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> I don't care to defend Engels early middle or late, ... > The language Engels is employing is indeed ugly. You agree that Engels was a philosopher, and his

> I don't care to defend Engels early middle or late, ... > The language Engels is employing is indeed ugly. You agree that Engels was a philosopher, and his philosophy is not defensible. But here's where we probably disagree: I believe that philosophy is something that does have an impact on the world. A vast number of people (both powerful and not) read Engels (and Marx - and Kant), and this played a major role in the decisions they made in their lives. There's definitely a trickle-down effect here: learned people get the ideas first, and apply those ideas to their own fields. Less-educated people don't read philosophy, but they get the gist of it this way. (And, of course, there are shades in between.) This is consistent also with the fact tha philosophical ideas take a relatively long time to permeate the culture. Summary: in a sense, philosophy determines the course of history. Kant originated the ideas that Marx and Engels applied to politics, which influenced Lenin, Stalin, Hitler and Mao. (It is true that many other politicians were also influenced by Marx and Engels, but they were either not running big countries, or had countries that were behind the philosophical forefront of the era, such as the USA.) Is it any surprise that blood-soaked ideas lead to mass death? I don't think that Kant, Hegel, Marx and Engels were idiots that didn't know what they were doing or what their ideas actually meant.

applicative 16y ago
Again, I don't think there is any evidence for these claims; they are bald assertions evidently made with an ulterior motive, which is what makes this all unjust. It would never have occurred to Kant or Marx that anything like the genocides and purges of the 20th century were even possible. They were, if you like, naïve. It was better times. It was by slow degrees that these things did become possible. The savagery of the First World War, and the sick character of the Tsarist regime, are together quite enough to explain the blood-curdling aspects of the Bolshevik regime, and its Stalinist development. Any number of 'ideologies' could have filled the vacuum; in Russia, Marxism was the least likely given what it seems to say, but so it was. The suggestion that Kant has blood on his hands in this connection is so completely outrageous and evil -- it puts one in mind of LaRouchites putting everything down to Aristotle and Bertrand Russell and the change in attunement of instruments. This is nonsense which serves to disable the listener's sense of reality. Once one is willing to blame Kant for Russian barbarism, one will stop at nothing. But the truth is, the same holds for Marx, who held to an entirely conventional moral system, basically that of Aristotle.
- maxharris 16y ago
  > it puts one in mind of LaRouchites putting everything down to Aristotle and Bertrand Russell and the change in attunement of instruments. Yes, LaRouche and his gang are crazy. I don't share their philosophical views, and I certainly don't agree with their political methods. (Apparently, they are so inconsequential that I can't even remember who they are. I've only heard about them twice before, and each time I needed to look the Wikipedia entry to learn about them all over again.) Having read the page now, I can say with certainty that I oppose LaRouche's views more than most people do: I despise his most beloved philosophers. Your claim is like saying that because creationists and evolutionists both have ideas on the origin of life, and because one group (the creationists) is clearly nuts, the sane scientific mindset has no validity because it also advances a worldview.
  - deleted 16y ago
    [deleted]
  - applicative 16y ago
    You are the one who has suggested that we blame Immanuel Kant for the Stalin gang's murders. This proposition could only be seriously affirmed by a madman. If it it written by a non-madman, the act itself is evil -- a wrong done to Kant -- but moreover there is the question of his purpose. I suggest that in your case the purpose is to confuse and disorient people, to loosen their sense of reality. This was the only respect in which I compared your falsifications to the quite different ones put forth by LaRouche.
- maxharris 16y ago
  > But the truth is, the same holds for Marx, who held to an entirely conventional moral system, basically that of Aristotle. Really? Marx to Engels: http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1848/letters/48_11_29.htm http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1848/letters/48_1... "I have devised an infallible plan for extracting money from your old man, as we now have none. Write me a begging letter (as crude as possible), in which you retail your past vicissitudes, but in such a way that I can pass it on to your mother. The old man's beginning to get the wind up." Explain how in the hell someone with a moral system that's "basically that of Aristotle" wrote this.

applicative 16y ago

Again, I don't think there is any evidence for these claims; they are bald assertions evidently made with an ulterior motive, which is what makes this all unjust. It would never have occurred to Kant or Marx that anything like the genocides and purges of the 20th century were even possible. They were, if you like, naïve. It was better times. It was by slow degrees that these things did become possible. The savagery of the First World War, and the sick character of the Tsarist regime, are together quite enough to explain the blood-curdling aspects of the Bolshevik regime, and its Stalinist development. Any number of 'ideologies' could have filled the vacuum; in Russia, Marxism was the least likely given what it seems to say, but so it was. The suggestion that Kant has blood on his hands in this connection is so completely outrageous and evil -- it puts one in mind of LaRouchites putting everything down to Aristotle and Bertrand Russell and the change in attunement of instruments. This is nonsense which serves to disable the listener's sense of reality. Once one is willing to blame Kant for Russian barbarism, one will stop at nothing. But the truth is, the same holds for Marx, who held to an entirely conventional moral system, basically that of Aristotle.

maxharris 16y ago
> it puts one in mind of LaRouchites putting everything down to Aristotle and Bertrand Russell and the change in attunement of instruments. Yes, LaRouche and his gang are crazy. I don't share their philosophical views, and I certainly don't agree with their political methods. (Apparently, they are so inconsequential that I can't even remember who they are. I've only heard about them twice before, and each time I needed to look the Wikipedia entry to learn about them all over again.) Having read the page now, I can say with certainty that I oppose LaRouche's views more than most people do: I despise his most beloved philosophers. Your claim is like saying that because creationists and evolutionists both have ideas on the origin of life, and because one group (the creationists) is clearly nuts, the sane scientific mindset has no validity because it also advances a worldview.
- deleted 16y ago
  [deleted]
- applicative 16y ago
  You are the one who has suggested that we blame Immanuel Kant for the Stalin gang's murders. This proposition could only be seriously affirmed by a madman. If it it written by a non-madman, the act itself is evil -- a wrong done to Kant -- but moreover there is the question of his purpose. I suggest that in your case the purpose is to confuse and disorient people, to loosen their sense of reality. This was the only respect in which I compared your falsifications to the quite different ones put forth by LaRouche.
maxharris 16y ago
> But the truth is, the same holds for Marx, who held to an entirely conventional moral system, basically that of Aristotle. Really? Marx to Engels: http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1848/letters/48_11_29.htm http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1848/letters/48_1... "I have devised an infallible plan for extracting money from your old man, as we now have none. Write me a begging letter (as crude as possible), in which you retail your past vicissitudes, but in such a way that I can pass it on to your mother. The old man's beginning to get the wind up." Explain how in the hell someone with a moral system that's "basically that of Aristotle" wrote this.