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 ------------------------------------------------------------------ To change your Lit-Ideas settings (subscribe/unsub, vacation on/off, digest on/off), visit www.andreas.com/faq-lit-ideas.html