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Friday, February 27, 2009

The Fallacies of Adolf Hitler's Mein Kampf ♥ 4:57 AM

"On Nation and Race" - Adolf Hitler [Chapter 11 of Mein Kampf]

On February 17, 2009, we learned about fallacies, forms of bad argumentation or inductive reasoning, which leads to faulty conclusions/statements. As we examined "Nation and Race" by Adolf Hitler, we discovered that it included some fallacies that created in hole in his argument.

"There are some truths which are so obvious that for this very reason they are not seen or at least not recognized by ordinary people. They sometimes pass by such truisms as though blind and are most astonished when someone suddenly discovers what everyone really ought to know." is the beginning of chapter 11.

Straight off the bat, Adolf Hitler has written a fallacy. The quote is an example of an ad hominem, "against the man". An ad hominen is a fallacy which refers to an attack on a person instead of the argument being discussed. Here, Hitler is implying that people are blind to his ideas of race. He is implying that his ideas about race is the truth and everyone who disagrees is blind and wrong.

"Even the most superficial observation shows that Nature's restricted form of propagation and increase is an almost rigid basic law of all the innumerable forms of expression of her vital urge. Every animal mates only with a member of the same species. The titmouse seeks the titmouse, the finch the finch, the stork the stork, the field mouse the field mouse, the dormouse the dormouse, the wolf the she-wolf, etc."

Here is a quote that demonstrates a hasty generalization as well as a false analogy. A hasty generalization is a conclusion on the basis of insufficient. The quote shows that Hitler is coming to the conclusion that organisms from different species do not mate with each other. However, today, we can see that different members of different species do mate with each other and reproduce. For instance, in nature a tiger and a lion came together and reproduced an offspring, known as a liger. The quote is also a false analogy, which is an analogy that does not offer proof of a connection. Hitler is trying to give evidence to his idea by saying that the different races are species of humans and act the same as the species of animals. However, there are no species of human and thus, there is no connection to the different species in nature.

Hitler makes his case for the superiority of the Aryan Race above others. In this section of the chapter he argues that the Aryans are genetically better than other races. Hitler states the Aryans are superior, but he never proves this. He states his claim, but does not provide evidence or examples to back up his claim. He is essentially giving his opinion and thus is begging the question, a fallacy where the arguer assumes that something has already been proven. There is no evidence that proves the Aryan race being the best.

The End.