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Unless correspondents ask us not to, this Website will post selected letters that it receives and invite open debate. |
Mike Kilroy has comments on the Lipstadt trial Thursday, October 7, 2004
Albert Camus and the Lipstadt Trial
I'M SURE you have read The Trial by Albert Camus: déjà vu?I recall Mr. Justice Gray's curious red flag stating that there was no need to define the meaning of the term Holocaust denier. Yet he allowed Professor Richard Evans to argue at length from the popular meaning of the term.
If that is so, then it follows that Mr. Justice Gray said that you have denied a category of events for which he has no definition. I am not one to condemn the judge. Obviously his career was out in public. A death sentence does have a way of concentrating a man's faculties. Ben Franklin would forgive him too.
P.S. If the Justice is a Sophist then it would follow that the role of the court is not to seek truth, which Sophists do not believe is knowable, but to uphold the viewpoint which strengthens the rule of The State or an alternate revolutionary State. Judges may support The Establishment or merely the side which promises a revolution, depending on the side they find best. However truth doesn't enter into the equation since, for the Sophist, there is no truth -- only the search for rule.
Comment from Keith McLennan, October 9: "Mike Kilroy writes "I'm sure you have read The Trial by Albert Camus." Well, you haven't, and neither has anyone else. Perhaps Mike is thinking of 'The Trial' by Franz Kafka... or he may be thinking of the murder case brought against Meursault, the hero of Camus' first novel 'L'Etranger' (The Stranger). But 'The Trial' by Camus? There's no such book.
Bjorn Hanssen makes the same observation: "Albert Camus has never written a book named "The Trial" (cf. his biography). Does Mr. "Kilroy" mean "The Trial" ("Der Prozess" (1925)) by Franz Kafka (1883-1924) (summary)?
And a definition of sophism: "In traditional logical argument, a set of premises are connected together according to the rules of logic and lead therefore to some conclusion. When someone criticizes the argument, they do so by pointing out either falsehoods among the premises or logical fallacies, flaws in the logical scaffolding. These criticisms may be subject to counter-criticisms, which in turn may be subject to counter-counter-criticisms, etc. Generally, some judge or audience eventually either concurs with or rejects the position of one side and thus a consensus opinion of the truth is arrived at.
The essential insight of sophistry is that the actual logical validity of an argument is irrelevant; it is only the ruling of the audience which ultimately determine whether a conclusion is considered "true" or not. By appealing to the prejudices and emotions of the judges, one can garner favorable treatment for one's side of the argument and cause a factually false position to be ruled true.
The philosophical Sophist goes one step beyond that and points out that since it was traditionally accepted that the position ruled valid by the judges was literally true, any position ruled true by the judges must be considered literally true, even if it was arrived at by naked pandering to the judges' prejudices - or even by bribery."
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