-- Tom Vogt:
evil, of course, is a question of perspective. most of those "evil" nations/people regard the US pretty much the same way. :-)
James A. Donald:
Stalin and Hitler were especially firm believers in the principle that evil is merely a question of perspective,
Tom Vogt:
and you seriously believe you can debunk a point by pointing out that there's a few assholes among its followers? oh, come on.
If morality is merely relative, then what is wrong with murdering a few million jews, kulaks, or people as irritating as James A. Donald? All a matter of perspective, isn't it?
"evil" could, I believe, be *defined* as "the term pretty much everyone uses to describe his or her enemies".
People who use this definition have a disturbing tendency to define entire social groups, races, classes, as their enemies. The reason we define certain killings as murder is not because "the bible tells us so", but because we want to know if a killing indicates that the killer is apt to kill murderously. In practice we notice that one piece of metal is like another, and other kinds of metal unlike, and we call one such group of pieces of metal "iron", "iron" being our word for that commonality that makes them alike. The naming does not make it iron, but the character of the metal itself. Similarly we observe that one deed, and one man, is like another, and another unlike, and we call one such group of men and deeds "evil", "evil" being our word for that commonality that makes them alike. Let us look at how real people in real life use the word "evil": Immediately after the bombing of Serbia, lots of US government officials went out on TV to argue that the bombing of Serbia was necessary and advisable because the ruler of Serbia was "evil". I do not have a transcript, but it seemed clear to me that they did not argue that he was evil, therefore deserved to have his soldiers blown up, but instead argued that he was evil, therefore his soldiers were likely to cause harm, therefore it was a wise precaution to blow his soldiers up. They unhesitatingly drew an empirical conclusion from a normative fact, and they reasonably expected that everyone listening would find the alleged normative fact compelling evidence for the empirical conclusion. They crossed the "is ought gap" without the slightest difficulty, and so does everyone else except for monsters and philosophers. I find it striking that many of the philosophers who have such great difficulty with this alleged gap have some connection to monstrous regimes. Not all of them by any means, but most of them. --digsig James A. Donald 6YeGpsZR+nOTh/cGwvITnSR3TdzclVpR0+pr3YYQdkG ILP99SyVaIkmx215wqr43UJJ0hQduNWeaZ0/k7GM 4mzrCxbxrsnsEX63mRLtarq6nQ94evNZW18Avove4