[lit-ideas] Re: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5OFThORmR-s&feature=fvsr
- From: "Walter C. Okshevsky" <wokshevs@xxxxxx>
- To: lit-ideas@xxxxxxxxxxxxx, Mike Geary <jejunejesuit.geary2@xxxxxxxxx>
- Date: Tue, 8 Jun 2010 11:29:51 -0230
"I'm a good me." Hmmm, interesting. But conceptually awry, I fear.
As there is only one, unique "me" as uttered by Mike, (there are technical terms
for what Mike is doing but I'll spare us for the present), the predicate "good"
cannot cogently apply. "Good" is a scalar term, the intelligibility of which
rides on qualitative difference: i.e., better, bad, worse, worst, best.
But such difference cannot apply to unique individuals since uniqueness permits
of no qualitative relational differentiation. You are what you are. (I'm
falling into the religious here, I realize.) You can't be good (or bad) at
being your own unique self. Only in community and otherness is there the
possibility for difference and thus evaluation. Mike cannot be a good (or bad)
Mike because there ain't no other Mike's around to compare him with. (Is that
necessarily a bad thing? :)
Consider: "That unique Mike is much better than the other unique Mike at being
Mike."
Walter O
G.W.F Hegel Professor of Speculative Metaphysics
Arizona College of Business Administration and Hydraulics
Surprise, AZ
Quoting Mike Geary <jejunejesuit.geary2@xxxxxxxxx>:
> Came across this quite by accident. I'm a sucker for such. It's long, some
> 21 minutes but to me it seemed very, very much too brief. For some reason I
> think that Julie Kruegger will love it. Things like this always make me
> wish I were someone else, someone bright and alive with ideas. But I'm just
> me and that's OK too -- I'm a good me.
>
>
> Mike Geary
> Memphis
>
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