@article{1481072,
      recid = {1481072},
      author = {Scarre, Geoffrey,},
      title = {Judging the past : ethics, history and memory /},
      pages = {1 online resource (x, 240 pages.)},
      abstract = {This book presents an extended argument for the thesis  that people of the present day are not debarred in  principle from passing moral judgement on people who lived  in former days, notwithstanding the inevitable differences  in social and cultural circumstances that separate us. Some  philosophers argue that because we can see things only from  our own peculiar historical situation, we lack a  sufficiently objective vantage point from which to appraise  past people and their acts. If they are correct, then the  judgements passed by twenty-first-century people must  inevitably be biased and irrelevant, grounded on moral  standards that would have seemed alien in that 'foreign  country' of the past. This book challenges this  relativistic position, contending that it seriously  underestimates our ability to engage imaginatively with  people who, however much their lifestyles may have differed  from our own, were our fellow human beings, endowed with  the same basic instincts, aversions, desires and  aspirations. Taking a stand on a naturalistic theory of  human beings, coupled with a Kantian conception of the  equal worth of all human members of the Kingdom of Ends,  Scarre argues that historical moral judgements can be  sensitive to circumstances, fitting and fair, and untainted  by anachronism. The discussion ends by examining the  implications of this position for the practice of  historians and for the ethics of memory and commemoration.  Geoffrey Scarre is Professor Emeritus of Philosophy at  Durham University, UK, where he has taught and published  extensively in moral philosophy and applied ethics for more  than three decades. In recent years he has focused  particularly on the topics of death and aging,  cultural-heritage ethics, and on the ethics of archaeology.  His six monographs include Utilitarianism (1996), Death  (2007) and On Courage (2010). He has also co-edited The  Ethics of Archaeology (2006) and Appropriating the Past  (2013), and edited The Palgrave Handbook of the Philosophy  of Aging (2013).},
      url = {http://library.usi.edu/record/1481072},
      doi = {https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-34511-1},
}