I saw an argument about this kind of thing recently that I think I’ve come to largely agree with, and it’s something like this: why does it actually matter if a historical figure was a “good person” or not? With a living person, there’s some utility to knowing this, we generally expect a “bad” person to do objectionable things, making such a person someone not to be trusted with power, or avoided, ect. But a dead person isn’t going to be doing anything. There’s no cause to consider if a dead guy would make an acceptable leader, or acquittance, or similar, since those things aren’t in the cards, so there’s not much reason to even care what their moral standards were and how well they actually held to them. What you can get out of those people, is simply what the consequences of their actions were. Judging those consequences by our standards makes some sense, because we can take actions that ultimately seemed to have positive consequences to us as an example and those that we don’t like the results of as a warning.
Might people of the future have some different standards that we don’t fit? Sure, but those are their ideas of right and wrong, not ours. From our point of view, those hypothetical future people are just as “wrong” as people in the past were. From their point of view, what happens when someone does whatever we do will be more useful information than if we’re all a bit evil or something.
I think that there’s more to learn from history than just actions and consequences. There is “Who should I be?” rather than just “What should I do in this situation?” You can see what sorts of people tended to do good, and part of that is recognizing what was they thought was bad and what was simply in accordance with the morality of the time; disappointing, perhaps, from our modern point of view but not the sign of a flaw greater than the one we have ourselves when we fail to morally innovate.
I also think that there is advancement in morality, not just arbitrarily changes like in fashion. Maybe some things were better in the past (many other people think to think so) but overall life for almost everyone is better now than it has ever been and that’s because of progress not just in technology but in the rules that we have for relating to each other. I expect that I could probably be convinced that the people of the future were right and I was wrong if I knew what the future was, because I think that the future will probably be better than the present.
That’s why I place so much emphasis on moral humility. I expect that somewhere, I’m making a mistake. I might agree with some modern-day zealots in principle, but because I’m not sure that I’m right, I don’t agree with their methods. That, I think, is the most important lesson of history.
I saw an argument about this kind of thing recently that I think I’ve come to largely agree with, and it’s something like this: why does it actually matter if a historical figure was a “good person” or not? With a living person, there’s some utility to knowing this, we generally expect a “bad” person to do objectionable things, making such a person someone not to be trusted with power, or avoided, ect. But a dead person isn’t going to be doing anything. There’s no cause to consider if a dead guy would make an acceptable leader, or acquittance, or similar, since those things aren’t in the cards, so there’s not much reason to even care what their moral standards were and how well they actually held to them. What you can get out of those people, is simply what the consequences of their actions were. Judging those consequences by our standards makes some sense, because we can take actions that ultimately seemed to have positive consequences to us as an example and those that we don’t like the results of as a warning.
Might people of the future have some different standards that we don’t fit? Sure, but those are their ideas of right and wrong, not ours. From our point of view, those hypothetical future people are just as “wrong” as people in the past were. From their point of view, what happens when someone does whatever we do will be more useful information than if we’re all a bit evil or something.
I think that there’s more to learn from history than just actions and consequences. There is “Who should I be?” rather than just “What should I do in this situation?” You can see what sorts of people tended to do good, and part of that is recognizing what was they thought was bad and what was simply in accordance with the morality of the time; disappointing, perhaps, from our modern point of view but not the sign of a flaw greater than the one we have ourselves when we fail to morally innovate.
I also think that there is advancement in morality, not just arbitrarily changes like in fashion. Maybe some things were better in the past (many other people think to think so) but overall life for almost everyone is better now than it has ever been and that’s because of progress not just in technology but in the rules that we have for relating to each other. I expect that I could probably be convinced that the people of the future were right and I was wrong if I knew what the future was, because I think that the future will probably be better than the present.
That’s why I place so much emphasis on moral humility. I expect that somewhere, I’m making a mistake. I might agree with some modern-day zealots in principle, but because I’m not sure that I’m right, I don’t agree with their methods. That, I think, is the most important lesson of history.