[lit-ideas] Re: Disintigration of values, British TV, Heidegger

  • From: "Lawrence Helm" <lawrencehelm@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
  • To: <lit-ideas@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
  • Date: Tue, 9 Feb 2010 21:54:08 -0800

You have written a strange note, Robert.  You reference one of my notes and
seem to reply to another, except you reply to just one part of that, a sort
of "aside" and don't address main emphasis which provides Kundera's 5
choices for "possibilities," that is, what one can do in the face of the
(assumed) decline in values.  My example of the lawyers arguing for the
right to lie was something I happened to read in the paper that morning, a
clear indication of a decline in one value, reminding me of what Kundera
wrote.  

Your note implies that I didn't cover what I had in mind by values - or that
I had nothing in mind and was merely groping for what Kundera had in mind.
The note you reference, not the one you responded to, should clear that up -
or at least point you in a more promising direction.

Lawrence

 

From: lit-ideas-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx [mailto:lit-ideas-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx]
On Behalf Of Robert Paul
Sent: Tuesday, February 09, 2010 9:23 PM
To: lit-ideas@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
Subject: [lit-ideas] Re: Disintigration of values, British TV, Heidegger

 

Lawrence Helm wrote 

I posted a note with the above title at
http://www.lawrencehelm.com/2010/02/disintigration-of-values-british-tv.html

This is a short response to what I found at that address.

Lawrence wrote (Milan Kundera and the decline of values) that in 1960,
Kundera had written that [the] 'world [was] in a process of the
disintegration of values (values handed down from the Middle Ages), a
process that stretches over the four centuries of the Modern Era and is
their very essence.' 

We are not told which values Kundera had in mind, but I should think that
they were the big capitalized ones epitomized by the four (or six, or seven)
values set forth in the Cardinal Virtues of the Roman Catholic church, as
adapted from Plato, and variously amended-Justice and Courage, e.g.-and not
such 'values' as the Divine Right of Kings,  the subjugation of women, or
the right of some men to own other men. He [apparently] offered no evidence
that a 'disintegration' of any sort of value was taking place in 1960, let
alone that it had been going on for four centuries before that. Of course,
this barbarous sentence doesn't say that a disintegration of values had been
going on for all that time, but that the world was in a 'process of the
disintegration of values.' Had one of my students written such a sentence, I
might have asked 'what, precisely, does this mean?' only in politer terms.
(One thing that I value that is being lost is the ability to write plain
English.)

Lawrence, by way of providing an example of the sort of thing Kundera had in
mind, adduces two cases in which the attorneys for two men charged under the
federal Stolen Valor Act, are arguing that, as neither benefited from his
false claim, they are guilty of no more than lying and pretending to be
something they were not; more or less a 'no harm, no foul' defense. (One of
the men apparently did benefit from claiming falsely to have been a veteran
of the Iraq war: he was able to live in veterans' housing, and once obtained
a discount on an airlines ticket.) If I understand Lawrence, he is upset by
what these men did, and by their attorneys' reasoning. The deeds and the
defense are apparently evidence to support Kundera's general claim-as if
impostors of this sort had never before been seen in recorded history. I
don't want to argue with Lawrence about this, i.e., whether such pathetic
goings on signal a 'decline of values,' or a 'disintegration' of them. My
suggestion is that such behaviour, however it is viewed-and if it is all
that is viewed-is as nothing when compared with real advances in 'values,'
such as the banning of slavery, and the advancement of women. If one wants a
value of which these are instances, it is surely Justice.

Each generation seems to believe that the new is the enemy of the good.; but
pretending to be what one is not is hardly new.

Robert Paul
Reed College

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