Attempting to debunk "man / product of his time" argument

[sasha_feather]

Saving my tweets on this as I think it through.

The "Man of his time" argument assumes that everyone in that time period felt the same way. Erases nuance and difference.

It also erases experiences of dissents and marginalized people. Those people existed even if history has forgotten them. (For example: I learned from Rachel Maddow tonight that Vince Lombardi was pro-gay and had a gay brother. He was a famous football coach that lived from 1913-1970).

Me and my friends don't hold the prevailing views of mainstream society. I don't think of us as "products of our time."

This argument also assumes that society progresses forward thru time, that people in the past were worse. Which is not true. (History does not go forward in a upward line. It's more like a sine wave maybe.)

We are all influenced by our time and society, but we can all think critically and listen to our consciences re right and wrong.

Saying that someone was "a product of their time" is usually just apologism for their bad behaviors.

If something is wrong today, it was wrong 100 years ago. (Ethical behaviors, possibly, have some standards across societies and times, even if morals are relative. Have to think on this more.)

Just because people in power endorsed it, doesn't make it OK for everyone else in society to do so.

Comments

[hunningham]

Also, "product of his/her time" is always used to excuse the nasty reactionary behaviour. Racism, anti-woman, homophobic behaviour and attitudes are explained away. But you never get anyone saying "product of their time - that's why they were a suffragette / communist / socialist / pacifist".

[sasha_feather]

Exactly! Great point.

[naraht]

Hmmm. I would prefer to say that all of us, you and I included, are products of our time - the culture of social justice activism via social media seems distinctively twenty-first century to me, even though it's hardly what you might call "mainstream culture."

The argument "he was a product of his time" is toxic 95% of the time, but I would say it's equally wrong (if not perhaps equally toxic) to judge people in the past as having been bad people if their views didn't match up to the yardstick of twenty-first century progressivism. Because I for one doubt that my views would have been exactly the same if I had lived a hundred years ago, to say nothing of further in the past.

It seems to me that you have to view an individual person's ideology within the context of the range of ideologies and mental models available to them in their period. So I'm not particularly surprised that someone born in 1913 could be pro-gay - history hasn't forgotten people like that at all, although popular knowledge of that history may not be up to scratch. I wouldn't be surprised to find British people arguing for women's suffrage in 1850, but if that's your definition of critical thinking and conscience then you're going to be very disappointed in 1750, or even in 1800 with the possible exception of Mary Wollstonecraft. There's a danger in holding out a very groundbreaking thinker like Wollstonecraft and saying "see, someone thought this, therefore everyone in the period could/would have thought this if they were ethical or conscientious people." I think of myself as a decently progressive person and my views are certainly "ahead" of mainstream society in most areas, but I don't flatter myself that I have the personal strength and distinctive thinking of a Wollstonecraft. I would have been a suffragette and a socialist in 1900, absolutely - maybe even in 1850. But there's really very little chance that I would have been waving those banners in 1750, and I don't find it problematic to accept that.

[oursin]

(Via dwcircle) And sometimes there's the Wilberforce Problem of contradictions: yay for his efforts antislavery, boo for his record on UK working class suffering the Industrial Revolution (and people pointed that disjunct at the time).

[spiralsheep]

(Also here via dwircle) Wilberforce wasn't as "anti-slavery" as you might have been taught. Let's hear it for the women, such as Elizabeth Heyrick:

http://spartacus-educational.com/REheyrick.htm

/it's always more complicated

[oursin]

Well, yes, plus the way individuals of that era could be antislavery but still racist in their basic assumptions.

[eos_joy]

Agreed!

I have had this debate more than once as well. You cannot say it is 'alright' for someone to be racist or violent because they were a 'product of their time'. How then do you explain that only a small percent of the population 'owned slaves' even at the height of slavery? It was just because people 'couldn't afford it' - it was because there were people opposed to the practice since antiquity. How about 'native civilizations' and cultures that were matriarchal versus so many that were patriarchal? What about incest and rape and murder? Excuses made by 'those in power' do not excuse the attitudes and behaviors, even if they help us to understand them. While it's hard to say 'I'd always think/feel this way' it is equally hard to say 'Oh, they are a product of their time' and have it sit well.

I don't say we condemn everyone and anyone who ever made a mistake or had a biased or ignorant viewpoint - but you cannot 'excuse' them as if it was completely 'ok' either.

...maybe? *>.<* This is a tricky debate sometimes. *sigh*

[owlectomy]

I agree with a lot of what you have to say and a lot of what naraht has to say also! I sometimes feel like the fragility of knowing how contingent my own moral beliefs are, how much they're formed by the society I live in and my family, peers, and friends, is the most helpful place to stand -- and that comes with knowing how contingent everyone else's moral beliefs are, too -- but I think nobody's excused from trying to be better than their society is. I definitely think of myself as a product of my time! And part of that is also being a product of listening to what my friends had to say about ableist language, and gendered language, and thinking, and changing.

But the real question is, why do we have to praise or condemn people who are already dead? I can't go back in time to scold H.P. Lovecraft or give Heinlein a course in Social Justice 101 (yet!). If we're really talking about how we look at their works -- then the only eyes I have to look at a book or a movie are my own eyes. So whether you can excuse someone's beliefs or not, I think it's always legitimate to say "There isn't room for any meeting of the minds here, I can't get anything out of this." Or even "I was really caught up by the storytelling, but I also winced at the misogyny and the racism."

Not sure if you read this Ta-Nehisi Coates piece on Thomas Jefferson, but it really gave me a lot to think about on the subject! Thomas Jefferson was more than a man of his times

[alwaystheocean]

Oh, I'm so glad you've re-posted/collated this here, I saw it in passing on twitter but wasn't properly paying attention at the time.

Thank you, loads of excellent points by you and other commenters that I hadn't stopped to consider before.

[sasha_feather]

Thanks for commenting!

[lotesse]

I've run into a lot of frustration wrt this issue and the kind of "historicism" that says, look Charlotte Bronte and Charles Dickens published books in the same year, obv. there's a connection there. But I don't see that the connection IS obvious, for precisely the reasons you've laid out here. I'd argue that the "of their time" thing is structurally reinforced by the way we periodize our history, emphasizing dates instead of personal contacts or continuities.

[heliopausa]

"This argument also assumes that society progresses forward thru time, that people in the past were worse. Which is not true."
Oh, yes! The enormously smug assumption that we are wiser and more open-minded and decent than all our forebears in every way. See also the enormous condescension of posterity.

[anotherslashfan]

(ETA: Ooops, I think I came across a bit harshly in this? Your thoughts on this topic are very inspiring! You do well in pointing out that the "a product of their time" argument is usually apologistic --- my approach in instances like this is usually to search for a way to break out of the confines that arguments like the one you're criticizing present.)

I think the inherent problem of the "product of their time" argument lies in its implied judgment of a person, and furthermore the idea that a person's actions as a whole can be integrated into what we perceive as their character. So what if it is hard to evaluate the moral standards a person shows in their actions - we can still talk about and evaluate the actions themselves - and yes, compare them to the actions contemporary people took. I totally understand (and share) the impulse to think about people in terms of good or bad (or progressive, or reactionary, whatever), but I feel that when it comes to problematic aspects, talking about concrete actions instead of trying to integrate them into our preconceived notion of what a "good" person is supposed to be like makes true discussion possible (or at least more feasible).

[sasha_feather]

Thanks for your comment! This seems to fall into line with ideas I've heard of "actions vs. identities" arguments.

[anotherslashfan]

Yeah, the argument is directly inspired by advice on addressing racist behavior: the "you're racist" vs. "what you did is racist" distinction. :)