He said nothing when he entered. I was passing the best of my razors back and forth on a strop. (…)
Source: Telléz, Hernando “Just Lather, That’s All.” In: Contemporary Latin American Short Stories. Edited by Pat McNees. Translated by Donald A. Yates. Random House 1974.
Available at [🔗].
current affairs
In The Guardian article “Time travellers: please don’t kill Hitler,” Dean Burnett considers whether it would be good idea for a time traveller to go back in time and kill Hitler.
links
Dean Burnett “Time travellers: please don't kill Hitler.” Guardian, 21 February 2014. [🔗]
questions
1. Should the barber have killed Torres? Do private citizens ever have the right to kill a tyrant? Might they even have a duty to do so?
2. Why does the barber refrain from killing Torres? Is he just rationalising away a lack of moral courage? Or does he have a point when he claims that killing Torres is not his place in the scheme of things?
3. In the Guardian article “Time Travellers: Please Don’t Kill Hitler,” Dean Burnett argues that, if one were to have a time-machine on hand, one shouldn’t kill Hitler. What reasons does he cite? How might this affect our experience of regret for not having intervened in an unfortunate chain of events in our own lives?