Toto

When I think of Hitler, I don't think of a rationalist. I think of someone who used emotion, stirred up others' emotions, who glorified pseudoscientific concepts of race, blood, purity, etc. There were many rational Germans, but I don't think they were the source of the Holocaust.

It is easy to coopt reason. Evolution did not select for reasonable people, and most people have little training in it.

fatpie42

Eh?

First you agree with me, then you tell me that I'm talking gibberish.

Are you talking gibberish too then? What's going on here?

fatpie42

Sorry if I'm misunderstanding you here, but let me just get this straight.

You are telling me that the pagan democracy that the Greeks and, to start with, the Romans both embraced was ethical nihilism. Meanwhile you are claiming that the dictatorial monarchies that proceeded to be developed throughout Christendom were a step forward.

I don't see how you Christendom can be said to have gained the higher ground as far as dictatorships are concerned....

Gamera

The term "ethical nihilism" makes my point, as it endulges a backformation that depends on the ethics of Christianity.

The Greeks had "ethics", no doubt: they invented the concept. But ethics that were clearly unethical by our definition of ethics, which by definition involves a recognition of the moral standing of others. The Greeks had no prohibition against raping, enslaving and killing nonGreeks. In this they were no different from any other classical pagan culture. That was par for the course. Did they have an ethic -- yep, the ethic was, we're the best people in the world and we can do whatever we want with nonGreeks. It was the same ethic of the Romans and Etruscans and Germans -- if you want to call it an ethic.

You should add to this the fact that women were property in the Greek "ethical" system.

As to pagan democracy -- rule by a few elite men who get to vote and oversee a slave society is hardly democracy in the sense we mean it, wouldn't you agree. Their view of democracy was, we Greek men have rights in relationship to each other, everybody else be damned.

Christianity developed the ethics of otherness - that other people, whether Greek, Jew, Moslem, women, slaves -- have ethical standing. That was unique. The rationale (that we are all the children of God) is irrelevant to this concept. It arose and changed history over time, making slavery and exploitation untenable as ethical behavior.

Did Christianity stop slavery and exploitation overnight? Nope, hasn't even stopped it now. But it made it untenable to have an ethics that claimed an elite group (racially, economically, genderwise, whatever) was privileged ontologically and hence had ethical priority in a world of others with no ethical standing.

Gamera

I agree that Hitler was irrational to the core. The point is he didn't think so. Or better stated, a vast number of Germans didn't think he and his policies were irrational. They though the extirmination of nonJews and attempting domination of the planet was eminently rational, given their premise that they were a superior race. Everything that followed from that premise was frighteningly logical.

What's frightening about the Nazi horrors is the rational, calculating way they were carried out, employing systems analysis to get the most labor out of death camp prisoners before gassing them, ripping out their gold filings, and disposing of the bodies. The killing in Rwanda -- while horrific -- at least was a paroxym of irrational violence and hence is in some ways more comprehensible than the calculating rational extirmination of millions upon millions of victims by the Nazis.

As Foucault said, it shouldn't have taken the Holocaust for people to realize how bureaucracies can rationalize the exploitation of other human beings. Reason is so easily tainted by evil agendas that its a pretty weak reed to base one's value upon. I value reason, but my values aren't based on reason, but on the premise that other people have moral standing and cannot ethically be used by me for my ends.

fatpie42

I'm sorry, but if you are not prepared to accept that any of Christian morality was inherited from the Greeks, then I don't see how you can say that any of secular morality is inherited from Christianity.

One follows from the other. If you deny one, you might as well be denying the other too, since the pattern is pretty similar in both cases.

fatpie42

No, it encouraged it for centuries....

Gamera

Christianity didn't. Various institutions that called themselves Christians did.

As you recall our Constitution encouraged slavery for 100 years. Does that mean that our democracy was pro-slavery?

Gamera

I don't see the logic of this at all. Greek ethics were utterly contrary to what we call ethics (as a result of Christianity). But if you can identify what ethics we inherited from the Greeks, please list them.

It's plain to me that Greek ethics were a system for exploiting others and hence the opposite of what we deem ethics. What we deem ethics comes from Christianity, i.e., the recognition of the other, and that the other is not an instrument of our desires. If you can find that in classic paganism, let's see it. Otherwise, my piont is made.

fatpie42

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nicomachean_Ethics

Now cut the cr*p.