The Look of Silence and the Problem of Monstrosity

<jats:p> In Beyond Moral Judgment, Alice Crary defends a version of moral objectivism which turns on the idea that participation in moral life involves acquired affective proclivities: subjective capacities which nevertheless allow us to be receptive to objective features of the world. In this article, I draw out key aspects and implications of her account with reference to Joshua Oppenheimer's 2014 film The Look of Silence, a companion piece to 2012's The Act of Killing. The film depicts a series of confrontations between optometrist Adi Rukun and warlords and gangsters involved in massacres perpetrated during Indonesia's anti-communist purges. Many of the interviews were carried out under the pretext of conducting eye tests, and the optometric equipment Rukun affixes to the faces of the perpetrators – who often appear quite cavalier about or even proud of their deeds – functions as a stark metaphor for their failures to see the meaning and consequences of their actions. As I work to show, there is something disquieting for philosophy about these men, and the urge to call them monsters. In particular, they cause disquiet by tempting us to say that there are agents who lack the means to see all moral features of the world, or who simply do not feel anything in response to them. As I argue, these explanations are not open to Crary, but that may be a sign not of the weakness of her account but of the glibness of accounts to which they are. </jats:p>