[lit-ideas] Fwd: Re: Re: The meaning of life
- From: wokshevs@xxxxxx
- To: lit-ideas@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
- Date: Wed, 26 Nov 2008 17:26:12 -0330
Quoting Eric Yost <mr.eric.yost@xxxxxxxxx>:
> >>And if he or anybody else can tell me the name of
> the movie in which Peter Sellars
>
> Your holiday spirits are several days ahead of "Our
> Girl Friday."
>
> As for Indian food being a panacea for a looming sense
> of aporia, forget about it!
>
> For almost ten years I lived near the notorious "Indian
> Restaurant block," 6th Street between First and Second
> Avenues, an entire city block of Indian restaurants,
> replete with apache-looking guys standing outside of
> each one trying to hustle bypassers inside; sitar and
> tabla players jamming in the windows; and curry,
> cardamom, and cloves stenching the air. Was often
> forced inside by friends visiting from out of town,
> always context-dependent, always rendered dyspeptic by
> the eerie meals in dark rooms, and usually suffered
> unmentionable gastric aftermaths. For me, Indian food
> is the personification of Chaos and all that is unclean
> and necrophilous. Except for lime pickles, that is;
> there's nothing like superhot lime pickle for blasting
> vile tastes away.
>
> Other people, including some not on the Subcontinent,
> love Indian food, and more power to them. Everyone
> should like what they like as long as it doesn't harm
> others. In a universalizable sense of course.
>
> Listening to Nicolai Ghiaurov sing "Vdol po Pityerskoi,"
>
> Eric
>
> PS: Chaliapin is much better.
-----> No, Phil got it right. It's *The Party*. "Polly mnum mnum" to one and
all. Hilarious movie. All about ethical expectations and their violations.
Habermas would say that Eric's taste in food, or lack thereof, is a product of
his socialization into a particular culture (or intersection of cultures) which
has shaped his likings and dislikings of particular foods and their
preparation.
Habermas would go on to say that Eric's present interests, wants and needs -
including his unfathomable predilection for lime pickles - are shaped by the
"ethical framework" within which he has been acculturated. Along with his
culinary preferences, Eric's ethical framework also includes an entire skein of
values, practices, traditions, conceptions of authenticity and the good life
through which he lives his life and encounters both himself and others. Chuck
Taylor calls such a framework a "moral space" - though he misuses the term
"moral" imho.. All of this is part of Eric's particular personal and
inter-personal identity comprehended as a specific and unique cultural
individuation of universal humanity.
Judgements, norms and principles generated by an ethical framework are indeed
"context-dependent" in the sense that their rightness and justifiedness (not
the same thing) are relative to the worldview held by an ethical framework.
Such relativity is not to be demeaned in either epistemic or moral terms. We
all originally come to be exposed to the distinction between what *is* the
case,
ie, what people actually do, and what people *should* do. Our first exposure to
the difference between fact and norm originates within the ethico-cultural
tradition into which we happen to have been born. (Rorty's "contingency.")
In a globalized, multiculturally pluralist, post-metaphysical world, however,
such ethical facts of socialization are insufficient for grounding/justifying
norms and principles regarding obligations we have to ourselves and each other
regardless of our differing ethically originating identities. No "ethical" norm
or judgement is universalizable - i.e., one that any rationally autonomous
individual could accept. Only "moral" norms and principles bear that
possibility. Moral norms establish rights and freedoms of individuals simply in
virtue of their rationality and dignity. They are claimed to be universally
valid and applicable across cultural and religous ethical frameworks. And this
regardless of whether any particular individual or tribe recognizes such norms
as satisfying universalization. (Thus, this is not an empirical claim.) The
rights and freedoms we hold as rationally autonomous agents are not relative
to, contingent or derivative upon,satisfaction of such ethical criteria as
race, class, gender, sexual orientation or religious affiliation.
What is confusing here is that "ethics" is often understood to be the
philosophical discipline concerned with matters of *moral* deliberation and
judgement. That is a mistake that originates with Aristotle's writings on
ethics. Within the discipline of philosophy, the first systematic and rigorous
articulation and justification of *morality" was provided by Kant. We're still
trying to figure out what the fellah meant, of course. Just as we're still
wondering whether the concept of a constitutional democracy is at all a cogent
and viable one.
Thanks to Eric Y for helping me see what was left unsaid but needed to be said
on these matters.
Walter O.
MUN
P.S. Chto znachet "Vdol"? Ya nye ponimayu eto clovo. Vsevo horoshovo. Valodsya
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