There's a difference between justification and acknowledgement. Just because people are able to acknowledge that specific artifacts only exist because they were stolen, does not mean that they believe the original theft was "right or reasonable."
I mean...sure, but then what's the point of this facile acknowledgement? Yeah, if you hadn't burglarized my house yesterday, all my things would have burned up in the fire that happened there today. That's all well and good, except you still stole my shit. The fact that you inadvertently saved it from being burned is irrelevant to the action of the theft.
Why should anything beyond facile acknowledgement be expected from the average person when it comes to appreciating artifacts that still exist on our planet?
Is it a moral crime to simply appreciate a painting, even though it was stolen hundreds of years ago? Are people "justifying" that crime that happened before they were born, because they're glad that the painting still exists?
Yes. Because your enjoyment deprives the ancestors of the people who actually created it. Try personalizing this to see if it resonates. There's a quilt that has been in your family for centuries, with each family member adding a patch. At some point, your house is burglarized and the quilt is taken. Hundreds of years later, the quilt is around the world, being seen by people who have absolutely no connection to it, meanwhile your great^n children no longer have access to this piece of their cultural heritage.
If my house was burglarized and a family quilt ended up in a museum after it was stolen, I certainly wouldn't blame the patrons of that museum for looking at it. My grievance would be with the current custodian of the quilt.
It's reasonable to expect stolen property to be returned. It's not reasonable to expect people to know the history of every piece of property they look at in order to determine if it was stolen or not.
Huh? Where did I "decide they're wrong"? In this hypothetical you're concocting, you're saying someone "looted" something from someone's trash? That's not what looting typically means. Looting typically means taking things the people from whom they were taken from deemed valuable.
You just don't like it, and that's fine. I can't say I really like it either. But it doesn't mean it's your job to fix it or that you have a right to just take the things preemptively. Continuing to perpetuate colonial abuse is not going to somehow Magically Fix Everything This Time For Sure, it's just going to keep making things worse.
And you know what, maybe they don't in the moment. But essentially none of these things ever get repatriated even when the people they came from explicitly say they want them back. And you can see the logic that justifies this ongoing theft all over this comment thread: "the people who stole it are dead so it's ours now."
This is the problem with all of these after-the-fact justifications. In order for them to exist, the things have to have been taken before the destruction. If I steal your TV and then your house burns down, have I "saved" your TV even though I still won't give it back? Am I now in the moral right?
These small analogies are obviously not perfect, but I think they illustrate the order of causality when we talk about "harm".
What if you die and i buy your tv at an estate sale, and then later your ancestors change their mind? [I'm mostly just posing this as a thought experiment, i dont think its exactly the same as this either]
I mean there is a lot of nuance involved. Sometimes i think repatriating artifacts is the right thing to do. However, if we were talking about say Roman artificats i would say that the modern descendents are so far removed that their claim is no more legitament than anyone else. But there are certainly cases where modern descendents have compelling claims.
But really, for the most part Roman artifacts are in Rome or Italy or the descendants of Roman client states they came from. Rome was never really looted like Africa or the Americas or even much of Asia were over the colonial power era. Likewise, neither were the colonial powers themselves, so there’s no real culture drain being helped along by holding on to a Roman or British or French or Spanish artifact.
For the most part when conversations need to be had about restoring artifacts, it’s that period we’re really talking about.
My enjoyment itself is what does that? What if viewing the artifact bores me to tears? No moral crime then?
Right on, I hear ya. If museums want my money, they can break into my house and steal it, like they stole their artefacts.
> That sounds like an a posteriori justification for stealing, like saying "see, that building ended up being bombed, so it's a good thing I stole all these Ukrainian paintings from the country last year".
The logical fallacy here is using one unrelated bad event to justify another unrelated bad event.
Taken to its logical conclusion, this argument would be that we should constantly keep looting art left and right, because who knows where and what is going to be destroyed at any moment.
Nor did I say that anyone said that it "justified" the theft. What I said was that that line of argumentation "sounds like an a posteriori justification for stealing".
Person1: A
You: This sounds like B, which is fallacious.
Person2: A
You: Again...this sounds like B, which is fallacious.
Me: No one is claiming B
You: I never said anyone claimed B. I said this sounds like B.
Sound about right?
Yup, with the added bit:
If you're not claiming that A is like B, then what's the point of you bringing up A to the discussion, at all?
Between these two facts, I think it would be way weirder if everyone quietly ignored the historical record of a specific artifact just because it was stolen. Imagine walking through a museum with a tour guide who is able to give mounds of information about every piece on display, until you ask them about a certain bust, and they say "oh we don't talk about the history of that piece" and you say "why not?" and he says "because it's not relevant".
Be honest, what you're actually saying is, "this information isn't relevant TO ME."
http://www.marcfennell.com/stolen (Sorry I couldn't find the RSS feed)
https://www.abc.net.au/radionational/programs/stuff-the-brit...
I believe you're looking for the phrase "post hoc", because a posteriori refers to knowledge that can only be gained from application of a test of some sort, whether logical or scientific.
They're stating a fact, not asserting the fact justifies some behavior.
But sure, yes, if they had not been stolen, certain items may have been destroyed. OK. And, so what, what's your point beyond this trite truism?
What's the point of your weirdly aggressive hostility?