Is German the language of bad people?
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German is the language of bad people
[edit | edit source]Pro
[edit | edit source]Pro German is the language of the mass-murderous Hitler and the German Nazis.
Objection There are many other dictators and murderous groups which have spoke different languages.
Objection The question is not whether German is the only language of bad people. And thus, the above is irrelevant to the motion.
Pro German is the language of the pseudophilosophers Fichte, Schelling and Hegel.
Objection These are not generally recognized as pseudo and bad people.
Pro German is the language of Marx, one of the most dangerous men who ever lived, whose pseudophilosophy and pseudoeconomics has caused untold harm and still presents a tangible risk to the world.
Objection That assessment of Marx is not generally accepted.
Objection Even if we accept the above: if German is the language of thinkers, also bad thinkers are likely to end up using the language.
Objection English is also a language of thinkers, but one struggles to find anything as bad as Marx (or other culprits/suspects). (French, another language of thinkers, fares worse than English given all those post-modern pseudophilosophers.)
Pro German is the language of the absolutist and rigid Austro-Hungarian empire, oppressing the poor non-German nations in it.
Objection This seems very one-sided; one should be able to say good things about the empire.
Pro German is the language of two of the three empires that partitioned the Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth in the 18th century, per Wikipedia:Partitions of Poland.
Con
[edit | edit source]Con German is the language of great poets (e.g. Goethe, Schiller, Rilke).
Con German is the language of great literary authors (e.g. Goethe, Mann, Schiller).
Con German is the language of great philosophers (e.g. Leibniz, Kant, Schopenhauer, Popper, Wittgenstein and the Vienna Circle)
Con German is the language of great mathematicians (e.g. Leibniz, Euler, Riemann, Gauss, Weierstrass, Cantor, Dedekind and Hilbert).
Con German is the language of great logicians (e.g. Frege and Gödel)
Con German is the language of great scientists (e.g. Kepler, Mendel, Einstein, Heisenberg, and Schrödinger).
Con German is the language of great musicians (e.g. Mozart, Bach, Beethoven, Brams and Handel).
Con German is a major language in Switzerland, the only (or one of very few?) world's direct democracy, where citizens really participate on the government.