Humanitarian Imperatives: Saving Lives from Nautical Distress and Shipwreck in Modern Europe

该项目旨在调查一项特定道德规范的历史- -从沉船和海上遇险中拯救生命的必要性- -并在此基础上促进对人道主义历史的更好理解。在此调查的基础上，该项目还发展了关于道德规范的历史特征和文化情境的新视角。1823年至1823年，英国和荷兰成立了救助海难人员的人道主义志愿组织，建立了全国范围的救生艇站网络。自18世纪60年代以来，在这些组织之前就有了当地的、往往是暂时的倡议。直到1870年左右，其他国家也纷纷效仿，尤其是北欧和西欧。在几十年的时间里，一个以城市资产阶级为主的环境成功地说服了以农村为主、往往是贫困的沿海人口，让他们认识到，在几乎所有情况下，几乎不考虑自己的生存风险，试图营救失事船只是必须的，这是一项普遍有效的命令。在此之前，对失事船只的援助仍然是偶然的。技术革新和经济激励都不能解释新的人道主义运动的出现。因此，道德文化的分析成为中心。该项目探讨了为什么和如何出现的问题，它是如何维持的，以及它在文化和社会中产生了什么后果。调查的重点是：(1)“道德经济”，即社会运动中拯救海难生命的混合价值观；(2)围绕救生和沉船的文化给定的话语和实践模式；(3)工作救生艇运动投资于有别于其他道德和人道主义事业；(4)讨论这种历史分析对道德理论，特别是元伦理学立场的影响。该项目侧重于英国、荷兰、法国和德国最古老的海上救援运动形式，从19世纪初到20世纪中期。该项目使用多种来源（档案和出版的文件，图像来源）和方法（解释学文本分析，话语分析，图像学，媒体史，理论论证，思想史）的组合。对这一问题的分析更广泛地旨在从理论上理解人道主义道德规范是如何围绕单一问题而不是一般原则出现的。这种理解将有助于解释人道主义在历史上出现时持续的不连贯和分裂，以及它与日常道德话语的距离。

The project aims to investigate the history of a particular moral norm – the imperative of saving lives from shipwreck and nautical distress – and on this basis to contribute to an improved understanding of the history of humanitarianism. On the basis of this investigation, the project also develops novel perspectives on the historical character and cultural situatedness of moral norms in general.Since 1823-4, humanitarian volunteer organizations for saving lives from shipwreck were established in Britain and the Netherlands that set up networks of lifeboat stations with national scope. Local, often transient initiatives had preceded these organizations since the 1760s. Until around 1870 other countries followed suit, in particular in Northern and Western Europe. Within a few decades, a mostly urban-bourgeois milieu succeeded in persuading the mostly rural, often impoverished coastal population to acknowledge the universal validity of an imperative according to which it was obligatory, under almost all circumstances and almost without regard to one’s own existential risk, to attempt the rescue of the shipwrecked. Previously, assistance to the shipwrecked had remained occasional. Neither technological innovations nor economic incentives explain the emergence of the new humanitarian movements. Hence, the analysis of moral culture becomes central.The project examines the question of why and how the novel imperative emerged, how it was sustained, and what consequences emanated from it in culture and society. The investigation focuses on (1) the “moral economy,” the hybrid values embraced by the social movements for saving lives from shipwreck; (2) the culturally given patterns of discourse and practice around lifesaving and shipwreck; (3) the work lifeboat movements invested in achieving distinction from other moral and humanitarian ventures; and (4) discussing the consequences of this historical analysis for positions in moral theory, especially meta-ethics.The project focuses on the oldest forms of sea rescue movements in Britain, the Netherlands, France and Germany, from the early nineteenth into the mid-twentieth century. The project works with a diverse source base (archival and published documents, image sources) and a combination of methods (hermeneutic textual analysis, discourse analysis, iconography, media history, theoretical argument, intellectual history).The analysis of this problematic aims more broadly at a theoretical understanding of the manner in which humanitarian moral norms emerge around mere single issues instead of general principles. This understanding will help to explain the lasting incoherence and fragmentation of humanitarianism as it has emerged historically, as well as its distance to quotidian moral discourse.