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Greatness, context and time

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SapereAude

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What of changing contexts in history when one claims morality, truth and greatness to be absolutes?

What does one forgive historical figures when one deems them "great" despite their greatness being owed to many things one knows to be gross immoralities?

Take our founding fathers of the US. Great men, birth of the greatest nation ever. Slave holders, slave traders. Same throughout history.. all the great cultures all the great leaders slave owners.

Does one forgive this because slavery was the norm at the time? Because I assume that today, even if someone did great things we would not forgive them the ownership of another human being.

What of the great ancient leaders who built great empires and nations, who created such beauty and wealth of knowledge? To what extent does it matter that these leaders often initiated violent action against other nations.. or taxed their people exhorbitantly to pay for their own ambitions?

What of the great leaders during modern wars? WW1, WW2? We know the draft to be immoral, where does that lead us?

It seems Objectivism holds that moral ends can't come from immoral means (I interpret that way and am happy to listen to anyone who doesn't agree explain why).. so how does one reconcile this with history and who we look up to?

I don't have any answers to the questions I've posed yet.. these are just the thoughts that have been on my mind of late (I read a lot of history) and am interested in finding out if others question these seeming contradictions in the same light I do.

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Does one forgive this because slavery was the norm at the time? Because I assume that today, even if someone did great things we would not forgive them the ownership of another human being.

If someone did great things, they would be great. Our forgivness, or whether they are moral in some area other than the field they were great in, have nothing to do with their greatness.

We don't forgive Wagner for sanctioning Hitler, but we consider him great nonetheless. And, if he did not sanction Hitler, that would not have made him any more or less great. His greatness is entirely due to his work as a musician.

Same with Einstein, who was a socialist, or Dostoevsky, who was a horrible, immoral altruist.

What of the great leaders during modern wars? WW1, WW2? We know the draft to be immoral, where does that lead us?

That's probably true, in both those wars (in fact in all American wars), I would lean toward saying the draft was immoral.

However, I think there are circumstances in which the draft is, for a period of time, the moral choice, in the case of countries that fail to fully adopt the moral principles they ought to adhere to.

Churchill for instance had only two options: mobilize his country, men to war, women to the factories, and fight whatever the cost, or allow centuries of civilization to be swept away by the most awful kind of tyranny. In that case, the draft was not immoral at all, taking office in 1940 and declaring that from now on the British will have a volunteer army, in the middle of the war, would've been suicidal, and immoral.

However, after the war, it was proper to abolish the draft, and create a volunteer army, on both sides of the Atlantic. And before WW2, it was also immoral for Churchill's predecessors to neglect the Army, to the point where during the war the draft became necessary.

So, while Churchill's choice to allow for the draft was the right one, immoral choices, by others, lead to the circumstances in which he had to rely on it.

It seems Objectivism holds that moral ends can't come from immoral means (I interpret that way and am happy to listen to anyone who doesn't agree explain why).

Hopefully no one will contradict you there. (except maybe to say that this might be redundant, when it comes to Objectivism, because Objectivist "means" are designed to allow for all the right "ends".)

But morality pertains to choices. In an Objectivist society, the President would have the choice to rely on a well funded volunteer army, payed for by citizen's voluntary donations, available to him. Then, any choice but to do so would be immoral, and not only not be justified by the end, but in fact would be the wrong way toward that end.

In today's America, the President has the volunteer Army, but needs the tax-money to support it, so, if he were in the mean time gradually moving away from this system toward a Capitalist one, it would be moral for him to use tax-money to support the military, for a period of time. That would be his best option.

In Churchill's England, and I would estimate in modern day Israel, the best option, and thus the moral one for the prime ministers, for some period of time, would be the draft. But Israel should move away, first from the draft to a volunteer army, and then away from the taxes that support that army, to volunteer contributions.

Edited by Jake_Ellison
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What of changing contexts in history when one claims morality, truth and greatness to be absolutes?

What exactly are "changing contexts in history"?

Do you mean: as new evidence is discovered, that the known history of a given person or event is updated to reflect the evidence?

Also...

Are we to assume by "great" you mean a superlative of the concept good? I.e., that goodness and greatness are synonymous?

Or, do you mean "large in scale," "large in significance," and/or "large in influence."

I believe a very persuasive argument could be made for the latter as the proper way to regard 'greatness' in terms of historical figures.

Either way, if you are going to proceed objectively, you will need to choose an explicit standard to rank anything, i.e., for answering the questions:

By what standard is such and such "great?"

Or,

By what standard is such and such "good?"

That is the only way you are going to be able to create a hierarchical ordering where one person, place or thing is ranked/ordered above another.

Furthermore, after you have selected your standard, you will have to identify essentials and non-essentials in relation to the standard, as you apply your criteria when measuring any given historical figure (or other object).

For example,

If you are going to claim possessing slaves is "bad," you will need to explicitly know if it is 'bad' by some standard.

Further, if you are attempting to rank figures by "goodness of character", or "magnitude of goodness of character", you will have to know if 'possessing slaves,' as an attribute of a figure is an essential or non-essential component with regard to your selected standard.

With regard to slavery and O'ism

I have heard (*can't remember where at the moment), L. Peikoff, make a good case that in some (not all), instances of slavery in history depended on a mistaken anthropological belief that a given group of men, were not fully human. In other words, under such a mistaken identification, men would believe they were merely keeping, in effect, animals.

As with all mistakes, as evidence becomes known, the belief was self-correcting, and slavery started being outlawed all over the world.

However, it is possible some slave owners fully understood they were forcing "fully-human" beings into slavery, and they just did not care.

*Possibly in LP's video, "Why Ancient Greece is my Favorite Civilization," when discussing the Ancient Greek instances of slavery.

Edited by phibetakappa
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Churchill for instance had only two options: mobilize his country, men to war, women to the factories, and fight whatever the cost, or allow centuries of civilization to be swept away by the most awful kind of tyranny.

I can understand this from Churchill's perspective and the perspective of those who got to survive or were born after. But if you are the one who dies, what does it matter to you that civilization is saved?

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With regard to slavery and O'ism

I have heard (*can't remember where at the moment), L. Peikoff, make a good case that in some (not all), instances of slavery in history depended on a mistaken anthropological belief that a given group of men, were not fully human. In other words, under such a mistaken identification, men would believe they were merely keeping, in effect, animals.

As with all mistakes, as evidence becomes known, the belief was self-correcting, and slavery started being outlawed all over the world.

However, it is possible some slave owners fully understood they were forcing "fully-human" beings into slavery, and they just did not care.

*Possibly in LP's video, "Why Ancient Greece is my Favorite Civilization," when discussing the Ancient Greek instances of slavery.

I don't have that source, but in a Q&A after "Induction in Physics and Philosophy" lecture 3 LP touches on a very similar question.

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I can understand this from Churchill's perspective and the perspective of those who got to survive or were born after. But if you are the one who dies, what does it matter to you that civilization is saved?

Nobody knows who will die. Historical battle casualty rates rarely even reach 50%, so chances are risking your life does not lead to death. If you do die, you won't feel a sense of loss anyway. Not fighting could lead to defeat, and living under a cloud of self-doubt and regret about not fighting or what could have happened if more had fought, is not a life proper to man qua man. But these calculations are stupid. Act to gain and keep your values.

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I can understand this from Churchill's perspective and the perspective of those who got to survive or were born after. But if you are the one who dies, what does it matter to you that civilization is saved?

What does it matter if one survives, if civilization isn't saved? At least if there's a fight, people have a chance to a life in civilization.

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I can understand this from Churchill's perspective and the perspective of those who got to survive or were born after. But if you are the one who dies, what does it matter to you that civilization is saved?

I'd much rather take my chances fighting against Hitler than hoping to survive as a slave in a Nazi concentration camp.

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  • 3 weeks later...

Phibieakappa has some excellent points, to which let me add

An important point is always the knowledge context, in the broadest sense. You cannot evaluate someone negatively for not being an egoist or rationally moral before rational morality existed, i.e., before Ayn Rand discovered it. Altruism was the only morality.

Somethings are clear indications of evil, simply because they show an explicit rejection of the value of life, e.g., power for the sake of power, slaughters, and, generally, murder (context may count).

What many people regard as greatness is not rational, and thus not moral.

On the other hand, one cannot ignore the benefit the world has received from the actions of some ambitious men of very questionable morality, e.g., Alexander the Great. Wars of conquest are not good (was Persia really a threat?). Yet, spreading Greek civilization was a good thing.

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