As I said perhaps Hitler believed his "ethical calculus" didn't have mistakes. Regardless, actions must be taken; if we never act out of fear that we might be wrong, then we never act.
That is if I am understanding what you are saying correctly.
Of course the opposite extreme is to never act out of fear of mistake. Yet like in nearly every aspect of life the obvious solution is to not gravitate towards extremes. Where we draw the line - between inaction out of fear and excessive action out of arrogance - is exactly the contention ethics ought to feature. Most people would say the line falls somewhere before slaughtering an entire race.
I respect him merely because he tried, even though what he proposed was so radical as to be deep in the realm of insanity, he still tried. And that's why I respect him: as a political figure, he was efficient, calculating, and got the job done.
Again, that betrays a lack of nihilism. A proper nihilist would laugh at him for trying when any attempting at trying is merely a more exhausting form of failure.
I disagree. My "nihilism" exists because my position is: there is no objective purpose, meaning, value, morality, or justice in life. In terms of the reality, nothing exists objectively except cold hard reality itself. All human creations are just that, human creations and delusions......as helpful as they might be for civilized life, they are ultimately nonexistent.
I'd be mighty curious how one could reconcile ethical nihilism with materialist realism. If ethics are subjective (and I agree they are), then there is absolutely no grounds on which to place materialist realism (and there isn't). Both of these positions (nihilism and anti-realism) are essentially pointless because they kill off action and condemn one to a life of staring at walls and quickly dying through dehydration and so anyone actually interested in something beyond their own mind has to ignore them.
And your use of the word delusion is unfair. A delusion is something we set up to reassure. An organized philosophical system is not a delusion, no matter how wrong it may be. Even Hitler's philosophy was not delusional; it was simply poor.
Now if that isn't nihilism, then I am not a nihilist; but nonetheless, I do not hold any sort of belief in objective "good". Good is what we make it; and we're free to have opinions on matters and believe in morals...but they are opinions, then, and not any sort of recognition of what actually exists because nothing actually exists.
Yes. Though I'd not say "ethics do not exist objectively" for two reasons. (1) Ethics are largely emotional or instinctively derived and thus do seem to exist apart from the human mind; this at least indicates that what we call 'ethics' exists in some sense apart from our minds and is thus somewhat objective: (2) They may exist objectively, but we have no access to that knowledge.
Hitler had a code of ethics, but it was his own unique code. He did believe, then, in an "ultimate good"....an Aryan society free of Jews. My point in saying "ethics are what we make them" is to show that Hitler had a different set of codes than you or I, and he isn't any more wrong than you or I.
Yes, he was. He believed it would make a 'perfect society'. It didn't. Germans have rejected it outright. As has almost every other culture in the world. You can suggest that his opinion was not any more unethical than mine, but it was certainly not correct. His reasoning was also poor and his philosophy utterly amateur littered with mistakes. He was wrong in many places. We blow Hitler up into epic proportions because of the numbers involved, his motivation and the context under which he acted. In reality he 'created' (or largely stole) a philosophy that was dominant in a small area of the world for an extraordinarily short period of time. His theories lasted about 10 years. I couldn't begin to count the number of thinkers who have had more than a thousand years of influence in terms of holding wait ethically or philosophically, so 10 years is pretty pathetic by any standard.
I never said Hitler was a nihilist. He was, however, likely a moral relativist (as we all are, in reality)
Were he a relativist he'd be a poor one. One natural conclusion of moral relativism is that extreme action is dangerous and overly risky exactly because of self doubt. The danger of moral relativism is - as you pointed out - going to far down the inaction road, not going too far down the action road.
There's extreme relevance in saying "it was right to Hitler"....obviously, seeing as Tiassa cannot even see this simple and obvious truth. By saying "it was right to Hitler", you reveal that morals are subjective and this is a very relevant point in discussions like this........because nobody is right. What we're discussing is our opinion and that needs to be recognized. Because not everybody understand all of this is opinion.
I can't stand this line of rebuttal. My name is Tyler and usually when I speak I'm saying Tyler's opinion. Do I really need to clarify this every time I enter a debate?? I hate people who always open with "now this is only my opinion, but..." or "it's my opinion that..." I know it's your opinion. Were you worried that I thought you were sharing Frege's opinion instead of your own?
Moreover, certain words you seem to take as subjective are actually not. "Evil" for instance, in English, has a vague but well agreed upon meaning. Being extremely violent for no justifiable reason* and to excessive ends is part of, though not the whole of, what we consider to be the set of "evil". You may point out that the definition of these words is
fluid and not entirely agreed upon, but it enough of a consensus has been reached that certain things unequivocally fall under "evil". The fluidity of such words makes them tricky. For example, 300 years ago in America it would have been widely considered that practicing witchcraft is evil. Today, no one except the Christians still stuck in the 1700s considers it to warrant such a strong term. Words like this are
fluid but do not lack objectivity. If simple ability to change in meaning were to be considered sufficient cause to label a word or concept purely subjective, then all concepts would be purely subjective. And we'd be back to the nihilism argument. And then I'd tell you again that it's boring so we need to move on.
*and "creating the perfect society" is not considered a justifiable reason in any English country I've been to
And we all have our opinions; I don't like Hitler or what he did. But he acted, he took action, and I respect him for that. Even if he failed, he died trying.
He died like a rat.
Perhaps the reason I respect him is because, unlike all the other political figures of the time, he pursued his own radical ideas instead of conforming to the Church or to some meaningless social institution.
Really? I'd say FDR, Churchill, hell even Stalin, Pearson in Canada, and many others did a much finer job of taking authority by the balls. You must be a big fan of Mao.
