What's wrong with judging history based on modern standards? If a historical figure held values closer to ours...

Progress is a myth. Like the tooth fairy or eskimos.

>everything that isn't modern liberalism is morally wrong

Are you saying peopele in 2000BC are on the same level of progress as us now?

Because you learn from failures and it's a lot easier to study other past failures to learn how to not do them yourself than to assume we know what's right when history always, ALWAYS repeats itself.

technological progress =/= (((social progress)))

progress towards what exactly?

History is not Civ.

I have had this argument many times with my friend. She is insistent that had she been plopped into an ancient culture she would have had similar morals regarding things like slavery, women's rights, homosexuality, etc. oooooook

because they are revisionists who are wrong about what had an impact on what and let their emotions cloud their eagles on to mt mordor

(You)

>we should challenge all our preconceptions
>except feminism which is a good, a positive good

Your not a cuck, you wouldn't get it.

Oh wait...

>john green
>actually has a spine

Because then we begin to treat morality as something objective. It is necessary to separate the morals and accomplishments of the people we celebrate. Maybe Martin Luther King Jr. didn't think gays should marry? What would his opinion be on trans people? Does that mean tear down the statues, museums, and ignore everything he fought for and accomplished? What if in 150 years, everyone is vegan and the general consensus is that eating meat was immoral akin to killing tribals? Should all the accomplishments of all meat eaters be ignored and forgotten because of the ever changing morality of people/societies? It's ridiculous.

It's more than that. They're implying morals are objective to begin with.

It triggers people that idolize those figures that are considered monsters and bad by others.

This is usually followed by them being hypocrites and proceeding to morally judge other groups they dislike

morals are objective by definition, you dunces.

You can't have morality without moral judgements. You can't make moral judgements exclusively on the present. Without moral wisdom you will be ignorant of history's meaning

This made me sad

>What's wrong with judging history based on modern standards?
It's as absurd as judging current events based on historical standards.

If you asked someone what they thought of President Obama and they said that he was a filthy Moorish invader who should be burned at the stake for following the Protestant heresy, you wouldn't think that was a serious political position, would you?

hot

>If you asked someone what they thought of President Obama and they said that he was a filthy Moorish invader who should be burned at the stake for following the Protestant heresy, you wouldn't think that was a serious political position, would you?

I would.

>the western democracies will fall to dictatorship within 100 years because of this you

Why didnt you help him?

This kind of answer is a perfect example of someone who really can't understand the function of history. Please stop posting this kind of vague 'arguments' and read, perhaps, something related to the 'philosophy of history'. Seriously m8, try to repeal your ignorance.

morals dont exist in the first place and if they did i doubt the ones we have now are somehow the right ones out of all times

>le romans killed jesus jews had nothing to do with it meme

By that logic, in the far future we'll be much closer to moral truth. Judging by history, moral standards will be very different in the far future. Since or moral standards must be wrong and we're unable to know the moral standards of the far future, we shouldn't make moral judgements on history or even contemporary times.

Finding out the truth.

user, you gotta remember where you're posting.

Who gives a shit about the future? As long I as I get to live in peace, I don't care what happens after I'm dead. That's for our children to worry about. The only thing that matters is my life right now, and how much better it is than everything else that came before.

...

btw historical figures outside the west like the mongols were all good

That's what religions do

Best answer ITT, even if it isn't the only answer, because OP's question is such garbage.

BECAUSE THERE IS A DIFFERENCE BETWEEN PRAGMATIC ISM AND ETHICS. LOUD NOISES!

Nothing, except that what's important isn't holding historical figures to modern standards of morality, but rather holding them to whatever is the very best standard of morality one can come up with. Historical figures who committed atrocities should absolutely be judged as moral scoundrels on that basis.

The bronze age was the height of mankind and everything after it has been the dark age there is no denying this.

>Whigs actually believe this
Lmfao

based

Shit b8.

It's easy to judge from the high horse provided for you by more eloquent and intelligent people.

If you judge a historical figure by modern standards understanding their motivations is impossible.

Because Johnyboy’s historiography is all screwed up. Green decides that he’s going to criticize Ancient Greece as though the 21st century jewish-anglo world he inhabits is a direct descendent of Ancient Greece. News Flash: the Western world, which masochist like Green depise so much, is NOT fucking direct continuation of Greece. Stop harassing Greek people with your faggotry like it’s personal.

Because you wouldn't have the context to understand how their lives worked, why people did the things they did.
If you had a modern lens, and you tried to understand Confucius (for example), you'd probably think he was a dick for being so ethnocentric and classist.

Things like "Honour" were a completely different concept back then. There was an "Honourable death" or even an "Honorable suicide". Honour was a way of preventing people from plugging themselves into whatever society they were thrown into; if you wanted to be respected, you had to have honour; they ought to know who your father was, where you're from, your wealth, your relationship status; everything was important to establish trust.

Today, our laws and law enforcement absolve us of needing to be trustworthy people; the only thing expected of us is to be law-abiding. Honour plays less of a role in our society.

When Achilles, a lowly soldier, was honoured more than Agamemnon, even though Agamemnon was royalty, it helps to understand how this could have happened; that it's not because a "royal" is without honour, but because Agamemnon's role cost more honour than the value of the monarchy in general, because the monarchy had no moral or honourable appeal. Achilles, in his own right, was more of a king than Agamemnon.

there is no good or bad. how can we judge anyone when we are all shaped by circumstanses we couldnt affect?

actually a smart frogposter... huh...

these are pretty good answers: , .
what i would say is: the nature of an action depends on the entirety of a situation.
>example: i tell my roommate to go open the door for the pizza guy. in one case it's the pizza guy, in another case it's a serial killer i know is there to kill whoever opens the door.
this isn't even relativism.
if you live in an ancient "barbaric" society and have an epiphany that you should be a pious pacifist vegan feminist decrying your society's whole way of existing, like a modern radical moralist, that has an entirely different character than it does today.
>you're arrogantly assuming your own ideas are superior to literally everyone around you plus the highest sources of wisdom around (religion, tradition, law)
>you're setting yourself up to be ridiculed, ostracized, maybe killed
>you're damaging valuable normal relations like friends and family
>you're potentially upsetting social structures necessary for the society to function
that's not a good way to live, it's actually insane.

So a 7th century islamic society is not "barbaric" by their standards at their time?

"by their standards" isn't even part of it
the point is just that what might seem like the same action considered in isolation is actually a vastly different action considered in its full context
that doesn't mean no society can ever be barbaric, and it doesn't mean no society can be criticized morally
but it does mean that once you understand a barbaric society, you realize each person may have had good reason to be barbaric