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Every claim below was made in this piece, quoted word for word and numbered in the order the piece makes them, so you can read it there rather than take our word for it. The sentence above each quote is our reading of the claim, not their wording. Each quote was checked against a stored copy of the page at build time; where the two differ, the quote is the fact.
Our reading
Condemning people of the past by modern moral standards gets in the way of understanding them.
Their wordsBut the most important problem with presentism is that condemnation crowds out comprehension: you cannot learn from people you’re busy sentencing.
Their wordsSo the standard should not be “could a genius have known better?” but rather “what could a reasonable person embedded in that context be expected to see?”
Their wordsThe moral truth that slavery is wrong was accessible at all times, in principle, because (I think) it’s a truth about human nature, in line with my naturalistic realism.
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