Lewis Carroll

[Bad Aim]

Should we judge a person based on our modern values?

Take Lewis Carroll, the writer of Alice in Wonderland and Alice Through the Looking Glass. There is no real evidence of him having a "fondness" for the real life Alice or her siblings. The real life Alice herself denied that Lewis Carroll was ever inappropriate to her. Yet we know that he took pictures of the young girl in, by today's standards, provocative poses.

But in Victorian England, photo's like that were actually very common and were not viewed as being wrong, even by legal standards.

So, should we have a negative view of Lewis Carroll for taking pictures of the young Alice in "street rags", posed to look like a prostitute? (He did not take nude photo's of the girl, though that was also common in that era)

Do we look down on Sigmund Freud and other psychologists (and medical doctors) for prescribing cocaine? Do we condemn the Medieval doctor's for prescribing blood letting for the Black Plague?

I guess what I am getting at is what I opened up with. Should we judge people from history based on our modern values or should we try to look at things through the lens of the time?

[Fake]

Oprindeligt skrevet af Cernunnos:

Should we judge a person based on our modern values?

No.

[Dracoco OwO]

I mean idk it's entirely possible he didn't think it was harmfull in any way.

[Angel]

Lewis Carroll was a photographer and was a friend of the Liddell family and took photos of people of all ages. There was nothing malicious about the photography (of Alice Liddell) despite claims of it being "awkward" by a few. He was simply doing what photographers do; take photos

[Raelic]

I can separate art from artists. Modern or classic.

[Vince ✟]

Umm.

Oprindeligt skrevet af Fake:

Oprindeligt skrevet af Cernunnos:

Should we judge a person based on our modern values?

No.

[Bamford]

Modern understanding is simple ignorance.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zMVkLLNrfGE

[40000Aggro]

I don't know, I have no opinion, I just google this all for fun to look for ways to make others look bad.

[Conejo]

The past is the past, and should be left there.

[Birds]

Should we judge people by modern values, or simply defer judgement until what we think is the modern value?

[Othobrithol]

Only to the extent that actions have current negative impacts. Carroll's photography, as you said, was common and therefore very inconsequential. Sigmund's fascination with cocaine is now just as inconsequential as his fascination with sex.

It becomes different when someone has a lasting negative impact on a group of people alive now. Genocide, slavery... that sort of thing. It doesn't matter if that was how things were back then.

It becomes an order of magnitude more cumbersome when someone is excessively celebrated (statues etc) and crossed one of those moral lines.

[Birds]

Celebrated individuals are reflections of the status quo. They cannot become celebrated without the world's implicit approval, only held up as figureheads. Whether the individual decides to celebrate them is outside of the scope of moral norms and values. It's an individual decision.

Plenty of people thought slavery was wrong and didn't participate. Many thought it was wrong and did.

[Neurotic Panda]

no.

its actually called presentism. I call it complete ignorance to fill your ego meter.

enjoy.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=schuzjknjYE

[[deleted]]

Oprindeligt skrevet af Vince:

Oprindeligt skrevet af Fake:

No.

Judging far enough back infers that things were exactly the same as today. Although human beings have always been "this way" and history may repeat itself, life was simply different far enough back. There was a time when one's 30's was considered geriatric and so there were marriages and even pregnancies at such drastically different ages than what is deemed normal or even healthy now. If someone fell ill, oftentimes it was life-threatening even though now, it would not be. So treatments or approaches to illness or disease in many cases were more severe. Many professions have changed throughout the centuries+ and the health fields are no different. As far as art, philosophy or any other creative field? None of that should be shocking, unless a person is unfamiliar with such fields in general.

[steven1mac]

His photography was fairly common for the time period he lived in.

[Birds]

A century earlier she would have been marriable and could have died in childbirth at age 11 or 12.