The Evil Competition: Nazis and Communists

(I am reposting this from my blog because I thought folks here might be interested.)

Stephen Browne has an interesting post , distributed as a column by The Atlasphere, that wonders why Nazis are the epitome of evil while the Soviets and Communist Chinese have body counts that are orders of magnitude larger. Hitler is the ultimate way to call some one evil, but Stalin, Lenin, or Mao are not. This is something that I have wondered myself. I am disgusted by the college students I see wearing t-shirts with Che, Mao, or Lenin on them. Are they just stupid and ignorant or something much worse?

I posted a comment to Stephen Browne's blog along the following lines (I forgot to copy and paste it and the comment is awaiting approval, so I am rewriting from memory).

I wonder if part of the reason that the Nazis are seen as worse, as more evil, than the Soviets, etc., is the systematic, methodical plan to kill entire races of people. The communists had their camps and mass executions, but they generally only murdered their perceived enemies and those that were deemed beyond 'rehabilitation' or 'reeducation'. They didn't target, to my knowledge, people solely because they were Jewish, gay, gypsie, etc.

Another aspect of this is that the Nazis had no qualms about murdering children. They actively targeted and killed children of all ages. (1.5 million Jewish children were murdered by the Nazi's during the Shoah). To my knowledge, the communists usually didn't target children for execution. (not to imply that children weren't murdered by the Soviets/Chinese/etc.)

I think for many people in comparing the Nazis with the Soviets/Chinese/etc. considerations of intentions and goals are trumping the body counts.

Ultimately, both the Nazis and Communists were and are evil. There is a certain point where trying to make distinctions like "more evil" no longer makes sense.

Virginia Tech Graduate Philosophy Conference 2007

This was recently forward to the ASU graduate students.

Call for Papers

on the conference topic of

The Philosophy of Mind


The Virginia Tech Graduate Philosophy Club and Philosophy Department invite submissions from current or upcoming graduate students to be considered for inclusion in our conference on Philosophy of Mind. This topic is broadly construed, and we welcome all papers that include and utilize of a conception of mind or its features in order to make advances in any philosophical field.

Submissions are due September 17th, 2007, and must meet the following guidelines:

Prepare a paper and cover letter as separate documents in Word, OpenOffice, or PDF format; send these together to charwood@vt.edu .

The cover letter must include the paper title, as well as your name, academic status, university affiliation, and contact information (including email).

The paper must be prepared for blind review (no name or identifying content); it must also include the title and a short abstract.

The content of the paper must fit within a 25-30 minute presentation. Alternative-format presentations that extend beyond paper readings are encouraged, but not required.

So why are we doing this, again?

For any of us who think they might be writing something original or new in their thesis/dissertation:

Online Philosophy Conference

Anyone "go" to this conference? What do you think of the format?

The second annual Online Philosophy Conference (OPC2) is now in its second week. Please distribute this information (e.g., forward this email) as widely as possible to your colleagues and students, so that they can take advantage of this great opportunity to attend a high-quality philosophy conference for free. The conference website is here: http://experimentalphilosophy.typepad.com/2nd_annual_online_philoso/

There are two videotaped keynote addresses, one by Ernie Sosa and one by Jeff McMahan, and papers presented by (last week) Delia Graf, Shaun Nichols, Meredith Williams, and Juan Comesana, and (this week) Jonathan Dancy, Gillian Russell, Derk Pereboom, John Fischer, and Caspar Hare. Each paper includes commentary by one or two philosophers and then a comment thread open to the general audience, with presenters responding online.

We hope that you will participate in the conference and that you enjoy it!

Sincerely,
Thomas Nadelhoffer and Eddy Nahmias
OPC2 Organizers

Rockford Bound

I am very pleased to announce that I have been offered and have accepted the job at Rockford College. Rockford is a small, private liberal arts college in Rockford, Illinois. It's about 90 miles NNW of Chicago.

I'll be teaching a 4-4 load from a mix of different classes. The fall slate is Intro to Philosophy and upper-division sections of Ethical Theory and Business Ethics.

Update (5/2/07 at 6:11 PM): Rockford has posted this flyer announcing the appointment.