigen Garten.
Welche Ueberraschung! Unter den riesigen Kampferbäumen stehen
hier eine Anzahl Theehäuser, und vor jedem derselben laden uns

buntgekleidete Musmis mit freundlichem Lächeln zum Besuch ein,
Musmis in roten, blauen und rosenfarbigen Kimonos, mit Blumen
besäet, Blumen auch in dem üppigen schwarzen Haar, den Samisen,
die japanische Guitarre, in der Hand, und treten wir ein, flugs werfen
sie sich zu Boden und harren der Befehle. Dann bringen sie, immer
lächelnd, Stuhl und Tischchen herbei, es folgen Aschenbehälter mit
glühenden Kohlen, dann die zierlichsten kleinen
Porzellanschüsselchen mit den seltsamsten Eßbarkeiten. Sie drücken
einem in reizend naiver Weise die japanischen Chop-Sticks
(Eßhölzchen) in die Hand und lachen über unsere Ungeschicklichkeit.
Drei, vier, fünf von diesen zierlichen Geschöpfchen kauern rings um
mich auf dem Boden und befühlen meine Kleider, zupfen an meiner
Uhrkette, nötigen mich zu essen und zu trinken. Ob ich nicht
möchte, daß sie tanzten? Gewiß. Sofort wird der Samisku
herbeigeholt, und während eine an den Saiten zupft, tanzen die
anderen die eigentümlichen japanischen Tänze, den Manzai, Kisku
und Ogurayama, tanzen sie mit den Händen, den Hüften, den
Köpfchen und Knieen, nur nicht mit den Füßen. Dabei sehen sie so
reizend aus, so verführerisch, so jung, vierzehn, fünfzehn Jahre, daß
man nicht französischer Seeoffizier zu sein braucht, um sich in diese
Chrysanthèmes zu vergucken. Und reißt man sich endlich los von
den kleinen Zauberinnen, dann fallen sie nieder auf alle Viere und
berühren ganz demütig mit der Stirne den Boden. Sayonara,
Sayonara!
Am andern Tage trete ich den Rückweg nach der Stadt an, und
unten angekommen zeigt sich mir in den Seitenstraßen der
Vorstädte vereinzelt das seltsame, kaum glaubliche Schauspiel, das
Pierre Loti in der Heimat von Fräulein Chrysanthème so oft gesehen
hat:
„Zwischen fünf und sechs Uhr nachmittags ist jedes lebende
Wesen nackt; Kinder, junge Leute, alte Männer, alte Frauen, alles
sitzt in einem Bottich irgendwelcher Art und badet. Und das findet
wo immer statt, in den Gärten, in den Höfen, in den Kaufläden,
selbst auf der Thürschwelle, so daß die Unterhaltung mit den
Nachbarn auf der anderen Seite der Straße leichter vor sich gehen

kann. In dieser Situation werden Besucher empfangen, und die
Badenden verlassen ohne das geringste Zögern die Badewanne, um
dem Besucher einen Sitz anzubieten oder mit ihm einige
liebenswürdige Redensarten zu wechseln. Indessen, weder die
jungen Mädchen noch die alten Frauen gewinnen etwas durch dieses
ursprüngliche Auftreten. Eine japanische Frau ohne ihren langen
Kimono und ihren breiten, anspruchsvollen Obi (Leibbinde) ist nichts
als ein winziges, gelbes Wesen mit krummen Beinen und flacher,
formloser Brust; keine Spur bleibt zurück von ihren künstlichen
kleinen Reizen, die gleichzeitig mit ihrer Kleidung verschwunden
sind.”
Japanerinnen in der Jinrickshaw.
❏
GRÖSSERES BILD

Die Wahrheit dieser Bemerkung hat gewiß jeder empfunden, der
die Japanerinnen im Bade gesehen hat, und gesehen hat sie jeder
Japanbesucher, auch wenn er sie nicht gesucht hat, ja selbst, wenn
er getrachtet hätte, ihnen auszuweichen, denn sie sind, wie gesagt,
morgens und abends überall zu sehen. Wie beim Schmetterling, so
sind es auch bei den Chrysanthèmes von Japan nur die Flügel, die
Kleider, welche sie so reizend machen.
Ob denn das Urbild von Madame Chrysanthème, der japanischen
Gattin Pierre Lotis, auch eine solche Enttäuschung für ihn war? Mein
Schiff fuhr erst spät abends weiter, ich hatte also noch hinlänglich
Zeit, ihr meinen Besuch abzustatten. Aber wie sie finden? Ueber den
Bund schlendernd, kehrte ich bei dem Konsul einer großen, uns
nahestehenden Kontinentalmacht ein, um mich nach ihr zu
erkundigen. War sie seit dem Erscheinen von Pierre Lotis Buch zu
einer Weltberühmtheit geworden, so wird man sie doch in Nagasaki
noch viel besser kennen. Der Konsul war nicht zu Hause, und sein
Sekretär hatte gar keine Ahnung von Pierre Loti und kannte weder
das Buch noch die Heldin desselben. Vielleicht konnte ich beim
französischen Konsul Auskunft in dieser Angelegenheit erhalten. Ich
kletterte zwischen schönen, tropischen Gärten hinauf zu dessen
Wohnung. Loti? Madame Chrysanthème? Er zuckte die Achseln.
„Bedaure. Unbekannt.” Wie sollte er jeden Marineoffizier kennen, der
in Nagasaki herumspaziert! Es kommen so viele französische
Kriegsschiffe hierher. Gewöhnlich steigen sie bei Madame L., der
Besitzerin des Hotels Bellevue, ab.
Das Hotel ist ganz nahe, und ich hatte doch die Absicht dort zu
essen. Madame L. ist die dritte Witwe eines französischen
Journalisten, der vor einigen Jahren in Tokio eine Zeitung, Courrier
du Japan, gegründet hat. Nach einigen Nummern starb die Zeitung,
gerade so wie ihr Gründer, an der Auszehrung. Seither warf sich die
Witwe auf das Hotelwesen und darbt nicht mehr. Beim Kaffee, den
ich auf der Hotelterrasse an ihrem Tisch einnehme, frage ich sie
nach Pierre Loti und Madame Chrysanthème. Sie lacht auf. „Mais
Monsieur, c’est un farceur! Er war in Nagasaki, hat aber weder Haus
noch Frau hier gehabt. Das ist ja alles erdichtet! Er hat bei mir

gewohnt und gegessen.” „Und Madame Chrysanthème?” fragte ich
weiter. „Quand à ça”, antwortete sie mir, „es giebt Tausende hier. Sie
brauchen nur zu pfeifen, und sie kommen. Aber Pierre Loti hat
niemals mit einer solchen zusammengewohnt. Das einzige Wahre in
seinem Buche ist seine Beschreibung von Nagasaki und seine
Bemerkung, daß das vermeintliche Bronzepferd im Osuvatempel aus
Jadestein ist.”
Ich empfahl mich und kehrte enttäuscht auf mein Schiff zurück.
Ein paar Stunden vorher hatte ich selbst vor dem Bronzepferde
gestanden und mich, mit dem Taschenmesser daran kratzend,
überzeugt, daß das Pferd aus Bronze sei. Ob die Geschichte mit
Pierre Loti, welche mir die Besitzerin des Hotels erzählt hat, ebenso
unrichtig ist wie jene mit dem steinernen Pferd?

Durch das japanische Mittelmeer
nach Kobe.
enn ich mir die vielen Länder, die ich in den verschiedenen
Weltteilen gesehen habe, vor Augen zaubere, so kann ich
doch keines finden, das sich an leidenschaftlichem Reiz, an
idyllischer Schönheit mit dem Paradiese von Ostasien, mit Japan,
vergleichen ließe, und in diesem letztern ist wieder die Inlandsee das
Schönste.
Man denke sich den vielgerühmten Lago Maggiore mit Palanza
und seinen Borromëischen Inseln hundertmal vergrößert, dann hat
man ein annäherndes Bild der Inlandsee. Kein anderer Erdenstrich
könnte den Vergleich mit ihr aushalten, und selbst der Lago
Maggiore ist lange nicht so lieblich und zugleich großartig. Der
großen Hauptinsel des japanischen Reiches, Hondo, sind gegen
Südosten drei andere große Inseln vorgelagert, Kiuschiu, Schikoku
und Awadschi, und zwischen ihnen breitet sich eine Wasserfläche
von etwa 350 Kilometern Länge und zehn bis fünfzig Kilometern
Breite aus, die mit der ungeheuren Wasserwüste des Stillen Ozeans
nur durch schmale Straßen verbunden ist. Diese von den vier
genannten Inseln umschlossene Wasserfläche ist die Inlandsee.
Auf meiner Dampferfahrt von Nagasaki nach dem in der letzten
Zeit vielgenannten Schimonoseki bildeten einige
Reisebeschreibungen über Japan meine Lektüre, und unwillkürlich
mußte ich über die Ueberschwänglichkeit lächeln, mit welcher die
Schönheiten der Inlandsee, deren Portierloge sozusagen

Schimonoseki bildet, darin gepriesen werden. Allein die Wirklichkeit
übertrifft thatsächlich alle Schilderungen. Schimonoseki selbst hat
daran freilich keinen Anteil; ein kleines, bescheidenes Städtchen, der
Hauptsache nach nur aus einer Straße bestehend, die sich auf zwei
Kilometer längs des Nordufers der schmalen Meerenge hinzieht. Der
Mastenwald von unzähligen Segelbooten entzog es unserem Anblick,
so daß ich den Aufenthalt unseres Dampfers in der
gegenüberliegenden großen, schwarzen Kohlenstation Modschi
benutzte, um auf einer der flinken Dampfschaluppen, welche den
Verkehr zwischen beiden Ufern der Meerenge besorgen, nach dem
Städtchen zu fahren. Vor den Holzhäuschen und rings um die
Warenhäuser herrschte reges Leben. Schimonoseki ist von der
europäischen Kultur noch vollständig unberührt geblieben, und ganz
wie vor der großen Revolution kleiden sich und leben die Einwohner
auch noch heute. Selten wird es von Europäern besucht, kaum daß
ein halbes Dutzend von Touristen in jedem Jahre in einem der
kleinen urjapanischen Gasthöfe absteigt. Hinter dem Orte, die
waldgekrönten Anhöhen hinauf, ist jedes Fleckchen Landes von den
fleißigen Japanern bebaut worden, und auf beiden Seiten der
Meeresküste bilden die zahlreichen, mit Kanonen besetzten
Festungswerke die einzige Unterbrechung.
Die Schimonosekistraße mit ihren hohen, malerischen Uferbergen
und der hier stets heftigen Flutströmung erinnerte mich lebhaft an
den Rhein, etwa bei Bingen. Die Breite ist auch nicht viel größer, nur
sind die Krümmungen stärker, so daß die großen Seedampfer mit
besonderer Sorgfalt gelenkt werden müssen. Nach kurzer Fahrt
treten die Ufer zurück, und wir befanden uns in dem am wenigsten
schönen Teil des Binnenmeeres, der weiten, tiefblauen,
spiegelglatten Suwo-Nada. Aber schon nach zweistündiger Fahrt
sahen wir vor uns eine Anzahl von Inseln aus der Seefläche
emporsteigen, und während der nächsten zwanzig Stunden kamen
wir aus dem großartigen Insellabyrinth der Inlandsee gar nicht mehr
heraus. Tausende und Abertausende von Inseln bedecken hier die
Wasserfläche, Inseln in jeder Größe, bis zu kleinen, kaum einige
Meter hohen Felsen, alle in so malerischen Formen und in so

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Emergencies And Politics A Sober Hobbesian Approach Tom Sorell

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