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> Villains are heroes of their own story. This is an assumption about the internal motivations of villains that we don't have any access to. In general, making

> Villains are heroes of their own story. This is an assumption about the internal motivations of villains that we don't have any access to. In general, making assumptions about the internal workings of the minds of historical people is a game of guessing. A much better method is to assume that these people meant to do exactly what they actually did. In this case, the best assumption about Hitler is to assume that he wanted to kill as many Jewish people (and also Romani people, Armenians, gays and others) as he could, and to conquer vast swaths of Europe. Why he may have done so is mere speculation. That he wrote some manifestos claiming there was some higher purpose to all this can easily be ignored: we have no way of knowing whether he was lying in those manifestos, or even in personal diaries. This holds true for how we should evaluate every action of anyone we have no hope of knowing personally: judging by the outcomes (at least the ones that we know for sure they were aware about), not by proclaimed internal motivations. If the policeman in your example shot someone lunging with a knife, then it's fair to say that they meant to stop a knife attack. If a policeman shot someone holding a knife to cut a tomato, then it's fair to say that they meant to harm that person in particular, even if the policeman claims that they thought the knife-holder was about to threaten someone else. Note: I am not talking about how jurors in a court of law should approach such a question. I am talking about how this question should be approached in the context of history.

boxed 3y ago
> A much better method is to assume that these people meant to do exactly what they actually did. That doesn't work. He shot himself in the head. Was that his plan all along? Clearly that method of analysis has some problems. > Note: I am not talking about how jurors in a court of law should approach such a question. I am talking about how this question should be approached in the context of history. That's a certain way of viewing history that I dislike. It robs past people of all agency and we never trust anything anyone says. That's way too cynical. It also has no explanatory power.
- simiones 3y ago
  > That doesn't work. He shot himself in the head. Was that his plan all along? Clearly that method of analysis has some problems. Perhaps. He did "achieve" a few other things before that point either way. > That's a certain way of viewing history that I dislike. It robs past people of all agency and we never trust anything anyone says. That's way too cynical. It also has no explanatory power. The thing is, we know for a fact that historical writings were highly motivated by propaganda purposes, and/or highly colored by the biases of the writer's culture. Very very few historical sources, especially going back to the middle ages or before, were writing from some intention of having objective history remembered. They were writing for some emperor or another, disparaging their enemies and deifying their families and reigns. Even personal letters, to the extent that we find them, tend to do the same thing. And even looking at more modern sources, you'll often find flagrant bias in reporting, and extraordinary levels of praise or disparagement of the characters involved depending on the source. It is then important to realize that we simply don't have access to the real characters of the people written about, ever. We at best get an idea of what they actually did, but we don't have any idea of their real personalities or intentions or beliefs. We barely know who the worse abuser was between Johnny Depp and Amber Heard, and we got to see a whole trial with plenty of clear evidence from both of them. We simply don't have any chance of judging what Charlemagne actually believed about virtually anything, or what kind of a guy he was.
  - boxed 3y ago
    Now I can, using YOUR logic, just claim that you don't actually believe anything you wrote, you are just pandering to the current zeitgeist of postmodern nonsense :P See how annoying that is?
    - simiones 3y ago
      I think it's only fair. You have no idea if I mean what I wrote and/or why I'm insisting on it.

boxed 3y ago

> A much better method is to assume that these people meant to do exactly what they actually did. That doesn't work. He shot himself in the head. Was that his plan all along? Clearly that method of analysis has some problems. > Note: I am not talking about how jurors in a court of law should approach such a question. I am talking about how this question should be approached in the context of history. That's a certain way of viewing history that I dislike. It robs past people of all agency and we never trust anything anyone says. That's way too cynical. It also has no explanatory power.

simiones 3y ago
> That doesn't work. He shot himself in the head. Was that his plan all along? Clearly that method of analysis has some problems. Perhaps. He did "achieve" a few other things before that point either way. > That's a certain way of viewing history that I dislike. It robs past people of all agency and we never trust anything anyone says. That's way too cynical. It also has no explanatory power. The thing is, we know for a fact that historical writings were highly motivated by propaganda purposes, and/or highly colored by the biases of the writer's culture. Very very few historical sources, especially going back to the middle ages or before, were writing from some intention of having objective history remembered. They were writing for some emperor or another, disparaging their enemies and deifying their families and reigns. Even personal letters, to the extent that we find them, tend to do the same thing. And even looking at more modern sources, you'll often find flagrant bias in reporting, and extraordinary levels of praise or disparagement of the characters involved depending on the source. It is then important to realize that we simply don't have access to the real characters of the people written about, ever. We at best get an idea of what they actually did, but we don't have any idea of their real personalities or intentions or beliefs. We barely know who the worse abuser was between Johnny Depp and Amber Heard, and we got to see a whole trial with plenty of clear evidence from both of them. We simply don't have any chance of judging what Charlemagne actually believed about virtually anything, or what kind of a guy he was.
- boxed 3y ago
  Now I can, using YOUR logic, just claim that you don't actually believe anything you wrote, you are just pandering to the current zeitgeist of postmodern nonsense :P See how annoying that is?
  - simiones 3y ago
    I think it's only fair. You have no idea if I mean what I wrote and/or why I'm insisting on it.