Whooo boy. This looks like this going into deeper philosophy than I am used to. But I will give it a shot anyway.

Quote Originally Posted by Sasaki Kojiro View Post
This is a problem with your moral theory. Owning slaves was unethical, nothing changes that. But our judgement of the person who owned slaves must vary considerably.
Why?

He was above many of the social standards of his time.
So why excuse him for not letting his slaves go earlier in his life? If he was above the social norms, then there really was no compelling reason for him to keep slaves other than being a bad person in that aspect of his life.


Why aren't they terrible people for doing that?
That's my point exactly! The circumstances of their life don't excuse them! I made that statement to highlight the error in trying to incorporate the social constraints of the time in our judgement.

It's the same argument in many ways...
Maybe I am dumb, but I am not seeing it. I will reread everything again though.


Yes, but so what? You can't leave out the "so what" part. Why should that make me feel in a negative way towards him?
You should feel negative towards him because when you talk about judging based on the times people lived in you are implying that the social constraints of the time leave an individual with no real choice and thus that is why we should look more kindly on said individual. But I am saying that everyone always has a choice no matter what, even if society greatly disapproves, there is a real choice. And he made the wrong one.

I think we have to skip most of this and go to the moral philosophy part because otherwise we are talking past each other.
Here is when I stumble and fail miserably with my chemistry major.

Any moral philosophy which focuses on actions and consequences is screwed up. Judeo-christian moral philosophy in particular because of the model of an omniscient god and a dichotomy between sin/not sin. We should discard all of that. It misleads us completely. It elevates as the most admirable people those who are simply incapable of harming anyone, or those who are naive and good natured in a somewhat stupid way, or those driven to self-sacrifice and self-denial.

What we should actually judge people on is their quality as a person, their overall excellence in the things that are important* (includes many "moralistic" virtues btw). People do this selectively with regards to their family and who they are going to marry (actually they do it for everyone in a kind of incoherant, they are just confused about whether it's appropriate). It should be the number one focus. You don't go "lying is wrong" and then just apply that across the board in some robotic way. It's often a difficult social judgement, and we often excuse it entirely or praise it.
But I am not trying to argue this from that strict of a dichotomy. The example I picked (slavery) is merely more black and white than say lying is. I am not arguing from Judeo-Christian moral philosophy, I will let Rhy and PVC do that. I am starting from my own axioms based mainly off of empathy, not God. I would still point to Washington as an admirable person within a certain sphere of subjects. I don't think we should even be thinking of who is most admirable or excellent overall as a person, because such general comparisons are always dumb when the broad strokes don't help anymore (AKA when you are not comparing Stalin to Washington).

I would not go "lying is wrong" because I am not led to the conclusion that lying will always be wrong, I am not Kant (I think he was the one who said lying is always wrong). But I am led to the conclusion that slavery is always wrong. So I am making judgement from that.

In your terms, both you and I are better people than Washington simply because we never owned slaves. That's arrogance to me.
Is it arrogant to say I am a better man than a murderer because I have never killed an innocent man?

What I would say as my complete answer Sasaki, is that when it comes to recognizing and empathizing with other human beings of different skin colors, yes we are definitely better people than Washington. When it comes to leading an army? Or a country? Probably not.

Is that really such a mislead way of thinking?
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