It is always dangerous to project our values and current opinions back upon thinkers of the past and hold them accountable to standards they could not have been aware of. This article does, I think, too much of that and also relies too much on secondary sources rather than the primary writings of these past thinkers. When we teach them today we tend to pass over their errors and emphasize the positive philosophical accomplishments achieved by them. With the possible exception of Heidegger, I really don't see that any of the mistaken views of these other past thinkers, especially Hume, Voltaire, and Kant have influenced current expressions of anti-Semitism or that they are particularly quoted by anti-Semites to justify their beliefs or that contemporary practitioners of the teaching of the history of philosophy are contributing to expressions of anti-Semitism as they are occurring today, which have their sources in contemporary political and ethnic conflicts we are all well aware of and have origins remote from the academy and the history of the Enlightenment.
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
No comments:
Post a Comment