Amazing tirade and ad hominem argument by Ken Freedman!
If we were to look into the personal life and morality of every source we
read, checked every source they themselves used for its verasity, checked
that they had read everything available in the British museum at the time,
before we allowed ourselves to find their ideas interesting or useful, then
there would be very few ideas left, if any!
Anyway, whose morality are we to use to distinguish between those 'scholars'
that are 'moraly acceptable' and those that are not?
We can all come up with our own long list of bastards who did terrible
things to their nearest and dearest, to their pets, their employees etc.
They lied and cheated, falsified evidence, fiddled the books, and commited
all sorts of criminal acts. Moreover, when they died their idea were
appropriated by others and used as a justification for doing terrible things
to other people. AND YET, they left us with ideas and ways of thinking that
we MIGHT find interesting and valuable.
Am I morally tainted because I find my reading of Marx's ideas productive
and illuminating?
This is silly stuff!
David
--
Professor David Sless
Director
Communication Research Institute of Australia
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