Re, Wow! Re: Marx and Woman (was Re: Gender & Free Speech)

Carrol Cox cbcox at ilstu.edu
Thu Mar 23 10:27:55 PST 2000


Brad De Long wrote:


> >
> >Would it have been a politically intelligent thing for a group of socialists
> in 1938 to have assassinated Hitler? Probably not.
>
> >
> >Carrol
>
> Wow!!

Not really. The burden the proposition carries is to head off two, perhaps three, kinds of debate: a) what I would call metaphysical moralism (and I guess Justin calls moral realism), b) legalistic arguments, and c) individualist arguments (i.e. arguments that assume, as did Milton, Hobbes, Spinoza, Kant,and neoclassical economists, the existence of what Marx called the "abstract -- isolated -- individual." I don't know, really, whether it would have been "politically wise" or not. What I do know is that I don't like such questions as "What would 'you' ("I," etc) have done had you been alive in 1938?" or "Would it have been moral to assassinate Hitler?" The first question is incoherent, the second metaphysical (i.e., religious).

Carrol



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