"Fallacies do not cease to be fallacies because they become fashions."
A timeless bit of wisdom from Chesterton.
It reminded me of something that came up on the philosophy exam this semester. After finishing the first two essays, I perused the ten questions at the bottom of the paper. Aside from the required essays, which I had just completed, we had to pick one of the other topics to write on. One jumped out at me as something that would be interesting (and not only fairly easy) to write about. Aristotle presents the opinion of others:
"All men aim at the apparent good, but have no control over the appearance."
This opinion he refutes by arguing that every man really does have a substantial amount of control about what he believes to be and chooses as good. He argues this from the nature of virtue as a habit and such. But his post isn't specifically about Aristotle's refutation of the false opinion. What struck me on that rainy Friday morning was that this idea has never died. It is, in fact, alive and well in society today.
How many times have you heard this:
"Don't blame me! It wasn't my fault!"
Fingers are pointed at parents, upbringing, culture, work -- anything to avoid the harsh reality of responsibility, guilty, and culpability. No one wants to accept that they might have done something wrong.
Funny to think that we have the same fallacious tendencies that Aristotle dealt with in ancient Greece. But not really that funny. After all, human nature hasn't changed...
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