On Thu, 10 Apr 1997, Doug Henwood wrote:
> Sebastian Gurciullo wrote:
>
> >Humanist Europe produced Nazi Germany
>
> Or, the Europe that produced humanism also produced Nazi Germany. Nazi
> ideology itself was very hostile to all those softhearted doctrines, and in
> their antihumanism and antiuniversalism, denied that Jews and other
> non-Aryans were as fully human as Aryans.
It's not antihumanist to claim that Jews aren't human. The essential
category of humanism remains. "We all must be humans; Jews aren't humans;
thus exterminating them is not an anti-humanist act." You want humanism to
be a critical criteron, an intellectual guarantor of moral action. But
humanism won't do that work for you.
Also, one could be a humanist and claim that women should be denied the
right to vote and to own property.
> The question I'm trying to ask, and apparently not doing it well, is how
> one chooses what boundaries are worth transgressing (e.g., various
> restrictive sexual moralities, rules I'm happy to see broken) and those
> which aren't (e.g. random enucleation).
>
> Doug
>
>
Do people really choose what boundaries are worth transgressing ahead of
time? Don't people just transgress? In "One Flew Over the Cuokoo's Nest"
Ken Kesey's anti-hero mental patient (played by Nicholson in the movie)
goes up against, transgresses, the rules and normalizing efforts of Nurse
Ratchet (or Hatchet, or whatever her name was).
--John
> Sebastian Gurciullo wrote:
>
> >Humanist Europe produced Nazi Germany
>
> Or, the Europe that produced humanism also produced Nazi Germany. Nazi
> ideology itself was very hostile to all those softhearted doctrines, and in
> their antihumanism and antiuniversalism, denied that Jews and other
> non-Aryans were as fully human as Aryans.
It's not antihumanist to claim that Jews aren't human. The essential
category of humanism remains. "We all must be humans; Jews aren't humans;
thus exterminating them is not an anti-humanist act." You want humanism to
be a critical criteron, an intellectual guarantor of moral action. But
humanism won't do that work for you.
Also, one could be a humanist and claim that women should be denied the
right to vote and to own property.
> The question I'm trying to ask, and apparently not doing it well, is how
> one chooses what boundaries are worth transgressing (e.g., various
> restrictive sexual moralities, rules I'm happy to see broken) and those
> which aren't (e.g. random enucleation).
>
> Doug
>
>
Do people really choose what boundaries are worth transgressing ahead of
time? Don't people just transgress? In "One Flew Over the Cuokoo's Nest"
Ken Kesey's anti-hero mental patient (played by Nicholson in the movie)
goes up against, transgresses, the rules and normalizing efforts of Nurse
Ratchet (or Hatchet, or whatever her name was).
--John