Should We Love and Value People Who Have Done Evil?

How should we think and feel about others? Should we love and value all others? All the time? Even if they have done evil? Why? How?

Human beings are born ignorant and so with a proclivity for making mistakes. We are also born with an early facility for sociability and the tendency to create and adopt moral standards, such as the golden rule, that guide us to value, respect, and love others at all times.

However, for many of us, there are people we find hard to value let alone love. Are our impediments to loving and valuing others justified? Should we love and value everyone, even those who have done evil?

Thomas Jefferson wrote, "Every human being must be viewed, according to what it is good for; for none of us, no not one, is perfect; and were we to love none who had imperfections, this world would be a desert for our love."

Should we value and love everyone for what they are good for? Despite any misbehavior they might have done? Or should we love others unconditionally?

In 1931, Mahatma Gandhi wrote "Freedom is not worth having if it does not include the freedom to make mistakes." Is the freedom to make mistakes an important virtue? So should we value even those people whose mistakes were terrible or even atrocious?

Do we have an ethical obligation to love or at least value all others? Why? Why not?

How should we assess the value of a human being?

Should we distinguish the good from the bad that someone has done: should we love and value the good while reproaching and condemning the bad? Can our minds simultaneously hold these two opposite judgments of the same person? What alternatives are there?

This is a joint event, sponsored by the Greater Philadelphia Thinking Society and the Philadelphia Ethical Society and hosted by CJ Fearnley of the Thinking Society and Hugh Taft-Morales of the Ethical Society. Free and open to all. There will be complementary light refreshments.

Recently, I (CJ Fearnley) struggled with the value of Martin Heidegger (1889–1976). He has been widely heralded as one of the greatest thinkers of the 20th century. He was also a member of the Nazi party until the day it was dissolved, he never apologized for his politics, and in a yearlong period of Nazi fanaticism (1933-1934) he helped legitimize the "Third Reich" and harmed the lives and careers of many Jews through his University position.

Should we love and value and carefully consider the thinking of someone like Heidegger who behaved so shamefully?

Since so many of Heidegger's contributions were extraordinarily good, how can we let his bad actions outshine his great contributions? Yet several people in our group let his Nazi and antisemitic sympathies and actions block their appreciation of his contributions. Should we so heedlessly allow past mistakes to eclipse present value?

First Round Questions: Should We Love and Value People Who Have Done Evil?

• Should we adopt Thomas Jefferson's morality to value people for what they are good for as in his quote "Every human being must be viewed, according to what it is good for; for none of us, no not one, is perfect; and were we to love none who had imperfections, this world would be a desert for our love"?

• Should we conditionally or unconditionally value and even love those who have done evil? What about Heidegger, ex-cons, sex offenders, Jeffrey Dahmer, or even Hitler?

• Do we have an ethical obligation to love or at least value all others? Why? Why not?

Second Round Questions: How should we value a human being who has done evil?

• Should we value people for what they are good for? Find gratitude for them? Love them unconditionally?

• Given Gandhi's quote "Freedom is not worth having if it does not include the freedom to make mistakes", should we value everyone despite their most egregious mistakes on the principle of freedom?

• For those whose mistakes were terrible or even atrocious, should we both love and value the good they have done and reproach and condemn the bad they have done? How?

• How else should we value those who have made really bad mistakes?