On Wed, 23 Jul 2003 08:18:15 -0400 Brian Siano <siano at mail.med.upenn.edu>
writes:
> On Wed, 23 Jul 2003 03:48:37 -0400, Chris Doss
> <itschris13 at hotmail.com>
> wrote:
>
> > Stalin was highly rational. A lunatic does not work his way up
> from low-
> > life gangster to head of the Bolshevik Party. A lunatic does not
> outfox
> > all of the Old Bolsheviks. That requires long-term planning,
> self-control
> > and discipline.
>
> So you're basically saying that, if someone becomes the supreme head
> of
> state, they are _ipso facto_ not a lunatic. Rather, they are highly
> rational, disciplined long-term planners-- just the qualities one
> would
> want in a leader.
I think it can be argued that someone like Stalin who managed to raise himself into the ranks of the top leadership of the Bolsheviks and the Soviet regime and did so by outfoxing some of the canniest political minds in Russia and the Soviet Union (i.e. Trotsky, Bukharin) was not likely to have been insane at that time. But rather must have been fairly rational, able to engage in long term planning, and was certainly capable of biding his time.
>
> >> I'll leave the clinical diagnosis to someone trained w/ a DSM
> handy. How
> >> about evil on a par w/ AH? Someone who could sign off on
> imprisoning the
> >> ten yr. old son of Kamenev, 4 yrs. after his Dad was assasinated.
> Who
> >> killed more leaders of the German and Polish Communist Party than
> AH?
> >
> > Evil is a metaphysical and theological category. It does not
> belong in
> > historical analysis.
>
> Why not? Evil's a very useful term. Can't really make moral
> distinctions
> without some notion of evil.
The term evil is uselful for theologians, moral philosophers, and metaphysicians but I fail to see its utility for social scientists, behavioral scientists or scientific historians. When people use it in historical analysis, the concept tends to act as an obstacle to further inquiry. Thus, as has already been pointed out when people label Stalin "evil" they tend not to pursue any sort of a deeper causal analysis into the phenomenon of Stalinism. Stalin killed lots of people because he was "evil", and "evil" people tend to do that sort of thing, no further analysis being required. This tends to support a "great man" view of historuy (or perhaps in this case an "evil man" view of history).
>
> > For a dictator to wipe out his enemies and those connected with
> them is
> > supremely rational.
>
> Okay, now they are highly rational, disciplined long-term planners
> who
> don't scruple at mass murder. Gotcha.
In certain political environments, a willingness to commit mass murder may be highly rational. That is something that the folk here who talk about evil as some sort of an explanatory category seem to have great difficult in understanding. Somebody has already suggested that Stalin might be comparable to the Roman emperor Tiberius who likewise seems to have been quite willing to commit mass murder for the sake of preserving the Empire and his own hold on power but who seems to have been quite a rational person who was a competent administrator.
As I recall the British historian E.H. Carr discusssed these issues in his book *What is HistorY?* and made quite a compelling case against the invoking of moral categories like evil as explanatory constructs.
Jim F.
>
>
>
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