Episode 405: Nigel Biggar
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Reassessing the Moral Narrative of Colonialism and Morality
Historical, moral judgment can be a difficult thing to navigate in the context of colonialism. Have you ever pondered the role of truth in history and its impact on today's political culture?
Nigel Biggar is a p theologian, ethicist, and the author of several books. His latest work is titled, Colonialism: A Moral Reckoning.
Nigel and Greg discuss whether historical accuracy should bow to political objectives or stand resolute in the face of revisionist pressures when it comes to European culture and the history of Western civilization. They reflect on the delicate balance between preserving facts and fostering reconciliation in a politically charged world. Nigel also talks about the Ethics and Empire Project's ambitious undertaking to assess empires across cultures and times and offer a deeper view that challenges historical judgments.
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Episode Quotes:
Historians and their moral judgements about colonialism
05:22: The problem with activist historians making moral judgments is, as it were, historians make moral judgments about colonialism, slavery, etc. They do so with the mantle of the authority of historians, but their moral judgments, from my point of view, really have no more moral authority than that of an ordinary person.
Why do we value understanding other cultures more than understanding other time periods?
32:11: An indiscriminate blanket condemnation of another culture is usually wrong and unwise because it is rare that every culture has got it right and every culture has got it wrong. So, we need to be open to the possibility that other cultures sometimes have something to teach us.
Considering context in moral judgments
10:42: We can look back and judge certain instances where, let's say, European colonists were excessively violent, and the case of the Puritan attack on the Native American village of Mystic in Connecticut or Massachusetts in the 1600s. Fellow Puritans and Native Americans who were present were appalled at the excess and violence. So even at the time, people recognized excessive violence, but compared to our circumstances, theirs were very insecure and recourse to violent self-defense and often, of course, self-defense, will take the form of aggression. We need to put ourselves in those shoes before we judge what violence was excessive. So it's partly a matter of taking into account very different circumstances, and any good judgment, moral judgment, needs to do that, whether we're judging something that happened 200 years ago.
Is it possible to do history that is not presentist to some degree?
50:23: When it comes to making moral judgments about the past, which I think sometimes is perfectly appropriate, some people say, as you suggest, that one shouldn't use the norms of the present to judge the past. Well, when we're in the business of making judgments, we can't help doing that.