Well, I didn’t downvote, but saying the Aztecs viewed human sacrifice as a virtue is at best an oversimplification. They sacrificed a lot of people and believed they were virtuous in doing so, but my understanding is that sacrifice within the Aztec belief system was instrumental to worship, not virtuous in itself; you wouldn’t be lauded for sacrificing your neighbor to Homer Simpson, only for sacrifices serving established religious goals.
The broader point, though, seems to be that the appeal to societal normality equally well justifies norms that call for (e.g.) sacrificing children to the rain god Tlaloc, if sufficiently entrenched. That logic seems sound to me.
I think it would be missing Tim’s point to suppose that he’s ascribing some sort of quasi-Kantian value-in-itself to Aztec meta-ethics, when all he seems to be noting is that the Aztecs got torture wrong. If you want to reserve ‘virtue’ for a more specific idea and historically bound idea in Western ethics, I doubt he’d mind your paraphrasing his point in your preferred idiom. It takes a pretty wild imagination to read Tim’s comment and think he’s saying that the Aztecs considered human sacrifice a summum bonum or unconditionally and in-all-contexts good. That’s just not what the conversation is about.
Well, I didn’t downvote, but saying the Aztecs viewed human sacrifice as a virtue is at best an oversimplification. They sacrificed a lot of people and believed they were virtuous in doing so, but my understanding is that sacrifice within the Aztec belief system was instrumental to worship, not virtuous in itself; you wouldn’t be lauded for sacrificing your neighbor to Homer Simpson, only for sacrifices serving established religious goals.
The broader point, though, seems to be that the appeal to societal normality equally well justifies norms that call for (e.g.) sacrificing children to the rain god Tlaloc, if sufficiently entrenched. That logic seems sound to me.
I think it would be missing Tim’s point to suppose that he’s ascribing some sort of quasi-Kantian value-in-itself to Aztec meta-ethics, when all he seems to be noting is that the Aztecs got torture wrong. If you want to reserve ‘virtue’ for a more specific idea and historically bound idea in Western ethics, I doubt he’d mind your paraphrasing his point in your preferred idiom. It takes a pretty wild imagination to read Tim’s comment and think he’s saying that the Aztecs considered human sacrifice a summum bonum or unconditionally and in-all-contexts good. That’s just not what the conversation is about.
Yeah, you’re right.