War

that's abstract rhetoric with no bearing on the human experience. Evil may not be "provable" the way that a rock is provable, but who cares, real humans live on earth and not in the hall of ideas.

"Evil" is a judgement that we can rightly apply to a certain spectrum of intentional inhumanity, cruelty, victimization, and infliction of suffering. And if you are willing to give humans credit for making decisions, then you also need to give humans credit for choosing to treat others in a way we deem evil.

Nonsense, even the most cursory look at the history of warfare would refute that. The nature of modern war is simply an extremity of the escalation in army size and armament that has been happening since antiquity. As we developed muskets from swords, then rifles from muskets, then machine guns from rifles, the defensive posture in war became overwhelmingly advantageous. This necessitated much larger armies in order to accomplish offensive tactics. This happened to coincide with the increased size of draftable populations, so starting in the 19th century really with the Napoleonic wars, armies became huge.

You really think the diplomatic issues at play are much different from community conflicts? It's the same stuff. Access to resources, nationalism (formerly known as tribalism), border disputes, and occasionally megalomaniac aggression. The difference between a Hitler and a ruthless warlord is mainly scale.

You cannot contend that evil is unproven and yet assume that justice is.

War doesn't grow. War is a strategy used to accomplish practical ends that are almost always economic and/or nationalistic. Injustice and dishonor are the favorite toys of propagandists to get people to go along with the war. Goebbels needed an audience that bought the injustice and dishonor line. But that's not what the Nazis were actually fighting for.

I'm staying out of this by fear of being rhetorical. Just I just cannot say: blood and tears is the question and what is your answer? I thought I had an answer. I have none, anymore...

No. Evil and justice are both moral forms.

When people called each other out for individual combat and each man went knowing some ones head was going to be on some ones mantle before the day was done, then you had a superior individual formed in the very process of working out what justice was...

only our modern systems and our modern forms of government and society make true evil possible, because when one is killed by a machine as armies are, there is no one to honor them or their death

... When war became the matching of so many machines of death the humanity went out of it, and the evil went in...

They are moral judgements, not "forms".

Whatever, and I'm sure in the age of noble antiquity there was never rape, pillage, infanticide.

Take a look at the campaigns of Tamerlane, of Genghis Khan, and of the First Crusade before you wax poetic about noble duels.

Right, because Genghis Khan's armies honored the hundreds of thousands of dead in Baghdad after they slaughtered the entire population of the city. Because the Crusaders wept after butchering Jewish children in Europe... right... they were waging wars of destruction and annihilation themselves. So what if their tools were different? You think they were incapable of knowing better just because there was no International War Crimes Tribunal?

I mean if antiquity could produce Siddhartha Gautama, Jesus, Aristotle, Plato, and Socrates, then antiquity could also teach people that mass slaughter is not honorable.

During the Holocaust Jews died from gassing, shooting, starvation, beating, and disease. Would you say that death from beatings was less evil than death from gassing, because it was mano a mano? Those Nazis in Kielce who bayonetted the babies must have been much more noble, because a blade is more personable and honorable than a machine.

If I seem sarcastic, it's because I cannot fathom the idea that the wanton infliction of suffering was any more noble back when the tools were more primitive.

Let me start with the first... If they are judgement and judgement is knowledge as Kant says, and we can only conceive of what we know, as I say (though I may not be alone in this), in what sense are you disagreeing with me???

So you judge some one just or evil... How do you do that without a form/idea of what justice or evil is???

We have formulas of correct human behavior based upon our knowledge of good as a generic term; but again, good is a form.

I do not accept this conception of judgement. Moral judgement is visceral. If you see some horrible act, you don't go through some rational calculus to decide how to judge it. You are instantly capable of rendering a moral judgement even if you've never witnessed or thought of anything like it before.

Even studies in nonhuman primates have demonstrated severe aversion to violence and to actions that harm unrelated animals. This is innate to us. Why do you think that violence against animals is such a strong predictor of sociopathic behavior? The capacity to render moral judgements is innate. And if we abstract an idea about justice or evil, we will refine that idea if we witness some theretofore unimaginable scenario.

Again, this ancient form thing. You dismiss the possibility that moral judgements are social and psychological.

Answer me this..you are walking home one night and you are attacked by a gang of thieves..should i cross over and confront these gangsters or not ?

What do you want to hear? What I'm thinking or do you expect me to do you a favour? The nicest thing would of course be if I acted if I was thinking and then agree with you. But I don't agree with you and I simply refuse to answer when matters are stated this way. This is not the f.. army and I'm not to be ordered around here. So while this is an interesting question that I will consider for myself you won't have an answer. For the moment I indeed prefer the thieves above the saviour and you plead badly for the saviour. I prefer you would save the pygmees. Thanks anyway.

It seems to me that war, regardless of purpose, is reactionary. you hurt me so I hurt you or you have something I want so I am going to take it. But now days it is even worse. Now days it is, "but this is how it has always been."

There seems to be a form of ignorant hatred towards others which cannot be broken by rationality.



Still, war is good for the economy...

What do you want to hear? What I'm thinking or do you expect me to do you a favour? The nicest thing would of course be if I acted if I was thinking and then agree with you. But I don't agree with you and I simply refuse to answer when matters are stated this way. This is not the f.. army and I'm not to be ordered around here. So while this is an interesting question that I will consider for myself you won't have an answer. For the moment I indeed prefer the thieves above the saviour and you plead badly for the saviour. I prefer you would save the pygmees. Thanks anyway.

What juvenile attitude..whose ordering you to do anything ? im requesting you answer a direct question without resorting to vague rhetoric. I have met many who claim war is never a choice they would choose but are rewarded with the freedom to make that choice by those who are realistic and make the sacrifice.No one asked you to comment ,you could have sulked away, so dont play the injured pacifist and refuse a direct question or ill assume you cant.Remember you cast the first insult my friend..

You are both kind of funny. Where Catchabula is worried about his words being used against him, xris is setting up the typical philosophers trap in which he uses subjectivism against the poster.

Both of you have very valid points but they are different in approach. As much as I hate to admit it, there is a major difference between war and a local mugging.

War is the wager of thousands of lives where as a loacl mugging is usually only a wager of a few possessions. Xris, I could just as easily ask if the national gaurd should be called to arms because you were getting mugged?

Catchabula, would you let thousands die only to avoid conflict? But when people are dying conflict already exists. Blood is already being shed. It is like a wild fire. Sometimes, the only way to stop it is to remove the oxygen from the air. To fight fire with fire.

Diplomacy is always attempted and usually fails. This may say something about mankinds ability to rationalize and talk things out but it is only when diplomacy fails that nations go to war for some unreconcialable (sp?) differences.

Sorry but the principles are the same a bully needs to be stopped some by the police some by rational dialogue but some by war.Its not something i would encourage or cherish just a fact of this imperfect existance.

And when does it end?

What juvenile attitude..whose ordering you to do anything ? im requesting you answer a direct question without resorting to vague rhetoric. I have met many who claim war is never a choice they would choose but are rewarded with the freedom to make that choice by those who are realistic and make the sacrifice.No one asked you to comment ,you could have sulked away, so dont play the injured pacifist and refuse a direct question or ill assume you cant.Remember you cast the first insult my friend..

So your answer is..should we have faced hitler or not?

It seems to me that war, regardless of purpose, is reactionary. you hurt me so I hurt you or you have something I want so I am going to take it. But now days it is even worse. Now days it is, "but this is how it has always been."

There seems to be a form of ignorant hatred towards others which cannot be broken by rationality.



Still, war is good for the economy...