Has anyone else read Mein Kampf?

[kiki1982]

Okay, so you think there is nothing inherently objectively wrong with "randomly" killing newborn babies. You don't think there is anything inherently objectively wrong with raping one's own mother. That's your opinion. Its a worthless opinion in my view, the opinion of my professor vastly superior.

If we are to take Plato's earlier dialogues as any indication of what Socrates was all about then we must recognize that Socrates posited the existence of an objective human moral good. Anyone who doesn't has their head stuck where the sun doesn't shine. Courage and cowardice, love and spite, strength and weakness, industriousness and laziness, no, nothing objective to the particular values we ascribe to such things. Its all relative. The weak hateful coward is according to another perspective just as good as the strong loving man of courage. Who am I, who is anyone to make categorical statements. Okay then.

I did not say I personally do not consider it wrong, but I live in a society where there is no need to control numbers, nor not enough money/resources/etc to support those children. If we do not want any we know what we can do against it. In view of what has been said below your post, it shows that it is wrong subjectively, but not objectively. In India, they still kill babies (mostly girls). People from the same culture do it the UK for the very same reasons. Why?
Look around you. Do you see objective good? I for one do not. I see subjective good and some of it largely overlaps with my conception, but it does not mean that it is objective.

Socrates acknowledged that one can only desire the good, yes, if one knows oneself and pursues happness (which fulfils one's soul). If one does not know oneself one may do the bad which stems from ignorance. So essentially, he says that every man has the potential to be good and do good, but that he may do the bad if he is ignorant that he is doing it or pursues what he thinks fulfils him. He also professed he only knew that he knew nothing noble and good. Plato defined the quest for wisdom and the mind as a process of learning to refind the Ideas in one's mind that are constant and come from a divine being. As man is living in a non-constant world, these Ideas are obscured and man may never find them back again.

The question is, if your tribe is starving and finding water is difficult, whether it is beneficial to have yet another mouth to feed. The whole tribe may die if you let the baby live. Is it wrong to kill the baby? Of course now it is wrong (subjectively) because we can live if we let the baby live, but is it objectively always wrong to kill the baby? Is it wrong to kill it or let it die if there is not enough food to give it? I suppose that depends on your end.

Yes, infanticide was common among the Romans. That's why they demonized the Carthaginians for sacrificing newborns to Baal. The exceptions prove the rule Kiki. The part I quoted in bold only shows that you do not grasp morality and have no business discussing it.

And that is the pot calling the kettle black because they killed their own. Oh, no, wait they thought it was better to just abandon them to die from hypothermia or something.
I have grasped morality so far that I see that it is relative. I think that is a little further than you have come.

And we are seriously off-topic here. Maybe the moderator finds this amusing?

[JuniperWoolf]

If a man shot up a primary school in your town, killing 50 kids, and then in a cafe a few years later you overheard someone making weak excuses for the guy, what would you do?

Nothing if he's been dead for sixty years. Like I said, that's useless rage. The opposite of "useless" would be "useful," which implies progress, so you've got to ask yourself: how is raging against WWII Nazis progress? How might it benefit anyone? You'd be better off to just not get too emotional about history which you can't change, because all you'll accomplish is unnecessary grief for yourself. I used to be the same, endlessly imagining the horrible guilt of not being able to take care of my family members as they're sent up the chimney, thinking what it would be like to be shoved into a freezing cattle car for days, or to be a mother who saw her baby's head crushed under a Nazi boot. I got angry for a while as well because that's the natural reaction and also makes it all easier to stomach that way, but there's little point in being angry at dead people. Really the best thing that people living today could do is think about the entire situation from all angles (including those of the opressors no matter how uncomfortable it makes us, because I would argue that this is the most important angle in regards to prevention of similar events in the future) and learn from it.

Someone says Hitler was not evil and I feel obligated to oppose such demented malarky.

You've got to see that this is simply a debate about the nature of "evil." Kiki isn't saying that Hitler wasn't evil ergo he was good, she's saying that Hitler wasn't "evil" in this sort of supernatural sense. Anyway, I'm not too concerned with Hitler, any objective truth there has been very obscured which is I guess what happens in a society largely feuled by propaganda. I'm really more interested in your average every day Nazi, that's what's important. What prompts a nation of people who have accomplished so much greatness to commit such atrocities? All that I've learned so far strongly implies that they were driven to it by great need, they were left very poorly off after WWI. That fits, we can use that.

I think she's just tired of hearing me pontificate for 20 plus pages.

Caught me, I'm in "resolution" mode now. Also I've thought about this a lot (really) so it'd be weird to not say anything after reading this thread.

[kiki1982]

Heck I'd say I actually have direct personal reason to hate Hitler. It was his agressive war policies which led to my great-grandfather getting blown to bits when his ship was torpedoed by a German U-boat. My grandfather grew up without a father, his mother forced to fend for herself with a 1 year old and a 2 year old, something that no doubt contributed to the psychological mess that he became. He goes on to become an abusive alcoholic and then a suicide when my mother was 14, and this really messed her up, and her being messed up no doubt helped mess me up.

There you go. **** Hitler.

I may tell you that my husband's grandfather was controller of the port of London and repaired the boats when they came back from France so they could go back to it to take more soldiers on D-day. The man worked solid and did not come home for three full days. When he came home, he was black with tar and soot and slept for 24 hours solid. My husband's family was in London during the Blitz.

Another member of my husband's family was back in Poland and was taken prisoner and deported to Auschwitz. He survived 4 years and then was sent to Sangerhausen from where he sent his very last card, saying that he 'ha[d] arrived well.' I have read all the letters he sent and there is a gruesome preoccupation with food the more time passes. He starts with thanking his family for the Easter package they sent him and ends with remarks that must have seemed strange for his family at the time that he 'hope[d] that they [had] enough bread where they [were].' The more time passes the less he actually talked about anything but food and the weather. He was not a Jew, but a Pole.

My family was in Belgium and my grandfather managed not to go to war, possiby out of principle. However, they did live through all the bombing and spent much of their time in the cellar. One of my family members fled to Brussels to live with an aunt because it was a free city (i.e. not bombed). Back home, their house was bombed and the roof was off. The daughter narrowly escaped being sent to Germany to work by finally getting a job in the post office in Belgium. For the remainder she went to work by tram and by train and narrowly escaped death on such a tram when a resistance member asked her to carry her bag. She refused for some reason and a little later the woman was taken away because there was a bomb in it. She said she could not understand why the communist resistance kept sabotaging as the Germans only took hostages to shoot.

Still, my family and family-in-law have felt shock, fear and anger, but no rage.

[KCurtis]

To be fair, I'm pretty sure Alex's first language is Italian.

Okay, I will be fair then. And I did use the word much in place of many twice!!

If we can't use evolutionary theory in a debate then there is much that we cannot debate. Evolutionary psychology accounts for good and for evil. In a morally relativistic view everything is good or everything is evil or everything is neither of those.

Does no one really see what I mean when I talk about this stuff? There is a reason we are not all sociopaths. If we all had sociopathic genes our species never would have evolved. Compassion and brotherhood and fluffy sounding things like that are actually biological imperatives that have enabled us as a species to survive and evolve. In good or ideal circumstances I believe most people choose kindness and love towards other members of their community and not random violence. Why is this? Because its how we have evolved.

Yes, I'm sure some of us do see it. And you are correct about biological imperatives enabling us to survive.

Then your philosophy professor held a particular opinion and he is welcome to it like you are, but it does not make someone else's opinion wrong, does it. There may be a lot of situations where killing babies may be right

The professor just has a vile opinion. Maybe you do too, I'm not sure. I for one have the right not to respect this opinion- but hold it in contempt.

[Darcy88]

I did not say I personally do not consider it wrong, but I live in a society where there is no need to control numbers, nor not enough money/resources/etc to support those children. If we do not want any we know what we can do against it. In view of what has been said below your post, it shows that it is wrong subjectively, but not objectively. In India, they still kill babies (mostly girls). People from the same culture do it the UK for the very same reasons. Why?
Look around you. Do you see objective good? I for one do not. I see subjective good and some of it largely overlaps with my conception, but it does not mean that it is objective.


The question is, if your tribe is starving and finding water is difficult, whether it is beneficial to have yet another mouth to feed. The whole tribe may die if you let the baby live. Is it wrong to kill the baby? Of course now it is wrong (subjectively) because we can live if we let the baby live, but is it objectively always wrong to kill the baby? Is it wrong to kill it or let it die if there is not enough food to give it? I suppose that depends on your end.



And that is the pot calling the kettle black because they killed their own. Oh, no, wait they thought it was better to just abandon them to die from hypothermia or something.
I have grasped morality so far that I see that it is relative. I think that is a little further than you have come.

And we are seriously off-topic here. Maybe the moderator finds this amusing?

The Romans did not commit widespread infanticide. Period. And if someone comes on here and proves me wrong it makes no difference. The exceptions prove the rule.

I do see objective good. I don't see how under any circumstance it can be deemed objectively good to spray acid on young women's faces like the Taliban do or to rape one's own mother which I'm sure some sick bastard has once done.

Your main error now is that you fail to realize that I admit the validity of extenuating circumstances. If the Jews were as Hitler said really out to eliminate the entire "aryan" race then what he did wouldn't have been evil. Under extreme survival condtions infanticide might be justified. But if you kill six million INNOCENT people, or if for no good reason you take an infant's life, that to me is evil. Its like you Kiki do not make a distinction between cold-blooded murder and self-defense. I do.

Still, my family and family-in-law have felt shock, fear and anger, but no rage.

Your family felt "anger" but not "rage." Rage is but only extreme anger. Kiki go build a time machine and visit Auschwitz and tell the mother of the boy and girl who were just gassed to death that Hitler wasn't evil. You have truth on your side apparently.

Nothing if he's been dead for sixty years. Like I said, that's useless rage. The opposite of "useless" would be "useful," which implies progress, so you've got to ask yourself: how is raging against WWII Nazis progress? How might it benefit anyone? You'd be better off to just not get too emotional about history which you can't change, because all you'll accomplish is unnecessary grief for yourself. I used to be the same, endlessly imagining the horrible guilt of not being able to take care of my family members as they're sent up the chimney, thinking what it would be like to be shoved into a freezing cattle car for days, or to be a mother who saw her baby's head crushed under a Nazi boot. I got angry for a while as well because that's the natural reaction and also makes it all easier to stomach that way, but there's little point in being angry at dead people. Really the best thing that people living today could do is think about the entire situation from all angles (including those of the opressors no matter how uncomfortable it makes us, because I would argue that this is the most important angle in regards to prevention of similar events in the future) and learn from it.



You've got to see that this is simply a debate about the nature of "evil." Kiki isn't saying that Hitler wasn't evil ergo he was good, she's saying that Hitler wasn't "evil" in this sort of supernatural sense. Anyway, I'm not too concerned with Hitler, any objective truth there has been very obscured which is I guess what happens in a society largely feuled by propaganda. I'm really more interested in your average every day Nazi, that's what's important. What prompts a nation of people who have accomplished so much greatness to commit such atrocities? All that I've learned so far strongly implies that they were driven to it by great need, they were left very poorly off after WWI. That fits, we can use that.



Caught me, I'm in "resolution" mode now. Also I've thought about this a lot (really) so it'd be weird to not say anything after reading this thread.

Juniper this is a great post. But I still maintain my right to rage at evil horrible men, especially when there is the kind of albeit tenuous link between their actions and my own life that I demonstrated earlier.

[kiki1982]

The Romans did not commit widespread infanticide. Period. And if someone comes on here and proves me wrong it makes no difference. The exceptions prove the rule.

I do see objective good. I don't see how under any circumstance it can be deemed objectively good to spray acid on young women's faces like the Taliban do or to rape one's own mother which I'm sure some sick bastard has once done.

Your main error now is that you fail to realize that I admit the validity of extenuating circumstances. If the Jews were as Hitler said really out to eliminate the entire "aryan" race then what he did wouldn't have been evil. Under extreme survival condtions infanticide might be justified. But if you kill six million INNOCENT people, or if for no good reason you take an infant's life, that to me is evil. Its like you Kiki do not make a distinction between cold-blooded murder and self-defense. I do.

And here we go again. Infanticide has nothing to do with these 6 million Jews. I took the 'objectively wrong' to heart and showed that it cannot be objectively wrong. Subjectively wrong, yes, in the vast majority of cases, but not objectively. Otherwise it would not have made its way in certain cultures as a way of controlling numbers.

The important thing is not whether we think it is wrong and whether he was responsible or not, the important thing is that what he was doing he believed to be right and why? That is how you resolve things.

Your family felt "anger" but not "rage." Rage is but only extreme anger. Kiki go build a time machine and visit Auschwitz and tell in most the mother of the boy and girl who were just gassed to death that Hitler wasn't evil. You have truth on your side apparently.

I know rage is extreme anger. They never felt it and they have all accepted what happened. They even speak German. The family in Poland very well as it happens. They are Poles and they talk of this time as horrible, terrible and apocalyptic, but I tell you, they are more angry about the Russians after. (although that is maybe because it had a larger influence on their lives)

Again, what exactly happened 60 years ago has little to do with us now. The only thing we can do is not to think about those 6 million people, they will not come back, even if we were thinking about them all the time. Or will they?
The thing we can do is to accept this chapter and learn from it. By ranting and raving, we do not get closure, we only rip the wound open again and again. Thus, it does not heal.

If a driver were to kill my husband tomorrow I would like to either see him pay a substancial amount of money so he feels what he has done or for him to lose his license forever. Putting him in prison is pretty ineffective. I would feel bad, sad and angry at that man/woman, but I would also see that I cannot go on with my life because I keep dwelling on it. You will say it makes a difference, but a person is a person, whether he was killed by gas or killed by a careless driver.

[ScribbleScribe]

Wow I never meant for my thread to get this heated or this long. I was talking about mein kampf, not everything else about the man & the holocaust.

[Darcy88]

Wow I never meant for my thread to get this heated or this long. I was talking about mein kampf, not everything else about the man & the holocaust.

You mean you never meant for your thread asking about a single book to go on to probe the fundamental nature of morality, of good and evil, history, human nature, the shine and the shadow of man's soul? Really? I apologize.

lol.

[Darcy88]

And here we go again. Infanticide has nothing to do with these 6 million Jews. I took the 'objectively wrong' to heart and showed that it cannot be objectively wrong. Subjectively wrong, yes, in the vast majority of cases, but not objectively. Otherwise it would not have made its way in certain cultures as a way of controlling numbers.

The important thing is not whether we think it is wrong and whether he was responsible or not, the important thing is that what he was doing he believed to be right and why? That is how you resolve things.



I know rage is extreme anger. They never felt it and they have all accepted what happened. They even speak German. The family in Poland very well as it happens. They are Poles and they talk of this time as horrible, terrible and apocalyptic, but I tell you, they are more angry about the Russians after. (although that is maybe because it had a larger influence on their lives)

Again, what exactly happened 60 years ago has little to do with us now. The only thing we can do is not to think about those 6 million people, they will not come back, even if we were thinking about them all the time. Or will they?
The thing we can do is to accept this chapter and learn from it. By ranting and raving, we do not get closure, we only rip the wound open again and again. Thus, it does not heal.

If a driver were to kill my husband tomorrow I would like to either see him pay a substancial amount of money so he feels what he has done or for him to lose his license forever. Putting him in prison is pretty ineffective. I would feel bad, sad and angry at that man/woman, but I would also see that I cannot go on with my life because I keep dwelling on it. You will say it makes a difference, but a person is a person, whether he was killed by gas or killed by a careless driver.

We are never going to agree. But you admit that what Hitler did was horrible. I think you even say that the acts themselves were in fact evil. I admit that Hitler was a human being like myself and like all of us and that it was fate and circumstance which made him what he was. I say it was evil, you say it was not. I think we have enough common ground to just agree to disagree. The world would be a boring place if everyone agreed on everything. It has actually been fun debating with you. Its brought me to think on things I don't often think about.

[kiki1982]

I think indeed we agree to disagree, Darcy.

And I have learnt a lot about the Nazis because I had to brush up on it as well as about other things (like baby killing in Neotlithic times). Very interesting.

The professor just has a vile opinion. Maybe you do too, I'm not sure. I for one have the right not to respect this opinion- but hold it in contempt.

I never said it was vile, I said it differed from mine. And if he were to say that he did not agree, then that would be fine too. But I tell you, he would not hold it in contempt and that's where a thinker's opinion differs from another's opinion.

And now you will say that is insulting...

[kiki1982]

Wow I never meant for my thread to get this heated or this long. I was talking about mein kampf, not everything else about the man & the holocaust.

Ok, so where are you now then?

Better get this thread back on track, before the moderator is tired of it...

[stlukesguild]

I never said it was vile, I said it differed from mine. And if he were to say that he did not agree, then that would be fine too. But I tell you, he would not hold it in contempt and that's where a thinker's opinion differs from another's opinion.

Or perhaps that is part of the reason that so many highly educated and cultured Germans could participate in such horrific behavior: they were great thinkers and intellectuals but lacked any real sense of morals. Taken from an idealized amoral position we can all entertain the most horrific of propositions (the Reign of Terror, the Holocaust, genocide, the whole sale slaughter of children, global thermal-nuclear warfare...) as an intellectual exercise or game... but one thing history has taught us, which you have seeming missed for all you protest that we must learn form history, is that whole sale slaughter, mass murder, genocide, etc... are the common result when ideals are placed above human realities... when ideals are valued above human lives. You professor may be a great thinker, but I would suggest that he is morally and ethically retarded.

[mal4mac]

I never said it was vile, I said it differed from mine. And if he were to say that he did not agree, then that would be fine too. But I tell you, he would not hold it in contempt and that's where a thinker's opinion differs from another's opinion.

Or perhaps that is part of the reason that so many highly educated and cultured Germans could participate in such horrific behavior: they were great thinkers and intellectuals but lacked any real sense of morals. Taken from an idealized amoral position we can all entertain the most horrific of propositions (the Reign of Terror, the Holocaust, genocide, the whole sale slaughter of children, global thermal-nuclear warfare...) as an intellectual exercise or game... but one thing history has taught us, which you have seeming missed for all you protest that we must learn form history, is that whole sale slaughter, mass murder, genocide, etc... are the common result when ideals are placed above human realities... when ideals are valued above human lives. You professor may be a great thinker, but I would suggest that he is morally and ethically retarded.

You make a standard intellectual argument against the Nazi position here, one I agree with. But in doing this you undermine your suggestion that they were great thinkers! You can't separate thinking from morals.

[kiki1982]

Or perhaps that is part of the reason that so many highly educated and cultured Germans could participate in such horrific behavior: they were great thinkers and intellectuals but lacked any real sense of morals. Taken from an idealized amoral position we can all entertain the most horrific of propositions (the Reign of Terror, the Holocaust, genocide, the whole sale slaughter of children, global thermal-nuclear warfare...) as an intellectual exercise or game... but one thing history has taught us, which you have seeming missed for all you protest that we must learn form history, is that whole sale slaughter, mass murder, genocide, etc... are the common result when ideals are placed above human realities... when ideals are valued above human lives. You professor may be a great thinker, but I would suggest that he is morally and ethically retarded.

They did not participate in such horrific behaviour because they did not diapprove. That is a common misconseption. The situation was in fact worse: they did not realise that what they were saying was racist and what they were thinking was despicable (or the vast majority did not). From Social Darwinism (if you ask me a wrongful interpretation of Darwin's theory), they moved onto 'possibly this also means that certain races are superior to other races of people', this developed towards 'race X is superior to race Y' (with all the measurements etc. Mengele made a PhD about this) and then you only need a mad guy who makes everyone believe what race Y in fact is. Had people in Germany just 'not disapproved' and just been passive, the whole system would not have got so far. Someone at a certain time would have put a stop to it or alerted people that this was frankly going too far. That is what you fail to see. By disapproving or hating, you are blinded for human reality, as you are putting your own morals and ideals above another. The object of hate is evil, period. The object of disapproval is at least to be called 'no good'. The Nazis hated Jews and disapproved of them mixing with the Aryan race. They presented them as a threat to the purity and superiority of the Aryan race.
They disagreed who was exactly Aryan and who Jew and they actually never had a proper definition of it, astonishingly. Hence Goering's sarcastic remark, 'Wer Jude ist, entscheide ich,' (I will decide who is Jew') after conning the system to save his assistant from losing his job. He took it so far that he had his assistant's mother swear an affidavit that her six (!) children were not her husband's, but her uncle's (I think) . Hitler bought the whole thing as well and issued a certificate of descent or something. That is frankly laughable.
They did not consider Jews being human or at least not as worthy of it as the Aryan race. A bit of propaganda did the rest. Clever propaganda.
If you want to learn from history, disaproving or hating is frankly useless. The only thing you can do is try to understand the why and how and then look around you. That will benefit you more than disapproving. Understanding and looking for the why and how you can only properly do if you do not disapprove. Otherwise you ask the wrong questions.

It does not mean that I personally think this fine. Of course not! But it does not benefit me to disapprove of or hate people who have done this or not publically disapproved of it because a) it is not going to bring those people back, b) it inhibits me in my empathy so I can imagine what these people thought and c) it will not make me observant, on the contrary in fact.

[KCurtis]

That is what you fail to see. By disapproving or hating, you are blinded for human reality, as you are putting your own morals and ideals above another.
Understanding and looking for the why and how you can only properly do if you do not disapprove.

Again, your opinions. Some people's morals and ideals are above others. My opinion- which I find superior to yours.