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I've been reading Alice Miller's book "For Your Own Good" this last week. Big chunks of her book excerpt "Mein Kampf", which I previous hadn't read at all. I

I've been reading Alice Miller's book "For Your Own Good" this last week. Big chunks of her book excerpt "Mein Kampf", which I previous hadn't read at all. I have very little problem reading Hitler's text through my own critical lens, without adopting the authors intent. I have a very different view on the world than Hitler, and I have no problem at all saying that my views are less pathological than his and further, I feel like history has judged the dude rightly and quite harshly. Is that a bad situation? And if not, how is this different than what you're describing?

nickthemagicman 6y ago
Actually my point is a tautological fallacy. You can never know what the author intended when writing. And every reader has a different subjective experience of a piece of literature or a work of art. So it's actually fucking impossible to even judge a work of art or writing based on the authors or readers perspective or in any thing beyond the aesthetic. Because what you think about something may not be what someone else thinks about it. And every persons thinking is influenced by so many different experiences: cultural, personal, moral, etc. So to attempt to create a concrete narrative about the intentions of a specific work of art or literature is impossible. This applies to reality as well. I've never read Mein Kampf, but I assume Hitle has good intentions for his country and wants peace and prosperity for the particular ingroup of people he identifies with. This is the same that everyone wants for their particular ingroup. Hitler did terrible things to accomplish that. So your perspective on Hitlers work is affected by the genocide that he commited. However, history is written by the winners and the present reality is merely one narrative, that the winners create. AMERICANS and every single other country in the world have commited genocide and other horrible atrocities.(see Native Americans during settler times and 400k innocent civilians killed in the middle east during the past decade) However, they won. If Hitler had won WW2 I can't help but wonder if the Jewish Holocaust would have been as minimized as the Native American Holocaust, and pushed under the rug. And Hitler would have gone down in history as a hero based on the news media spinning that narrative and nationalistic exuberance. Narratives are the most powerful thing in the world but also the most untrue.
- andrewzah 6y ago
  Everyone thinks that they're right (or on the right side of history, as it were). Things like book burning only become an issue when someone that they don't agree with is doing it.
stephenhuey 6y ago
You both raise some good points, but in your case you may at least understand what Hitler was trying to communicate when you decide not to adopt his view. To answer your question, a bad situation in my mind would be something like this example: a few years ago a relatively bright friend who had worked for a famous national politician got into a disagreement with me when I referred to The Colbert Report as satire. He did not think there was satire or that Colbert was putting on another character for the show at all. I was a big fan of the show, but it was alarming to me how many people might not understand subtlety like satire in novels and movies. Maybe there was never a golden area when everybody got it. In Voltaire's day, did the majority of the populace comprehend his meaning? Were the majority even aware of his messages? I have always loved reading novels from an early age, and find them superior in understanding other people's ways of thinking. As advanced and educated as many people enjoy being in the 21st century, I fear too many might still not bother to dig deeper into the intentions of a writer to truly understand what they were hinting at. It's an excellent skill applicable to other areas in life, and with controversial topics it can really help to bridge the gap in a polarized debate. Hitler is an extreme, and I personally don't believe all writing is fundamentally good and edifying to your soul, but I do think effort should be made to understand an author, especially when the writing clashes with contemporary norms. You can still discard it after carefully weighing it, but if you discard it without giving credit to what the author was trying to say because you don't even understand it, that's a loss. These zealous critics could apply their same logic to cancel my beloved Huckleberry Finn, a book that shed light on injustice more effectively than most even though the author did not come from the same ethnic background as Jim.
- throwawayboise 6y ago
  > I fear too many might still not bother to dig deeper into the intentions of a writer to truly understand what they were hinting at. Of course, how can you do this when people's experience with writing is mostly 120-character tweets that are read and reacted to on first emotional impulse.

nickthemagicman 6y ago

Actually my point is a tautological fallacy. You can never know what the author intended when writing. And every reader has a different subjective experience of a piece of literature or a work of art. So it's actually fucking impossible to even judge a work of art or writing based on the authors or readers perspective or in any thing beyond the aesthetic. Because what you think about something may not be what someone else thinks about it. And every persons thinking is influenced by so many different experiences: cultural, personal, moral, etc. So to attempt to create a concrete narrative about the intentions of a specific work of art or literature is impossible. This applies to reality as well. I've never read Mein Kampf, but I assume Hitle has good intentions for his country and wants peace and prosperity for the particular ingroup of people he identifies with. This is the same that everyone wants for their particular ingroup. Hitler did terrible things to accomplish that. So your perspective on Hitlers work is affected by the genocide that he commited. However, history is written by the winners and the present reality is merely one narrative, that the winners create. AMERICANS and every single other country in the world have commited genocide and other horrible atrocities.(see Native Americans during settler times and 400k innocent civilians killed in the middle east during the past decade) However, they won. If Hitler had won WW2 I can't help but wonder if the Jewish Holocaust would have been as minimized as the Native American Holocaust, and pushed under the rug. And Hitler would have gone down in history as a hero based on the news media spinning that narrative and nationalistic exuberance. Narratives are the most powerful thing in the world but also the most untrue.

andrewzah 6y ago
Everyone thinks that they're right (or on the right side of history, as it were). Things like book burning only become an issue when someone that they don't agree with is doing it.

stephenhuey 6y ago

You both raise some good points, but in your case you may at least understand what Hitler was trying to communicate when you decide not to adopt his view. To answer your question, a bad situation in my mind would be something like this example: a few years ago a relatively bright friend who had worked for a famous national politician got into a disagreement with me when I referred to The Colbert Report as satire. He did not think there was satire or that Colbert was putting on another character for the show at all. I was a big fan of the show, but it was alarming to me how many people might not understand subtlety like satire in novels and movies. Maybe there was never a golden area when everybody got it. In Voltaire's day, did the majority of the populace comprehend his meaning? Were the majority even aware of his messages? I have always loved reading novels from an early age, and find them superior in understanding other people's ways of thinking. As advanced and educated as many people enjoy being in the 21st century, I fear too many might still not bother to dig deeper into the intentions of a writer to truly understand what they were hinting at. It's an excellent skill applicable to other areas in life, and with controversial topics it can really help to bridge the gap in a polarized debate. Hitler is an extreme, and I personally don't believe all writing is fundamentally good and edifying to your soul, but I do think effort should be made to understand an author, especially when the writing clashes with contemporary norms. You can still discard it after carefully weighing it, but if you discard it without giving credit to what the author was trying to say because you don't even understand it, that's a loss. These zealous critics could apply their same logic to cancel my beloved Huckleberry Finn, a book that shed light on injustice more effectively than most even though the author did not come from the same ethnic background as Jim.

throwawayboise 6y ago
> I fear too many might still not bother to dig deeper into the intentions of a writer to truly understand what they were hinting at. Of course, how can you do this when people's experience with writing is mostly 120-character tweets that are read and reacted to on first emotional impulse.