[lit-ideas] Whose Job Is It Anyway?
- From: Jlsperanza@xxxxxxx
- To: lit-ideas@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
- Date: Tue, 25 May 2010 20:27:55 EDT
Befehl ist Befehl
In a message dated 5/25/2010 8:11:17 P.M., rpaul@xxxxxxxx writes:
He said, many times, according to all reports, 'I was only following
orders.' Even if he did say. 'an order is an order,' he did not just say that.
How this alleged tautology got into the discussion escapes me.
---
But he was speaking GERMAN! Surely, "I was only following orders", or "I
was JUST following order", or "whatever" seems like an Englishman's
expression.
Recall Arendt on Englishmen's role there: null!
Surely he spoke in German -- the phrase, as per header, occurs in the wiki
entry:
This is Arendt, who was there, on p. 271 of her book:
". . . for Israel the only unprecedented feature of the trial was that, for
the first time (since the year 70, when Jerusalem was destroyed by the
Romans), Jews were able to sit in judgment on crimes committed against their
own people, that, for the first time, they did not need to appeal to others
for protection and justice, or fall back upon the compromised phraseology
of the rights of man
-- rights which, as no one knew better than they, were claimed only by
people who were too weak to defend their 'rights of Englishmen' and to enforce
their own laws."
---
So perhaps C. Bruce etc., can explain what words in German he used. These
things are very idiomatic, and 'only' DOES occur in both:
"I was only doing my job"
"I was only following orders"
The implicature of 'only' should be studied GENERALLY:
"only p"
----
And surely 'only' cannot be THAT otiose.
"I was only doing my job" makes sense if it's charity or amateur -- and
then it's not a job.
Imagine the time when Greece was a country of slaves. Would you say a
'slave' was only doing her job?
FIRST, you need free will. This is NOT the case in 'service professions',
or even army.
----
Note that a philosopher would NEVER, could never, will never, shall never,
may never, can never, say "I was only doing my job".
!
Unless we mean what Grice thought was Joseph's (the Oxford tutor) job in
Oxford, "to practice the art of midwifery, and strangle error at birth!"
J. L. S., Bordighera
--- The Swimming-Pool Librarian, etc.
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