Anthropology of Cruelty: Historical and Cultural Verification

摘要

Cruelty and its possible forms, manifesting in cultural consciousness and language, including indifference, mockery, heartlessness, ruthlessness, vindictiveness, and barbarism is a crucial and vital topic of modern culture and thereby it should be carefully studied. The following research is based on principle of interdisciplinarity, uniting diverse research perspectives, however with the dominance of anthropological discourse with its focus on search for universal foundations of human existence. Referring to materials of the historical realities of the late Manchurian period of Chinese history, we reveal territorial, hierarchical, gender, and age factors, determining the manifestations of cruelty that were inherent in the Manchu court and characteristics of reign and personality traits of Empress Cixi. The irrational nature of cruelty, noted by researchers with regard to habits, character traits, and specific behaviors of the Chinese Grand Empress of the Western Palace, can be interpreted with regard to the marked anthropological basis. These foundations, persistently manifesting in communities of various types and partially in the lives of higher animals, make the phenomenon of cruelty constant. In fact, cruelty retains, like violence, "irrepressibly deep rooted in historical and psychological experience and in human ontology itself" (A. Guseinov). At the same time, it is obvious that the civilized process pushed out cruelty into the area of anti-values. The cultural and historical verification of the anthropological approach is one of conditions for confirming its heuristics.