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I think there's a difference; Einstein did not try to hold himself up as a moral exemplar, or at least, arguing so would be difficult. (I'm ignoring the moral

by lsc 9y ago

I think there's a difference; Einstein did not try to hold himself up as a moral exemplar, or at least, arguing so would be difficult. (I'm ignoring the moral difference here between being a jerk and literally owning slaves, which is also huge.) It's much easier to argue that Jefferson held himself as, and is seen today as a moral leader; to the extent that you see Jefferson as a moral leader, owning slaves really does diminish his authority in that area, in ways that having moral failings of the same magnitude would not diminish a person's contributions, say, to science. (Jefferson did make some contributions in that area, too, but compared to Einstein, or to Jefferson's contributions elsewhere, they were minor.) I personally think one can be a terrible person and a great scientist; Can one be a horrible person and a great moral leader? My gut says that you can't, that your own moral failings compromise your greatness as a moral leader in ways that your own moral failings can not compromise your greatness as a scientist. though I can see valid counter-arguments in both cases. For that matter, I'm not sure that scientific failings can compromise your greatness as a scientist. I think scientific contributions are interesting and important in part because we have this framework for dealing with scientific ideas that can take good and provable ideas from a source that spews a lot of (probably) false and unscientific ideas. I'm thinking here of Tesla, who unquestionably was a great scientist and who's work we use every day, but who also had a lot of ideas that didn't pan out, and many that one could argue were... crazy. I think our framework for dealing with moral and ethical contributions is dramatically weaker. We do have such a framework for legal contributions, but even that is a lot weaker than what we have for scientific contributions.

WalterBright 9y ago
Do you think that "All men are created equal, ..." is invalidated because Jefferson owned slaves? Do you think the Lewis & Clark expedition was valueless because Jefferson owned slaves? Do you think the Louisiana Purchase is of no consequence because Jefferson owned slaves? Given his accomplishments and contributions: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thomas_Jefferson which would you say are invalidated because he owned slaves?
- marchenko 9y ago
  "All men are created equal..." is certainly not invalidated, but what was intended to be indisputably true is rendered debatable, since Jefferson obviously countenanced exceptions.
  - WalterBright 9y ago
    Whether he had slaves or not made no difference to American history. I've never read about anyone justifying holding slaves because Jefferson did. Don't conflate the man with the idea. The idea has changed world history for the better, a LOT better. For example, I believe that a healthy diet is desirable. But I often fail at eating a healthy diet. In no way does that invalidate the idea or my belief in it.
    - mlinksva 9y ago
      I'd be very surprised if defenders of slavery didn't routinely use Jefferson, Washington, and company to justify slavery. I don't know offhand how to find primary sources, but a quick web search turns up an interview[0] with a slavery and Jefferson scholar who says: "So that Americans come to believe in racism by reading Jefferson. And in the 1840's and 50's, these Southern racists who are defending slavery are reading Jefferson and quoting him on these issues. ... This is very damaging, horrible ideas and they are used over and over again in the 1840's and 50's by the defenders of slavery to argue in favor of continuing slavery. Jefferson justifies slavery, in fact, by arguing that blacks are inferior to whites on almost all levels." [0] https://www.pbs.org/jefferson/archives/interviews/Finkelman.htm https://www.pbs.org/jefferson/archives/interviews/Finkelman....
      - lsc 9y ago
        The constitution of the CSA[1] would look pretty familiar to anyone who has read Jefferson's work; I suspect that if both were written by private entities under current copyright laws, the CSA would be found to have infringed on the document it was abridging. I mean, this is just snark, but it's certainly an example of the words of Thomas Jefferson being used to defend slavery. This is the biggest problem with an originalist interpretation of the Constitution, and one could argue that the fact that the constitution was so vague as to what, exactly, constitutes a man or a citizen was actually a progressive thing, because if we had frozen what a voting citizen was in 1787, we'd explicitly only have given the right to vote to property owning white males, something that (I hope) almost all of us would disagree with. Because so many important things were not strictly defined, we sort of have a built in bias towards loose constructionism. [1]http://www.libs.uga.edu/hargrett/selections/confed/trans.html http://www.libs.uga.edu/hargrett/selections/confed/trans.htm...

by lsc 9y ago

WalterBright 9y ago

Do you think that "All men are created equal, ..." is invalidated because Jefferson owned slaves? Do you think the Lewis & Clark expedition was valueless because Jefferson owned slaves? Do you think the Louisiana Purchase is of no consequence because Jefferson owned slaves? Given his accomplishments and contributions: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thomas_Jefferson which would you say are invalidated because he owned slaves?

marchenko 9y ago
"All men are created equal..." is certainly not invalidated, but what was intended to be indisputably true is rendered debatable, since Jefferson obviously countenanced exceptions.
- WalterBright 9y ago
  Whether he had slaves or not made no difference to American history. I've never read about anyone justifying holding slaves because Jefferson did. Don't conflate the man with the idea. The idea has changed world history for the better, a LOT better. For example, I believe that a healthy diet is desirable. But I often fail at eating a healthy diet. In no way does that invalidate the idea or my belief in it.
  - mlinksva 9y ago
    I'd be very surprised if defenders of slavery didn't routinely use Jefferson, Washington, and company to justify slavery. I don't know offhand how to find primary sources, but a quick web search turns up an interview[0] with a slavery and Jefferson scholar who says: "So that Americans come to believe in racism by reading Jefferson. And in the 1840's and 50's, these Southern racists who are defending slavery are reading Jefferson and quoting him on these issues. ... This is very damaging, horrible ideas and they are used over and over again in the 1840's and 50's by the defenders of slavery to argue in favor of continuing slavery. Jefferson justifies slavery, in fact, by arguing that blacks are inferior to whites on almost all levels." [0] https://www.pbs.org/jefferson/archives/interviews/Finkelman.htm https://www.pbs.org/jefferson/archives/interviews/Finkelman....
    - lsc 9y ago
      The constitution of the CSA[1] would look pretty familiar to anyone who has read Jefferson's work; I suspect that if both were written by private entities under current copyright laws, the CSA would be found to have infringed on the document it was abridging. I mean, this is just snark, but it's certainly an example of the words of Thomas Jefferson being used to defend slavery. This is the biggest problem with an originalist interpretation of the Constitution, and one could argue that the fact that the constitution was so vague as to what, exactly, constitutes a man or a citizen was actually a progressive thing, because if we had frozen what a voting citizen was in 1787, we'd explicitly only have given the right to vote to property owning white males, something that (I hope) almost all of us would disagree with. Because so many important things were not strictly defined, we sort of have a built in bias towards loose constructionism. [1]http://www.libs.uga.edu/hargrett/selections/confed/trans.html http://www.libs.uga.edu/hargrett/selections/confed/trans.htm...