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Dehumanization In David Livingstone Smith's 'Less Than Human'

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We wake up in the morning, get ready to go to work or school and we leave our house or apartment to be at a place where there are several people. We do not think about people and their races consciously, it is a subconscious thought and this thought could lead to several things. Some individuals can view others as fellow human beings while others view them as less than human or even people who do not deserve to be where they are right now. It might not be the first thought that crosses our minds but it crosses our mind subconsciously. We do not act or behave in a way where we make them feel like they are different from us because doing so seems to be morally wrong. We all have the ability to dehumanize but we do not because it is morally wrong. David Livingstone Smith, a professor of philosophy at the University of New England, supports this claim. Smith wrote a book called Less Than Human in which he discusses the concept of dehumanization in depth. Alan Page Fiske, a professor of anthropology at the University of California, Los Angeles is known for studying the nature of human relationships and cross-culture variations between them. Tage Shakti Rai is a Post‐Doctoral Research Fellow in the Center for Global …show more content…

Merriam Webster dictionary defines moral as of or relating to the principles of right and wrong behavior. However, Fiske and Rai define moral as an action used to constitute, create or regulate social relationships. The people committing the violence believe that what they are doing is morally right and that they are morally motivated to participate in such

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