“How should we evaluate people and actions in the past?”

Is it appropriate to use contemporary values and beliefs to judge past people and their actions? Should we evaluate them according to modern standards? If not, then by what standards should we evaluate their actions and character? By the standards and values of their time? Of their culture? Wouldn’t that mean that we could find slavery, in some circumstances, justified? Or military conquest? And, should we hold them responsible for what they did and did not know? It would seem that however one understands their past has major significance for their present: its self-understanding and its on-going actions. 

Join us in discussing this pressing social issue, in a discussion led by Dr. David Sprintzen, Emeritus Professor of Philosophy at Long Island University

This is the October installment of “Ethical Issues in OurTimes”: a product of the Ethical Humanist Society of Long Island. 

Thursday, October 6th, from 7-9pm on zoom at:  https://us02web.zoom.us/j/896985586