Evil Hitler

So you don't condemn or condone Hitler and are neutral on whether he was good or evil?

I think there were people that believed as he did and acted accordingly. They are evil.

There were people that went along with his ideology so they could share his power. They are evil.

There were people that went along with the ideology because they feared retribution. They were victims and still wrong and on the cusp of evil.

There were people that ignore Hitler's horrific actions or did nothing about him. They could be or not be evil.

People that currently believe in his ideology and act on it are bad people and are be evil to some degree or another.

Rickie wrote: So you don't condemn or condone Hitler and are neutral on whether he was good or evil?

Since mine was immediate prior post to this, and you didn't quote anyone, I'lI assume this was to me... and if so I'd ask, good at what!?

I'm sure he was good at quite a few things, but not as a humanitarian LOL.

I actually said in my post "and so for me Hitler's regime was objectifiably evil". That probably already answers your question?

As feeling animals we automatically get lazy and use broad terms for narrow meanings, in this example to denote being 'human' by our own subjective interpretation of morals and ethics to assert some scale of judgement - but that is presumptuous in my opinion that we know enough to make such over-arching judgements, the assertion is beyond the capacity to make it generally speaking... for the danger of using loose terms is they reach beyond our meanings. The same looseness which lets us be lazy in over-using them as specific is the same looseness which gives room for others to misunderstand or take valid opposing positions. It's just inefficient... if one wants to mean the polar of evil then use compassion I say, its clear, its understandable, its fast. Time is money, there is more important things in life then squabbling over semantics.

But to argue amongst myselfs - there is an argument that mixing the broad with the narrow such as 'good and evil' serves to denote evil as bad, and compassion as good.... but to me its like playing music out of tune for no reason as that association is fundamental for me at least.

Adder Thank you for the well thought post.

My error I was replying to Connor and messed of the quoting.

"Rather than saying Hitler was evil, I'd say the facts. He was a dictator. He personally saw to the destruction of large swaths of Jewish people He caused a war on a global scale. He is the reason many, many people died."

So you don't condemn or condone Hitler and are neutral on whether he was good or evil

This thread offers a lot to think about! To avoid going too far afield, I'll comment on just two things.

One question that I see arise is whether there is an absolute, universally-applicable moral standard against which the evilness of a deed can be be measured, or if moral standards are defined culturally or personally. The closest thing I can thing of to an absolute moral precept that might come close to being universally acceptable would be the Hippocratic Oath: "First, do no harm." It's extreme opposite - "cause harm whenever possible" - seems so destructive that it's difficult to imagine anyone sane adhering to it.

Yet, personal judgment still is almost unavoidable, as sometimes we are presented with choices where harm is unavoidable. In medicine, for example, from where the Hippocratic Oath originates, a surgeon might be faced with a choice to remove a life-threatening aneurism using a procedure with a high likelihood of leaving the patient partially paralyzed. In cases like this, harm - evil - cannot be avoided, but only minimized.

Also, if we are aligned with a moral standard, we often are required to confront fear when determining how to respond. MadHatter said:

MadHatter wrote: We can have all sorts of factors that push us to condone or not condone something. Fear can be a big one. But it does not change that you could act and you choose not to. I know the impact of fear and overwhelming force all too well from my abuse as a child. And maybe my standing up in the face of those events gives me unrealistic expectations of others. Often I get told that not everyone can act as I do and risk their behind even if you will get hurt in the process. Maybe those people are right and I am unrealistic or at least unfair.

Fear drives us to do quite a lot, sometimes even steering us into evil deeds that we wouldn't conduct in fear's absence. How to deal with fear is probably something best dealt with in another thread, or maybe in a lifetime of experience!