Can a bad person be a philosopher?

[Aedes]

I meant in the sense of being a moral judge and a judge of morals. He was a philosophical ethicist. Thus, if anyone should be reflective on questions of good and bad, it should be he who took it up as an academic life-endeavor.

I can't disagree with your second paragraph. You know my family history, and yet I still own (and listen to) the complete Ring des Nibelungen and Tristan und Isolde (a total of 20 CDs). There's a difference between a Heidegger and a Mengele. Mengele produced his science through torturing people with his own hands, and most scientists would agree that no generalizable clinical science can come from coerced subjects.

[Fido]

Originally Posted by Aedes

I meant in the sense of being a moral judge and a judge of morals. He was a philosophical ethicist. Thus, if anyone should be reflective on questions of good and bad, it should be he who took it up as an academic life-endeavor.

I can't disagree with your second paragraph. You know my family history, and yet I still own (and listen to) the complete Ring des Nibelungen and Tristan und Isolde (a total of 20 CDs). There's a difference between a Heidegger and a Mengele. Mengele produced his science through torturing people with his own hands, and most scientists would agree that no generalizable clinical science can come from coerced subjects.

No one should confuse morals and ethics with good and bad... What is good for the Jews is not good for the Arab, but it may well be moral to the Jew... What was good for the Nazis in their perspective, and moral was not moral or good in the eyes of their many victims....We have had almost a thousand years since the church began to take over society and give most of Europe the remains of Roman Law, which they could not begin to understand without Greek Philosophy...Before Roman law died out, we can see the beginnings of natural law in the law of nations which put forth the idea that all nations were equal... We have come to think of all people as equal, and that is as far as it goes because we have not done much to protect that equality with universal law...What the nazis said was what most of us believe anyway, that we are more than equal, and deserve more than what life has left us with... It may not fit with our half hearted morals which imagine a human community; but fits the facts, that the Germans are wide spread people, artistic and industrius, who were by geography and history inhibited in industrial develpment and the exploitation of international markets....It fit with the two great social currents of the age, which were nationlism and socialism, and it was at first glance, very moral, guarding the genetic health of the people and mental, social, and artistic decadence...That they were a throw back in time with their banners, and standards and uniforms is obvious; but without group identity there can be no morality...Heidegger was ethical in the sense of his own society, but to be an ethicist, or a moralist as all modern philosophers are, is to understand morality from all perspectives, and is also to understand that this strength of community is an impediment to building a world community... Look at U.S.... We say we are a nation and prove we do not grasp the word... We allow our rich and politicians to divide us and exploit us... We see our businesses sell our defenses to the world as though another export, but mostly we export the means of production to places were the people have no rights, and work as slaves, and so undercut our own freedom and rights... And morally, we refuse to extend our rights or resources to others; so the anger and enmity of the world grows while our strength and unity wain... We are not a nation as the nazis recognized the German peoples to be... We are a nation state united by a simple idea as though by a distant common mother: that all people are created equal...Our morals will never be better than the tenacity with which we hold to that idea, our equality...

So; if the question is whether one must be moral to be a moralist, I think the answer is no, but it is usually the case... And people can be moral without understanding morality...In a limited sense, Heidegger was moral without being a moralist, because if he had understood national morality, and Catholic morality he would have expanded it to the international level, and set about building world justice...

[Aedes]

Originally Posted by Fido

No one should confuse morals and ethics with good and bad...

The personal philosophy of good and bad is morality. The general philosophy of good and bad is ethics.

Originally Posted by Fido

if the question is whether one must be moral to be a moralist, I think the answer is no, but it is usually the case... And people can be moral without understanding morality...In a limited sense, Heidegger was moral without being a moralist, because if he had understood national morality, and Catholic morality he would have expanded it to the international level, and set about building world justice...

But the question is about how to regard someone who is a philosopher of morals who fails to condemn the most outwardly destructive and self-destructive regime in the history of the world.

A number of people have said that no art is possible after Auschwitz (Auschwitz of course being both place and emblem). It's an enormous punctuation mark on history. It's not a period, but it's simultaneously question mark, exclamation point, and ellipsis. You think about humanity, about progress, and then Auschwitz and Hiroshima and Kolyma and Verdun enter your mind -- and you take note that all our great steps forward have a reciprocal step backwards.

And then Heidegger comes into the picture: 1) philosopher of progress, 2) philosopher of ethics, 3) WWII happened during the height of his career, 4) German, 5) Nazi celebrist, 6) survived three decades after WWII.

He was not sheltered from it at all. He was best equipped of any Nazi to account for and understand it. But he did not. Why not? Because like many other prominent Nazis who survived decades after the war, like Eichmann, like Mengele, like Stangl, there was no contrition, no apology. Only self-justification. "It was an era", or a "context". Stangl ran Treblinka -- he never expressed remorse for gassing 800,000 people. He never sought to understand it (read Into That Darkness).

So Heidegger, it seems, couldn't let go of it. He couldn't separate his philosophy from it, or at least separate his self. If he can't do that, being intellectually equipped to do so, then why should we grant him that favor?

[Fido]

Originally Posted by Aedes

The personal philosophy of good and bad is morality. The general philosophy of good and bad is ethics.

You are incorrect here...Morality is a Latin, coined word used to translate the sense of the Greek word for Ethics...They are synonyms, and you can talk all you want about what each has come to mean, but then, that is another moral question....

But the question is about how to regard someone who is a philosopher of morals who fails to condemn the most outwardly destructive and self-destructive regime in the history of the world.

The whole affair shut Ezra Pound's Mouth... F.T. Marinetti, one of the three most important forces in modern art, and a life long fascist, wrote a futurist manifesto in 1909 glorifying violence, hygene, the heroic character, conquest, the destruction of museums and libraries and injustice everywhere with shades of the Nietzschean superman, and by the editor of his work, his fascist allegiance is de-emphasized... The point being that the enthusiasm which charaterized its birth did not grow on it with age... Fascism was old in Italy before Hitler picked up on it, and it needed support ever after...People who remembered their role wanted to forget it, and live through it... Those people who suffered the horrors and lived through it wanted to forget it too, but usually found forgetting impossible...

Being able to teach philosophy does not make a person a philoosopher... They may be part of the knife, but they are not its edge... They often have all of the facts, but they miss the point.... And many others who look closely at morals are not true moralists as all philosophers are...There is no objective good... No person can look at any goal or behavor as being for all time objectively good... It is a complex subject, and it is easy to understand how well meaning people looking for a complete change in society could embrace the Nazis who promised exactly that... What it became was a redux of the past; Feudalism at an Industrial Scale complete with arms, armor, and cavalry...The only things that saved them was the Hitler cult, Terror, Nationalism, and the inherent strength and efficiency of a feudal economy... The middle ages ate up their excesses in feast days, and the nazis ate theirs up with war...

A number of people have said that no art is possible after Auschwitz (Auschwitz of course being both place and emblem). It's an enormous punctuation mark on history. It's not a period, but it's simultaneously question mark, exclamation point, and ellipsis. You think about humanity, about progress, and then Auschwitz and Hiroshima and Kolyma and Verdun enter your mind -- and you take note that all our great steps forward have a reciprocal step backwards.

No one could tell the first thing about Auschwitz without art... I accept a general definition which does not include me out...I would humbly suggest that we cannot get social change right because we do not understand what we are dealing with... People like Heidegger with his ideals, and principals and absolutism think they are doing good with a sholt in the dark... To do good one must act with understanding, and that is the one sense where Socrates' words: Knowledge is virtue make sense...

And then Heidegger comes into the picture: 1) philosopher of progress, 2) philosopher of ethics, 3) WWII happened during the height of his career, 4) German, 5) Nazi celebrist, 6) survived three decades after WWII.

He should probably been executed, but not for crimes, which he may never have commited, but for fun which is the best we can expect from death...

He was not sheltered from it at all. He was best equipped of any Nazi to account for and understand it. But he did not. Why not? Because like many other prominent Nazis who survived decades after the war, like Eichmann, like Mengele, like Stangl, there was no contrition, no apology. Only self-justification. "It was an era", or a "context". Stangl ran Treblinka -- he never expressed remorse for gassing 800,000 people. He never sought to understand it (read Into That Darkness).

Much of the accepted evidence was on the side of the Nazis... Did they understand it all, and even if it did was there enough justification for their actions... People act out of ignorance always... We cannot begin to calculate all of the effect from ourselves as a cause, and yet we act, all the time and every day...Those people celebrated that violence... They were certain that in attacking the commies that they were engaging the untermench...We hated the commies, and they had pseudo Darwanism, and Nietzsche on their side... Now; from a moral point of view, I say: We cannot stop people who have been poisoned by the malignancy of their injust lives... We can try to create and atmosphere where people do not suffer the want of injustice, nor think they must stand alone to have it...Only just societies can know and accept peace... Looking at history, when can we ever say that German society worked for Germans as a whole???.It was certainly before the Franks took hold, if ever...What they gave to others was the very injustice they had endured from their own or others... Versailles and its humiliating terms shocked the Germans out of their chronic depression and made them lash out in frustration and anger... Changing that fact of history would have only delayed the inevitable... Injustice flows like puss, and it is better flowing than stagnant puss... It is moral to demand justice and insane to suffer injustice...

So Heidegger, it seems, couldn't let go of it. He couldn't separate his philosophy from it, or at least separate his self. If he can't do that, being intellectually equipped to do so, then why should we grant him that favor?

I take what good I can from anyone with the goods...When it comes to great people in history I think if better that they defend me rather than me defending them... What I offer is a defense of future generations as every defense of justice is... As we cannot live without justice our society cannot live without justice and so generations to come if they live at all will suffer its want even in their time...

[Reconstructo]

To be a good philosopher is to earn some points in the direction of being a good person. Didn't Schopenhauer kick a prostitute downstairs and end paying her bills for the rest of her life? Oh well, he's still a great philosopher.

[Theaetetus]

Foucault may not be considered a good person either. He lived an odd personal live that would have probably repulsed many people, but someone's work should not be confused with their personal lives. You see this in many different fields--especially the arts which philosophy should be lumped in with. One of the best actors of recent times, Robert Downey Jr, fights drug addiction, and many of the greatest musicians over the last 50 year have battle with drugs (e.g. John Lennon, Jimi Hendrix, Keith Richards, Janis Joplin). Of course, it is not just limited to people in the public eye. There are lawyers, doctors, priests, pastors, teachers, police officers, and members of every line of work that battle their inner demons. Does this make them bad? No, it just makes them weak to certain passions and drives.

[kennethamy]

Originally Posted by Theaetetus

Foucault may not be considered a good person either. He lived an odd personal live that would have probably repulsed many people, but someone's work should not be confused with their personal lives. You see this in many different fields--especially the arts which philosophy should be lumped in with. One of the best actors of recent times, Robert Downey Jr, fights drug addiction, and many of the greatest musicians over the last 50 year have battle with drugs (e.g. John Lennon, Jimi Hendrix, Keith Richards, Janis Joplin). Of course, it is not just limited to people in the public eye. There are lawyers, doctors, priests, pastors, teachers, police officers, and members of every line of work that battle their inner demons. Does this make them bad? No, it just makes them weak to certain passions and drives.

I rather agree with you. But I think that some people may think there is something special about being a philosopher that is inconsistent with being a bad person. So they they might agree that people in other fields can be good at what they do, and still be bad, but that fails to be true in philosophy.

[Reconstructo]

I believe that Schopenhauer actually suggested that philosophers were motivated by irritability. And Nietzsche was powered, if you ask him, by the power drive. Hegel talked of the necessity of tarrying with the Negative, and even defined man as negativity, a hole in the present. (Loosely, via Kojeve..)

What I am getting at is that there is a dark side of the Force. Philosophy has strong associations with evil as well as good.

[kennethamy]

Originally Posted by Reconstructo

I believe that Schopenhauer actually suggested that philosophers were motivated by irritability. And Nietzsche was powered, if you ask him, by the power drive. Hegel talked of the necessity of tarrying with the Negative, and even defined man as negativity, a hole in the present. (Loosely, via Kojeve..)

What I am getting at is that there is a dark side of the Force. Philosophy has strong associations with evil as well as good.

But nothing you say here shows that philosophers need be bad persons.

[Reconstructo]

No, I don't even have simple definitions for good or bad. Rape and murder are obviously not so charming, but it soon gets complicated. And I wouldn't judge a philosopher for fighting a duel. I don't think moral righteousness is the least bit necessary for the writing of good philosophy, but I don't "evil" is required either.

Now cognitive dissonance is something else. Wasn't Hobbes suspected of causing a plague? I mean suspected by the superstitious (for lack of a better word).