[lit-ideas] Re: 21. century European anti-Semitism
- From: Omar Kusturica <omarkusto@xxxxxxxxx>
- To: lit-ideas@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
- Date: Tue, 20 Apr 2004 09:52:18 -0700 (PDT)
--- Phil Enns <phil.enns@xxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
> Omar Kusturica points out the facts that early
> Christians held to a
> position of non-violence when they were in a
> minority position and that
> this changed when they gained political power. What
> Omar does not do is
> show that the gain in political power was the cause
> of the change. I
> believe the relevant fallacy is that of post hoc,
> ergo propter hoc.
*I tend to follow the Humean approach to casuality
which holds, roughly, that matters of causality are
not to be settled by logical analysis. It follows that
the arguments about causality are probabilistic and
should not be expected to follow the form of rigid
logical demonstration. The talk about logical
fallacies is then not much use. If one event follows
the other in time, the chances are that there is a
causal relationship between them. If the same pattern
occurs frequently, and the example of Hindutwa
suggested that it does, this increases the chances. I
think that I will leave it at this without purporting
to have provided a logical demonstration.
The
> point of my post was to note that the commitment to
> non-violence was not
> tactical (or should that be strategic?) but arose
> from deeply held
> beliefs. Furthermore, the grounds for those beliefs
> in non-violence lay
> not in pragmatic political and social
> considerations, but in the very
> identity of Christianity so that there have always
> been Christians who
> held to a position of non-violence.
*I am not sure what is meant by "the very identity of
Christianity." If that referes to conformity to
Christ's original message (but does the true identity
of Christianity correspond to that ? It would seem
that, to believe this, we might have to subscribe to
that message itself), we may analyse the historical
situation in which that message itself originated. It
originated among a people who were themselves
subjugated and relatively powerless, and then it was
directed seemingly to the poor, the sick, the socially
ostracized and the disenfranchised among them. So it
is not surprising to find that it incorporated the
idea of non-violence, or non-violent resistance to put
it blantly.
O.K.
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