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Nazis and Ethics

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Nazis and Ethics

Allhazred
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Posted 02/13/08 - 05:17 PM:	#31
Swordfishtrombone wrote: You need to clarify this further: 1. Are you asking if it is ethically justifiable to kill someone who directly threatens your survival? 2. Are you asking if it is ethically justifiable to kill someone whom you accuse of threatening your survival even if that is patently impossible? Case 1 is what I mean, and my basis was, and is, such ideology as Mein Kampf, that Jews, etc, were a threat to Hitler's Ideological Aryan race. Case 2, on the other hand goes back to squeeco: So if I'm convinced that everyone in my family is bent on killing me and kill them first, I was "quite correct" to do so? I responded to this by clarifying that you would need some sort of proof, such as documentation, or eye-whitness accounts of conspiracy. Now Hitler had neither, because I know you will mention this, however Hitler's 'proof' was blood and ideology polution. According to him, the Jewish genetics and idology of the Bolshivics was harmfull to Aryan existance. Please keep in mind that this was originally a kind of idle thought caused by five 'documenteries' about Hitler/Nazi Germany. I say 'documenteries' because it was pretty much slanted against the Nazis, like most modern-day viewpoints. Does this clarify my position? incision wrote: Allhazred responded with a slightly different argument: (4) It is permissible to eliminate anything that threatens either your personal survival or the survival of your culture. (5) Certain practices or ideas threaten our culture. (6) Therefore, it is permissible to eliminate those practices or ideas. Well genterally in a mild example, yes. In extreme examples, where it is impracticle or otherwise impossible to eliminate the practices, eliminating the source is permisable, but in my point of view, you had better be damn certain that there is no other way to eliminate the threat. So it would be permissible to make a law against kosher food if it harmed the American tradition of fast food. This is still obviously undemocratic, but this argument no longer justifies actually killing the Jews, so if the Nazis used this line of reasoning to reach that conclusion then they were still being irrational. Well, it would be unconstitutional, not undemocratic, the hypothetical law was passed. But yes, I understand your point. The differance between the Nazis and me is that they chose to follow swordfish's second case: 2. Are you asking if it is ethically justifiable to kill someone whom you accuse of threatening your survival even if that is patently impossible? Looking at what the Nazis did, in hindsight, and from a differant cultural perspective, the Nazis obviously had little to non-exitant proof that 'impureities' were that at all. In general, I don't think that enlightened, democratic people will be more attached to their own culture than to other people's rights. Whether the Nazis actually thought that the Jews were a threat is an important historical question, but since the ethical reasoning is already flawed, it does not matter whether that premise is true. [/quote] I don't really agree with that, culture is what binds peoples together if enough people thought that something was weakening the culture, and thus the civilization, it would be eliminated. The example of this I propose is the Prohibition. Granted people eventually came to their senses and re-allowed consumption and production of 'booze' because they realized that it was the people, not the item that was destroying the culture. Whether the Nazis actually thought that the Jews were a threat is an important historical question, but since the ethical reasoning is already flawed, it does not matter whether that premise is true. Well I guess that is true, but think on this: If the Nazis actually thought the Jews were a legitimate threat, does it matter that the reasoning is flawed?
A lie told often enough becomes the truth. Vladimir Lenin your awareness of the whole is marred by your awareness of that which moves contrary to the whole - the sixth dimension Maybe... if you spend your life worrying... then the only way that your life will have meaning is if what you fear becomes real. - tagline from Sublime

Swordfishtrombone
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Posted 02/13/08 - 07:56 PM:	#32
Allhazred wrote: think on this: If the Nazis actually thought the Jews were a legitimate threat, does it matter that the reasoning is flawed? I'll turn the question around. Was there no other possible course of action than the one they ended up following? Is there some other way they might have dealt with this perceived threat other than exterminating the Jews of Europe? And also, Nazi Germany was not a pluralistic society. It was an extremist military dictatorship, political dissenters were sent to Dachau and purged, and they did not represent the opinion of their constituents. So is there any way to validate the extremist lunacy of the Nazis when they weren't even representing their constituency? So I'd argue that it doesn't matter what the Nazis thought. There is absolutely no justification to go out and torture, brutalize, and exterminate roughly 15 million people, 6 million of whom were Jews, *ever. It doesn't matter what they thought. It is such a cruel subversion of human empathy, human kindness, and the human stewardship we expect in our leaders. The idea of this pollution or contamination by the Jews is already unethical unto itself (see Sartre's fabulous discourse on this in his Portrait of the Antisemite). But to take this further and actually attempt to exterminate them from the earth, and even the idea that that might be a justifiable course of action, really is inhuman* in an ethical sense. If you argue that any of this is excusable, then your argument must be extrapolated -- and we end up arriving at a point where any genocide and any cruelty between any two groups of humans is justifiable as long as our initial fear is strong enough. Would you really want to live in a world constructed on that idea? Edited by Swordfishtrombone on 02/13/08 - 09:14 PM
Paul - http://www.pbase.com/drpablo74 "Everything you can think of is true..." -Tom Waits

jdrw
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Posted 02/14/08 - 07:33 AM:	#33
Swordfishtrombone, Note up front that I surely condemn the Nazi atrocities. As well as all atrocities against people groups from Biblical times throughout history to the latest incidents yesterday. But what besides conveying rhetorical impact do you understand "absolutely no justification" to actually mean in the world we actually have access to? What exactly do phrases such as "ethically unjustifiable" add to our understanding of behavior that we condemn, behavior that we will not tolerate, behavior that we will fight against? In what sense are these "absolutes" absolute? What exactly is their binding force? Cheers. jd
OTOH I might be exhaustively wrong about everything I've ever thought--with the possible exception of this sentence.

Allhazred
philotic twining

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Posted 02/14/08 - 09:37 AM:	#34
Swordfishtrombone wrote: I'll turn the question around. Was there no other possible course of action than the one they ended up following? Is there some other way they might have dealt with this perceived threat other than exterminating the Jews of Europe? Well obviously there were alternatives, and I have said as much. We look back at all of the history that we have written and look at all of the things that we could have done, and they could have evicted genetic/ideological 'polution' such as they percieved it. One example provided in the videos that were shown in class: One german said someting about moving all the Jews to Madagascar. Yea, thats not really practicle, however it shows that the Nazis were aware of alternative actions they could have taken. If you argue that any of this is excusable, then your argument must be extrapolated -- and we end up arriving at a point where any genocide and any cruelty between any two groups of humans is justifiable as long as our initial fear is strong enough. Would you really want to live in a world constructed on that idea? I argue from the point that it is excusable, I do NOT believe, on a personal level that this is excusable. And no, I would not like to live in such a world. Edited by Allhazred on 02/14/08 - 10:52 AM
A lie told often enough becomes the truth. Vladimir Lenin your awareness of the whole is marred by your awareness of that which moves contrary to the whole - the sixth dimension Maybe... if you spend your life worrying... then the only way that your life will have meaning is if what you fear becomes real. - tagline from Sublime

Swordfishtrombone
Death to Malaria

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Posted 02/14/08 - 11:04 AM:	#35
jdrw wrote: But what besides conveying rhetorical impact do you understand "absolutely no justification" to actually mean in the world we actually have access to? What exactly do phrases such as "ethically unjustifiable" add to our understanding of behavior that we condemn, behavior that we will not tolerate, behavior that we will fight against? In what sense are these "absolutes" absolute? What exactly is their binding force? There are two things here that I regard as absolute: 1. All humans can suffer 2. We are human before we are x type of human. I was using the word absolute as an emphasis, not in some metaphysical sense, but the emphasis was to show that if there is any fundamental ought among humans who are empowered with armies, the extermination of entire human populations probably tops the list of things they ought not do (and this can be justified in both utilitarian and moral terms, whatever you'd like). Not because this is inscribed on some stone tablet in the heavens, but because what would be a greater violation of life, humanity, and freedom than to exterminate a whole population of humans? And do these things -- life, humanity, and freedom -- have absolute moral value? No, but they are among the few things we all have. So for some disaffected group of radical German antisemites to ethically justify extermination of the Jews on any grounds still requires a justification that is a joke compared with the ethical implications of a genocide. Furthermore, since Allhazred's original question presumes that it's the perceived threat from Jews that constitutes justification, then we're in the realm of weighing evidence -- just because Hitler and his followers thought the Jews were 'contaminants' doesn't mean that in the eyes of reasonable humans this is either true or a threat. One has to look at this claim of a threat in terms of its plausibility and its imminence. And no sane contemporary could look at the 200,000 Jews in pre-war Germany and Austria and see them as such a real and immanent threat that Germany would have to exterminate 6 million of them from all of the surrounding countries. _______ But here's what I find so perverse about the argument that Allhazred has put forth here. It is simply a doctrine of self-defense that exonerates all action and all consequence. It argues that ANY ACTION, however cruel, vicious, sadistic, brutal, and excessive, is ethically justified if that action is committed by someone who perceives a threat. It allows the deliberate infliction of suffering to be ethically excusable if it is justified a priori by a threat. And the problem is that this determination (whether the original threat was real) can only be made retrospectively, i.e. once the action has been committed. But since the person perceiving the threat carries out a course of action at the time the threat is perceived, this means that the ethical justification is put on the table based on the claim of a threat, not based on its truth. Thus ANY war criminal can find some rhetorical way to present his past crimes as self-defense; as can their revisionist defenders. So taken to its theoretical extreme, Allhazred's argument would morally exonerate one person for torturing and then killing all other humans on earth if that person felt threatened by all of them. Edited by Swordfishtrombone on 02/14/08 - 05:51 PM
Paul - http://www.pbase.com/drpablo74 "Everything you can think of is true..." -Tom Waits

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