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Comment by tshaddox | Hacker News Reader

> You can say "we should judge people by the standards of their time", but it seems that he fell short even by those standards.

Just out of curiosity, what are notable examples of people saying “we should judge people by the standards of their time” in a reasonable way?

I most frequently hear it used for many of the “American forefathers” or other prominent people during that time to refer to their views on slavery and the treatment of indigenous people. In that case it’s clearly laughable, since A) there were prominent contemporary critics and B) a lot of those people spent considerable effort performing mental gymnastics in writing to defend these things, which one wouldn’t expect if they were simply unaware of any potential moral problems with their actions and views.

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But were they morally and culturally equipped to recognize those issues as failures, or were they simply average people of their time, that spent time debating what was to them a fringe, extremist idea that made little sense? If the latter, can you condemn them for not being remarkable in this regard too, as they were on political, philosophical, scientific and patriotic issues? Can, indeed, any man be such a timeless conscience that is not only revolutionary to the their time, but to all future moral codes?

You are most probably not among the universally righteous minds of our times, you are just an average man of our time. I don't think that means, by default, that all your actions are not worthy of praise of that your failing by an undisclosed future moral crime (such as eating sentient animals) negate all your moral choices today.

In many cases they were highly educated who are widely accepted as significant thinkers and writers, and they wrote in depth about the arguments for and against slavery. So yeah, they’re on record as explicitly considering the arguments at the time and rejecting them.

And further, "standards of their time" has a particular frame. By the standards of enslaved people, slavery was terrible. When people say that slavery was not considered evil by the standards of the time they are saying by the standards of white people who benefited from a slavery-based economy.

This is quite a simplistic view. Slavery in its milder forms (buying and selling people along with land, restrictions on movement etc.) was widespread in Europe up until 19th century. There has not been a homogeneous class of “white people” who universally benefited from slavery. Secondly, there is a distinction between considering something “evil” and “unnatural”. My ancestors clearly hated the German landlords but, at the same time, clearly saw the situation as something quite natural. After all, it had been the fact of the matter for 600 years. This is further evidenced by the fact that it took more than a century of gradual awakening to actually realize an alternative social structure. So, by the standards of about 200 years ago slavery in these parts was certainly not seen as desirable by the slaves but quite certainly as something “normal”.

No, that's not what they are saying. Slavery predates written records and was perpetrated by many cultures. It continues to exist in Africa (Mali, Niger, Sudan, etc), in India (bonded labour), in the middle east (migrant workers) and other places. When one includes sexual slavery and trafficking, it's virtually everywhere.

> Just out of curiosity, what are notable examples of people saying “we should judge people by the standards of their time” in a reasonable way?

Do you consider eating meat at a restaurant to be a morally acceptable thing to do?

The meat you consume there is likely factory grown, which means that the animal lived in total misery until it was brutally murdered under extreme duress.

It's highly likely that people will consider treating animals like that to be immoral at some point. If you don't accept your quote as truth you'll also have to accept that your descends will consider you (and everyone else in our society) monstrous.

I absolutely accept that people in the future might consider things I have done to be monstrous.

Do you accept that at some point they might try to take away an honor from you because of it?

Personally, I'd say yes. I know enough to try to diminish my animal consumption, but for a variety of reasons I haven't eliminated it. If that is someday seen as monstrous enough that they want to revoke my awards and recognition, I'm actually all for it. It will be a better, kinder world than the one I live in.

I mean, that's one frequent US-based usage. But people use it in plenty of other contexts too.

E.g., reading (non-politics) authors from the past. Listening to music by musicians from the past. Just as a quick example, should you or should you not listen to Wagner is a question among Jews, because of his anti-semitic views. Personally I wouldn't let that stop me from listening to him, but people have different views on this kind of stuff.

one such example is the quote "an eye for an eye".

Today this sounds as condoning revenge or vigilantism, as opposed to forgiveness.

But in its historical context, it was in fact the opposite, since the norm at the time used to be to engage in vastly unequal retaliation (e.g. "your entire family for an eye").

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