The late philosopher M. Jackson asked "Whose bad?"

The common theme in the the history of Africa that we have read thus far is that of exploitation, fundamental human rights abuses, atrocities ect. What I get from the discussion in class is that we are trying to attach some type of cause to these wrong actions. We are trying to justify in our minds the actions of the various parties. Fundamentally we ask "Why did these people do what was fo obviously immoral by any philosophers book?" We are trying to match up their actions with their rhetoric to expose any ulterior agenda or examine the historical context in which they lived to see how that might mold a person in to a disposition to do these terrible things. Rightfully so in history we can only use induction and inference to know the unknowable. the unknowable being the thoughts, beliefs and true intents of a person. Without the frame of all of this logic, I believe lies a postulate that prevents us from looking within the individual. That is that free will is an illusion. If we adopt that idea we could never say that these atrocities happened because these people consciously knew that what they were doing was wrong by their own personal understanding and acted otherwise. I think that it is equally justified to simply say that those that acted immorally did so consciously and like much of the rest of humanity justified their actions within themselves and for their piers and public and a cloak of altruism and good. I accept that the factors discussed so far are active variables in trying to understand the past but I personally step out of the idea that free will is not a factor and recognize that humans can make within themselves immoral decisions (that morality being of their own determination, not to be confused with ethics).