Beyond Punks in Empty Chairs: An Imaginary Conversation with Clint Eastwood’s Dirty Harry—Toward Peace Through Spiritual Justice

Authors

Mark L. Jones

Abstract

This Article is based on a presentation at the 2012 conference on “Struggles for Recognition: Individuals, Peoples, and States” co-sponsored by Mercer University, the Concerned Philosophers for Peace, and the Carnegie Council for Ethics in International Affairs, and it seeks to help combat our human tendency to demonize the Other and thus to contribute in some small way to the reduction of unnecessary conflict and violence. The discussion takes the form of a conversation in a bar between four imagined protagonists, who have participated in the conference, and Clint Eastwood’s Dirty Harry, who is having a bad day questioning his immersion in a violent world. Their conversation touches on many different areas including political philosophy, jurisprudence, psychology, political conversation, international relations, legal history, comparative law, and even theology. Thus the conversation ranges from Francis Fukuyama’s notorious thesis, expounded in his 1992 book The End of History and the Last Man, about the ideological superiority of liberal democracy (and the paradigmatic type of human beings who inhabit liberal democracies at the end of History) to the values underlying medieval animal trials and The Confessions of Saint Augustine, and it culminates in an apocalyptic thought experiment involving a literal last man.

Recommended Citation

Jones, Mark L. (2016) "Beyond Punks in Empty Chairs: An Imaginary Conversation with Clint Eastwood’s Dirty Harry—Toward Peace Through Spiritual Justice," University of Massachusetts Law Review: Vol. 11: Iss. 2, Article 4.
Available at: https://scholarship.law.umassd.edu/umlr/vol11/iss2/4