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Politics : Politics for Pros- moderated

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To: Lane3 who wrote (100055)	2/14/2005 8:02:32 PM
From: TimF	of 793782

And of course utilitarianism (whether or not it is called altruism) can be used as part of an argument to justify many different things including some actions that are quite horrible, but its not utilitarianism (or altruism) itself that causes these things, or even truly justifies them. The Nazis (for example) are responsible for their own horrible actions. When they tried to justify their actions they would try to justify them in terms of principles that might be accepted by a lot of people. If they wanted to argue that their atrocities where justified because they helped achieve the greater good for Germany as a whole, someone could respond to them either with an anti-utilitarian argument or with an argument about how their aims and their means do not maximize utilitarian benefit (or both). If they couldn't overcome your logic, they could shoot you, or shout you down, or ignore you, or come up with a different justification. The existence of the concept of utilitarianism, or that of altruism, didn't cause the atrocities to happen, and eliminating those concepts, or moral arguments based on them would not have prevented the atrocities of the Nazis or other similarly evil groups. Tim

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