I think you misunderstand me. I’m not talking about the reasoning used by the pro-life movement or the pro-choice movement. I’m talking about your reasoning. You seem to suggest that the good surely cannot entail having people do or suffer things against their will.
Why should it be necessary to create such a world to that end?
How indeed? Here, however, that distinction between the creature and the creator in man comes into play again, and thereby the distinction between lower and higher valuings. What I said in my previous post about informed choices is not the end of the story. Does a homo sapiens suddenly gain the faculty of reason at, say, 0:00 hours of his eighteenth birthday? Of course not; he must have been raised, which cannot happen without his first having to do or suffer things against his will. As Nietzsche says, the task is “[t]o breed an animal that is warranted to make promises” (Genealogy of Morality 2.1). A defective birth control device? A promise broken. Rape? Incest? Promises broken–not just on the part of the perpetrators, mind you, but also of the victims, their guardians, or their guardians’ guardians, etc. (for instance, the State that allowed incestuous parents to be the heads of a nuclear family).
It doesn’t, and that doesn’t matter.
If there is no such distinction, then why should I ask people in the street instead of you? In fact, I’m asking you, not because you’re absolutely rational whereas they are absolutely irrational, but because you are supposedly more rational than they. So, I ask again:
Why do you care if they ever resolve their dispute or not? Just because you don’t want your “I” to fracture and fragment to the point where nothing is able to keep it together, at least not with respect to choosing sides morally and politically?
To me it is. I think the great Platonic political philosophers–among whose ranks I include Homer and Nietzsche–are the most valuing human beings who are most warranted to make promises. They are willing and able to impose their will on entire cultures for centuries, sometimes even for millennia:
“Law-giving moralities are the principal means of fashioning man according to the pleasure of a creative and profound will, provided that such an artist’s will of the first rank has the power in its hands and can make its creative will prevail through long periods of time, in the form of laws, religions, and customs. Such men of great creativity [are] the really great men according to my understanding[.]” (Nietzsche, The Will to Power, section 957, Kaufmann translation.)
I think it’s in bad faith to object something like this to me–or to others–every step of the way. Of course, the first step towards effectively addressing your point does not yet effectively address your point. If you accept the objective value I’ve established, that is the starting point; it’s premature to say: “All very well, but how does that solve our great problem?” We’re getting there–if you’ll bear with me. Basically I feel what you’re doing is this:
You: “Is an infinitive a noun or a verb?”
Me: “Technically, it is a noun.”
You: "
How does this answer my question?
How does this answer my question?
How does this answer my question?" etc.
::
As a prisoner, the person is a creature: she is imprisoned, just as the creature is created. (If she imprisons herself, however, then as an imprisoner, she is a creator.)
As one executed for murder, too, the person is a creature.
As one committing a murder, however, the person is a creator.
Need I go on?
Neumann would wholeheartedly agree with your question about his analysis, as do I:
"Objection: If nihilism is true, is it not itself another empty impression? Answer: Yes.
Objection: Is it not contradictory to say that nihilism is both true and yet nothing more than an arbitrary impression, a mere prejudice? Answer: Yes.
Objection: Does not this prove it false? Answer: No. Any faith in anything’s being something rather than nothing, any desire to live rather than die, is self-contradictory. The self that it contradicts–anything’s true self!–is reality’s nothingness. Life in all its manifestations is, and must be, self-contradictory. Refusal to acknowledge its self-contradictory character is at the heart of all mankind’s self-delusions or prejudices, especially of all moral-political passions (‘values’). Bigotry is unavoidable for men (or beasts) determined to be something rather than nothing!
Objection: Why are empty experiences nothing? However arbitrary or meaningless they are, must there not be something or someone to experience them? Answer: No. The faith that this or anything else must be so is itself nothing but another empty experience. This includes faith in any distinctions, including those between truth and falsity, right and wrong, arbitrary and non-arbitrary, freedom and slavery.
Objection: Then the claim that everything is nothing is itself nothing? The claim that everything is arbitrary impressions itself is arbitrary? Answer: Yes–as well as any claim or desire to be or to do anything.
Objection: Does not your claim that nihilism is true require a nonarbitrary distinction between truth and falsity? Answer: No. The gist of your objections implies that genuine communication and community is possible. It implies that the ‘we’ who communicate and ‘things’ communicated–including this exchange!–are more than nothing. In reality they are meaningless impressions, dreams whose dreamers are themselves dreams.
Objection: Why communicate then? Answer: There is as little nonarbitrary reason to communicate as to do anything. All striving to do or be anything arises from a nihilist will to overpower nihilism, the will of nothing to be more than nothing. Like everything else that will is nothing." (Neumann, “Nihilism Challenged and Defended”.)
Need I go on?
::
Postscript. I am inclined against capital punishment, because I don’t easily believe that nothing better can be made out of a person anymore than “dust and ashes”. Why not enslave the person instead? Why not give her the choice between death and enslavement? The question would be whether she would profit our culture more when enslaved or when dead. We stand before a question of economics…
A threat to what, though? Is a threat to something meaningless really a threat? So shouldn’t we first establish the meaning of life on earth?
This presupposes a positivism of some kind. Can we “find” the world without “touching” it?
Are there logical, atomic facts of the world?
The natural sciences are no more embedded in the world. As Nietzsche said, they only describe the world, they do not explain it. Logos means “word”; an explanation of the world must be pre-logical, appealing to irrational intuitions–“free will”. As I wrote in my last trip:
“Neumann valued honesty, but there is indeed nothing objectively wrong with dishonesty. It’s just our preference, the preference of the philosophers. But it is and remains our preference because we actually value existence precisely as what, in our view, it most probably is: valuation, the valuing of being over non-being, the valuing of it precisely because to be is to value. To be is to rise up in Satanic defiance of God, of non-being: the rising up out of non-being, the asserting of oneself as a being, is pleasurable to those who do it; otherwise they would cease doing it, or not have started doing it in the first place. This big bang of ours, and this coming into existence of minute quanta, is all a great hubristic rebellion against non-being, against the notion that it’s better not to be. That which does not exist is just tacitly, passively, agreeing with that notion. But it’s not true, it is better to rebel, no matter what profound and protracted torture it may be punished with. The rebellion itself is worth it. This fleeting moment of being, this little life of ours, and our dedication of it to its affirmation–that is absolutely worth it.”
Since we’re being all dithyrambic and strong-valuation-tended I will spill my own innards on the divination table like sausages for the pigs, or pearls for the divers who dive for pearls; for the first time I fully grasp the value of value philosophy as encompassing value ontology. VO is its epistemic center, but the substance of it existed already in the early Sauwelios, earlier even than Sauwelios, in the boy who, while in a mushroom trip, reached for his German copy of Zarathustra. That is an act of the purest valuing, the greatest seriousness, readiness for the most dangerous game. In my world, for all intents and purposes, this was where philosophy began to overcome the madness that gripped all those hubristic souls of my generation. I always knew I understood Nietzsche easier than Sauwelios, and by this I also knew I understood him only partially.
The grand scheme. You have to have the stomach for that.
Though this sentence isn’t nearly long enough to properly indicate such a thing, the most dangerous man of the 20th century may ultimately prove to have been Jos Krook.
No, in regard to both identity and value judgments, I make the crucial distinction between that which we believe is true subjectively “in our head” [as dasein] and that which is demonstrated to be true objectively [for all of us].
Then I ask those who embrace one or another rendition of moral/political objectivism [or moral/political idealism] to focus the beam on a value judgment of their own. Let them demonstrate to us how they are themselves able to transcend my dilemma above.
Now, most of course attach their own narrative here to either God or to Reason.
In fact, for months now I have been trying to get you to explain to me how your own values [and sense of identity] are able to combine elements of both.
In other words, you pick the value, you pick the context. Let’s finally pin this down.
Or, sure, link me to the post where you already have.
Human motivation and intention are no less embedded problematically in the astonding complexity that is embodied in dasein.
Consider all of the variables that come together on our sojourn from the cradle to the grave:
historical era
culture
childhood indoctrination
race [in a racist world]
gender [in a sexist world]
sexual orientation [in a homophobic world]
biological and psychological predispositions
unique individual experiences
unique individual relationships
unique individual contact with particular ideas – in books, magazines, films, the arts, the internet etc.
I am myself an existentialist. So the manner in which I view human identity is as “dasein”. The “I” that is thrown into a particular demographic smorgasbord at birth and then is ceaelessly evolving and changing from the cradle to the grave.
So, in the midst of all that is the “reason” “I” am here. But, in my view, this cannot even be pinned down by me let alone you.
But, sure, part of my motivation [the part I am “conscious” of] does revolve around polemics. I love the stuff. But, in turn, I truly do wish to bump into a point of view that might yank me up out of this fucking hole I am in. My “dilemma”. It really does more or less “paralyze” me. Fortunately, I have reached that point in my life where such paralyzism is largely moot. But I can imagine how horrific it might be if one were still in their prime. Like most folks here. So the last thing they want to believe is that I might actually be on to something here.
If you get my drift.
Actually, what philosophy seems to be today is largely [and increasingly more] irrelevant. To the extenxt that it drifts farther and farther away from the question, “how ought one to live?” is the extent to which it becomes almost entirely “technical” instead.
On the other hand, to the extent that it does focus the beam on that which is of interest to me, is the extent which it comes down into this fucking hole with me!
Hmm.
Maybe it’s not “win/win” for me so much as “lose/lose”.
But I suspect that I will take this contradiction with me to the grave.
Unless of course the objectivists finally prevail and “save” me.
Try to imagine that, down the road, you are arguing before the Supreme Court in a case where, after the Republicans have gained control of the White House, the Congress and the courts, it is being decided that Roe v. Wade will be scrapped and replaced with a law that makes all abortions illegal.
You make this exact argument to the Supremes.
Do you actually believe this reflects an analysis that renders moot the conflicting goods embedded in the abortion wars as I have described them? Do you actually believe that you, as a “value ontologist”, have effectively used the tools of philosophy and/or science to resolve the issue once and for all?
why do you call people objectivists after they have already acknowledged that their standing is a perspective? It is a intentional misinterpretation.
why do you constantly ask if philosophy can come up with a way to settle conflicts? That is the same as to say there can’t be universal morality, so can we have universal morality? It is very silly.
Of the four paragraphs you’ve written here, what do the first two have to do with the last two? How is putting them together as you’ve done not mere rhetoric?
Of course there are many “reasons” for considering abortion wrong. One of them is that one believes God considers it wrong. My argument revolves around the logical question “why should God, or any other supreme authority, consider it wrong?” To answer “because it is the termination of a human life”, if it’s even true, is only a deference of the question. Why is the termination of a human life, or of an innocent human life, wrong? It must be because there’s something to human life–something that renders it intrinsically valuable. What is that something? For many or most pro-life people, especially those who are also pro capital punishment, it is the ability to choose right over wrong. Adam and Eve somehow chose wrong over right, even though they did not have a notion of right and wrong before making that choice… Since then, all human beings are born in sin, so they are still innocent before they are born–though somehow already human–, and are even in some sense innocent before they break any law (which is why not all human beings receive (capital) punishment immediately after they have been born or reached the age of consent or whatever)… And you’re asking me to reason with your country’s inane Supreme Court–when it is, moreover, dominated by a party stuck up to its neck in this metaphysical mud–, as if it had any philosophical authority?
I have given you a rational value, from which everything logically follows–the Nietzschean Superman, as the most valuing human being, is the meaning of earthly life–, but you “choose” to hide behind your “democratic republic” over spelling out the consequences.
The distinction I always make is between those who argue that their own value judgments are true objectively and those who argue instead that moral and political values are embodied subjectively/subjunctively in dasein. The objectivists then seem compelled to designate others as, for example, “retards” if they don’t share their own values/ideals.
Objectivists will often make the same claim regarding identity. They will argue that “I” is not an existential contraption fabricated out in a world awash in contingency, chance and change, but, rather that one can come to grasp their true identity. The Real Me.
And that this authentic self can then obviate conflicting goods by subsumming them in one or another rendition of this:
1] I am rational
2] I am rational because I have access to the Ideal
3] I have access to the Ideal because I grasp the one true nature of the Objective World
4] I grasp the one true nature of the Objective World because I am rational
That is when I ask them to bring their authentic self down to earth and to demonstrate how one of their own values/ideals is not entangled in the dilemma that mine seem ensnared in.
As I did with you above. Assuming of course that you are an objectivist in the manner in which I construe it.
Well, folks like von rivers and Satyr seem to share my view that there is no universal morality; but I am still struggling to grasp the manner in which they seem to argue that objectivity is within our reach. In other words, if we are willing to think exactly like they do about abortion or capital punishment or gender roles or animal rights etc., we too can make that crucial distinction between “one of us” and the “retards”. Between the masters and the slaves. Between the ubermen and the sheep.
On the other hand, I am willing to concede that there may well be an objective morality [even a universal morality] but that I have not myself come upon an argument [much less a demonstration] that this is the case.
In the interim, I argue for democracy and the rule of law: moderation, negotiation and compromise.
As distinguished from either might makes right or right makes might.
As for whether my point here is “silly”, well, obviously I don’t think it is silly at all. But, sure, I agree, it might be.
I noted my reasoning above. I believe that women ought to have the right to choose abortion. And I believe that abortion is the killing of a human being. How do I recocile this? I don’t. And I don’t because that, in my view, is the nature of the conflicting goods here. The good of the woman means the will of the baby is snuffed out. The good of the baby neans the will of the woman to abort it is snuffed out. Or, rather, the woman is forced against her will to give birth or risk being charged with first degree murder. At least in those part of the world it is against the law.
How then do you approach the conflicting goods here? I’m sorry, but I still don’t really get that part.
Again:
Because the alternative is the world – the real world – that we live in now: either women can choose to kill their unborn babies [against the will of the babies] or they are forced to give birth [against their own will].
Really, how is this any different from the arguments [idealities] of Satyr, Lyssa and the Kids over at KT? They tell you which values are “high” and “low”. They tell you which choices are “informed” and which are not. They tell you what Nietzsche means in regard to these relationships.
But I’ll be damned if I can fathom what their own “analyses” have to do with the manner in which I construe dasein, conflicting goods and political economy. How, in other words, do they make those things go away. Aside, of course, from “in their head”. In their largely scholastic “world of words”.
Right. Tell that to the dead babies. Tell that to the women forced to give birth.
How we react [either cognitively or emotionally] to any particular abortion will depend on the extent to which we are involved in the choice. Either in making it or related in some capacity to the woman who is making it. So we will always only care more or less. Or not at all. That is dasein in a nutshell.
There is no more or less rational choice in an absolute sense. That is always relative to the manner in which you construe your own identity as dasein and the manner in which you construe the “good” relating to any particular abortion. And then of course the legal/political framework in which you reside.
My point is this: If I am involved in a choice to kill a baby by aborting it [as I was with John and Mary] I don’t have access to a philosophical narrative like VO. I am entangled instead in my dilemma above. What I imagine then is someone like you who does have an “ontological” assessment of values advising them. Or someone like James S. Saint. Or someone like Satyr. Someone, in other words, who really does believe you can make a rational distinction between that which is said to be an “ideal” behavior and that which is not. A point of view said to actually be in sync with the Objective World itself. The way the world really and truly is.
That you do imagine yourself to be a philosopher-king with respect to the relationship between identity, value judgments and political power speaks volumes regarding the gap between us.
Again, I am imagining you sitting in a room with the family of the prisoner and the family of the victim. You note this to them and…and what? Or you are arguing this before a court that is deciding whether capital punishment either will or will not be the law of the land.
The narrative seems lofty enough. But what on earth does it have to do with the world that we actually live in. A world embodied and embedded in this:
From my perspective then you have embraced this intellectual contrapment [VO] and you use it to anchor “I”. Just as have hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of other objectivists throughout the course of human history: The Way.
For some it all goes back to God, for others it all goes back to Reason. Always their own. Then it just comes down to whether they construe those who are not “one of us” to be simply wrong or to be actual “retards”. Are those lacking in true wisdom afforded some slack or are they deemed to be The Enemy.
In any event, objectivists embrace what to me are largely personal opinions and/or political prejudices – subjective/subjunctive contraptions as the one and only truly rational manner in which to probe and then to propagate the nature of “human reality” itself. Even with respect to that which is most important to me: how ought we to live?
But, sure, maybe VO does come closer to it than all the others. Maybe it is even smack dab in the bullseye.
