Boundaries: The Balkans,the Law,and the Sacred

The recent Balkan Wars are a phenomenon of violence across psychicboundaries, the value-based cosmological Worlds that humans necessarilycreate as the substantive content of consciousness. This violenceresults from the human tendency to consider alien values perceivedacross a psychic boundary as a threat. This violence cannot beeliminated by eliminating these boundaries because these boundariesthemselves cannot be eliminated. Instead, the problem can be addressedonly in terms of establishing public institutions that honor a pluralismof values, thereby attenuating the threat that alien values pose.