Should we judge historic figures by modern standards?

historical facts are fact but their interpretation changes in time as far as i remember there was an economist who even earned Nobel price by proving that slavery was stable economic system and after that he had to deal with something similar to Santanche of course you judge everything by your standards, even history slaves were well taken care of (with few exceptions, on which is based all you talk about); the smart ones were even sent to school by their masters but i think more important is that there is a tendency to attack everything American - history, origins, foundation, religion, policy, way of making business, way of life...

Many of our Founding Fathers opposed slavery and referred to it as the Peculiar Condition. Regardless, truth is what it is, and anyone afraid of the truth has something to hide. Slavery was an unfortunate fact just as the fact that Muhammad was a pedophile. Neither fact can be changed or denied.

I agree with the majority of your respondents. I believe that we should judge based on the times it happened in. "Everybody is doing it" is not an excuse, rather it is a reason. We have grown over the years and do things differently now. How do we know that in 300 years we wont be doing more vile things? Or how about in 100 years, we never have to have human contact. Will the people of the future think it was awful having to actually touch another human?

Hi Taskr36, I think that one should be really cautious when threading on religious feelings. I am not in favour of paedophilia and I am not certainly going to approve marriage of children. To be honest I don't know the social atmosphere around Mohammed's era. Were children marriage socially accepted? If yes it sheds light on Mohammed's marriage to a six year old child. I think its hard to criticize someone many years later. You have to understand his motives, the society in which he lived in, what was his norm. I am not a muslim and I don't have the least intention to defend Islam or Mohammed. There are many things which I fail to understand. For example in Greek societies, young boys were kept as lovers. It was the norm as if one' says he has a mistress nowadays. Looking at past cultures/societies, such things look strange and we condemn them.

I am not sufficiently familiar with the time and place in which Mohamed lived to determine whether or not marrying at age 9 was considered normal. I am familiar enough with U.S. history to say that the idea that slavery was an atrocity incompatible with moral behavior since the Quakers put the idea forward in the late 1600s. I am familiar enough with U.S. history to say that there was an active abolitionist movement in the 1700s. I assert that it is therefore perfectly legitimate to note that those Founders who enslaved others failed to live up to their own principles as outlined in the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution. They committed and perpetuated an atrocity and they knew it. This does not negate the fact that they did accomplish good things as well, but neither do their successes negate their failures. It is simply not the case that the atrocious nature of slavery was an unknown concept at the time of the American Revolution.

Well. I'm pretty sure that marrying at such a young age was pretty common practice, not just in that part of the world, but all over. Life expectancy was MUCH shorter then. So I don't think it is fair to call Muhammad a pedophile. If men were doing this same thing today, when people are living into their 80's and 90's, they are pedophiles. As for the slavery thing...I don't know. It was a mistake. A horrible error in judgement. That said, one of the "accomplishments" of our founding fathers is that they set up our government to be able to change laws and right wrongs. They knew that they weren't perfect, and that they were making some mistakes. So they gave us a way to fix those errors so that we wouldn't continue to do wrong. It doesn't make up for the wrongs of slavery. Nothing can. But it is something.

No, it's not appropriate because standards of acceptability change over time. What was once acceptable in the eyes of society can become unacceptable as the needs and opinions of the society change. Before this country became industrialized children routinely quit school to work on the family farm, it used to be acceptable for girls to marry well before the age of 16. It's not okay to judge either example you gave by today's standards.

I think we should present history in its context and shouldn't judge it by modern standards. The founding fathers did a lot of great things regardless of whether or not they owned slaves. It was the norm at the time and it wasn't really considered wrong by the majority of people, so should we even bring it up? I think referring to Muhammad as a pedophile is pretty low, too. Young girls were often married off at that age, sometimes to kids their age and sometimes to really old men. They didn't have a legal age where you became an adult, so once again why should we bring it up?