It’s a common Wise Saying (by which I mean a saying people you must accept as Wise on pains of social ostracism, if not actual pain, are fond of) that you must never speak ill of the dead. Forgiveness making you the bigger person is tied into this: You aren’t being forgiving if you’re saying what a shit that dead asshole was, are you?
OK, apply that logic to Adolf Hitler. Or Pol Pot. Or Josef Stalin. Or Idi Amin. Or Strom Thurmond… and people begin to cavil, don’t they? Somewhere along the line from Adolf Hitler to a Dixecrat Senator we learn the lesson of forgiveness and Christian Charity, but trying to apply that lesson to Stalin means you’re a bad person on a fairly objective level.
So where is the line drawn? Does it only apply to relatives? Does it apply to people the people around you may be fond of?
I’ve always heard it in the form of gossip, rumor, or innuendo. They are not around to defend themselves, to tell their side of the story.
Sure, you can speak ill of someone who we demonstrably know did bad things, Like Hitler, but it is rude to be at a funeral or a wake, and complain about some slight that the deceased performed upon your person.
This sounds intelligent, which is often the opposite of Wise, but when you hear the concept being applied to Joe Paterno, you know that it isn’t being applied that way.
I would agree that it is not being applied well in that case.
Who is saying not to speak ill of the dead for him?
In that case, people saying that are not being respectful, they are trying to shut down criticism.
Now, at the same time, if you actually show up at his funeral and are talking shit, that’s still a bit rude. Funerals are for the living, not the dead.
There is no reason to treat the dead any better than the alive. Not that one should picket at a dead person’s funeral (necessarily,) but that has more to do with outright rudeness than about respect for dead.
For politeness sake you may not want to speak ill of the dead in front of someone who is grieving their loss, but overall, speaking ill of the dead shouldn’t be as problematic as speaking ill of the living.
If Hitler is an exception, I think it’s less about him being evil, and more about him being a public figure.
Ignoring the issues of public figures, and causing strife at funerals, I think we have two basic concerns, maligning character specifically, and also more generally privacy.
I’m not sure interpreting it as “once they are dead they are off limits” is all that useful. I prefer “dying doesn’t make you suddenly fair game”.
There can be a lot more to it than a reverence for the dead. In fact, excluding possible effects on the subject of derision, lets us see that there are other potential harms, both to others and to ourselves.
It can be a good intuition pump for understanding how there is a lot more at play than just hurting the subject, when making a habit of shit talking.
As has been said, this dictum has always been about social relations, not about the writing of (or discussion of) history.
‘Don’t make waves when people are in emotional distress’ might be another way of looking at that piece of advice.
ETA: I’m curious how many people remember it as “NEVER speak ill of the dead,” versus “Don’t speak ill of the dead.” The latter formulation is what I’ve heard.
Here’s how that worked in my family: when someone is on their deathbed, that is when all the bad stories must come out. Once they’re dead, no more telling how Mom once killed a man in Reno just to watch him die, or how Uncle Tuffy cheated on his income tax for the last 20 years of his life, or how Aunt Edna was actually the one who sunk Uncle Bill’s boat. If they did something truly heinous and unforgivable, they are no longer considered family and take your best shot before or after death, doesn’t matter.
I sometimes read online obituaries where people are honest about the person who died. How they abused and mistreated their friends and family, killed the family pets, etc.
I find that much more refreshing than pablum about how great every dead person is and how they’ll be missed.
Yeah. While there are people whose greatest service to the world was departing it, this alone rarely confers enough merit to even the score.
That said, I think one should reasonably interpret this saying as meaning that one shouldn’t spread rumors and gossip about people no longer around to defend themselves.
Miss Manners mentions various polite, but nevertheless clear ways to describe a deceased person.
Absent praise, for instance. If the only thing you say about someone is “He was known als an animla lover and led a hard difficult life” … then most people know enough.