[lit-ideas] Re: 'airy-fairy Proustian snob' or the Last Great AmericanPhilosopher?

ok, so tend to agree with geary, altho evrybody has a moral, and to some
its a nice thingy to beat others with. if all moral is subjective then
whats the aid in appealing to it to establish certainty with regard to
action or attitude?

-p

  ----- Original Message -----
  From: "Julie Krueger"
  To: lit-ideas@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
  Subject: [lit-ideas] Re: 'airy-fairy Proustian snob' or the Last
  Great AmericanPhilosopher?
  Date: Sat, 30 Jun 2007 01:29:02 -0500

  gods aside, which is more common in the average human -- to deplore
  or to embrace cruelty?  Do we not consider the embrace of cruelty to
  be aberrant?

  Perhaps all ethics is not after the fact, but in process. 

  Re. Cheney & his best buddy God, you'd have to redefine "God" to sell
  that one to me.

  Julie Krueger
  catching up on old e-mail, yet again

  On 6/26/07, Mike Geary <atlas@xxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:


    RP:
    > Here's a piece from Slate (called to my attention by Jeff
    McLaughlin  at
    > Thompson Rivers University, Kamloops BC) in which various
    people  offer
    > their reflections on Richard Rorty.
    >
    > http://www.slate.com/id/2168488/fr/flyout

    a quote from Stephen Metcalf from the above site: "always and
    everywhere
    deplore cruelty;"

    But why?  Why deplore it?  Why not embrace?  I really like
    Rorty.  But he,
    like everyone else lacking God-given absolutes, seems confined to
    personal
    preference.  And from my perspective, judging from history and
    the history
    of religion, it seems there's no God-given absolute against
    cruelty -- God
    and Cheney seem to me to be best buddies.  Rorty, I imagine,
    would respond
    that cruelty doesn't work, it only begets more cruelty, ergo,
    don't be cruel
    (unless you want to rule?).  But I would argue that the Western
    world is
    where it is (mostly egalitarian, liberal, bourgeois democracies )
    in large
    part through past cruelty.  I have to wonder, you know?  Is all
    ethics after
    the fact?  But not tonight.  I'm going to bed.


    Mike Geary
    Memphis




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---
The more abstract the truth is that you would teach, the more you have to 
seduce the senses to it.
- Friedrich Nietzsche, Beyond Good and Evil

http://phatic.blogspot.com

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