Thank you, Arjun Sambhi, for this important and profound question.
This is an important and profound question. Hitler did horrible acts, but did he think his actions were bad? To answer that question, we need to be honest about how we think about moral issues. Popular culture has instilled in us a simplistic vision of evil – the wicked witch, the evil stepmother, the comic book archvillain, the dark side of the force, and many more. These stereotypes have given us the idea that bad people know they are bad and enjoy being bad. From petty criminals to dictators, we assume that bad people knowingly and gleefully commit bad acts.
Philosophers have a different insight. The ancient Greek philosopher Plato thought that no one thinks his or her actions are bad. No one wants to be bad and everyone wants to do what they think is good, but they make mistakes out of ignorance. Plato’s idea has been widely interpreted by philosophers as meaning that no one knowingly does evil; rather, people do bad things only because they are ignorant of the badness of their actions. If they knew an action was bad, they wouldn’t do it. If we taught people what was good and what was bad, they would always do what was good.
I hear you scoff, and I don’t blame you. It is wishful thinking to believe that morality is as simple as a matter of learned intelligence. As soon as your parents told you not to do something, you never did it – right? As for Hitler, it is difficult to believe that it was only because he didn’t know it was bad that he ordered all of that violence and hate. Philosopher William of Ockham rejected the idea that to know the good is to do the good. He said that people act on the basis of either their intellect or their will. Just as we as children willingly disobeyed and did things that we knew were bad, so too may people exercise their free will to choose to do bad things.
That doesn’t mean that Hitler knew he was a bad person. Hitler didn’t think that what he did was bad. That’s the other part of what Plato said that I think is underrated. Everyone wants to do what they think is good. Am I saying that Hitler thought what he was doing was good? Yes, I am.
Think about a terrorist committing mass murder. Terrorists act from their belief in a cause that they think is good. They justify their violence as serving a greater good. The same is true for the revolutionaries and the loyalist soldiers fighting the revolutionaries. They commit bad acts because they think they are doing good.
This can be understood via utilitarianism, which says that if the good consequences of an action outweigh the bad consequences, then it is a good action. So, if you killed a thousand people, but that mass murder would ultimately do more good than harm, then it would be a morally defensible action. Sounds horrible, but in far less dramatic ways, that is how we reason about moral choices all the time. We cheat a little here and there because we like the benefits that come from it.
Hitler was typical in that he believed that acts are justifiable if they bring good results. We can look at his actions as being driven by his desire to do good for himself and those he thought deserved it: the so-called superior German race. He “knew” he was a good person defending the superior Germans against their enemies. Hitler referred to the Jews as a disease infecting the body of the German people, and what do you do with a disease? You cut it out.
Hitler’s reasoning was a steaming pile of bullshit, but the point remains that Hitler didn’t think he was a bad man. He and other Nazis thought that they were giving the world a solution to the “Jewish problem.” Hitler knew what he was doing, and he did it willingly, but we must still condemn him as an evil person.
What do you think? Did Hitler think he was the good guy? Let us know in the comments.
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Image: Adolf Hitler showing off his legs (source)
I’ve taught university philosophy since 1998, including courses in history of philosophy, ethics, government and politics, religion, and multidisciplinary topics. My Ph.D. in philosophy is from the University of Essex. My academic research in social and political philosophy is on applying normative and applied ethical issues to increase understanding of social injustices and the responses to them. I explore how recognition theory and phenomenology can help us understand personhood, identity, injustice, social conflict, and social justice. Today, I teach part-time to devote more time to research and writing.
Hello, Douglas. Medium tempted me with your essay claiming to abolish “The Problem of Evil,” but as I am not a member I chose to explore your other work. Having seen your “dig deeper” tagline, I’m a bit surprised by your binary approach to this question. I agree that, in general, terrorists believe they are doing good. I believe it because there’s empirical research to justify that belief. But Hitler? A far more complicated case. Here’s someone who, psychologically, is more like Donald Trump: a narcissist and perennial liar. You cannot dig deeper into either man without introducing the concept of rationalization, nor can you avoid the neuro-psychological fact that personalities are not fully integrated, consistent wholes. Brains have nonverbal impulsivity as well as narrative centers that try to make sense of behavior retrospectively. In persons who have training and a commitment to rational, self-critical evaluation, a good/bad assessment of behavior will likely produce mixed results. In a narcissist, blame will never find a perch — at least not in public. I intuitively believe that someone like Trump knows that he’s a liar and a fraud (he surely knows, for example, that he’s not at all pious). Hitler, whose personality I know much less well, surely realized that he was engaging in many kinds of reprehensible behavior. The evidence for this lies in his vision of a thousand-year Reich — a classic instance of ends justifying means. In conclusion, it seems to me that your conclusion is a bit too simplistic. Cheers, Clay
Hhaaaa haaa… U compared hitler to trump? Like Kennedy to Tucumsuh. Regan to Neoleon.