PUZZLED ELEPHANT TO ROG AND 3WD
> PIRSIG:
> "Because Quality 'is' morality. Make no mistake about it. They're
> 'identical'. And if Quality is the primary reality of the world than
> that means morality is also the primary reality of the world." pg. 111
>
> ROG:
> Am I the only one that sees this as a distortion of the term morality?
ELEPHANT:
No, but that's because the term 'morality' has been distorted this way an
that once or twice in the last 2000 years. Prisig is alive to this when he
reminds us in ZMM that Plato's 'arete' doesn't translate well as 'virtue'
nowadays, and is better rendered as 'excellence'. Kant, not to mention the
Judeo-Christian tradition (for the most part) taught us to regard morality
as a duty to something outside ourselves, a higher power (GOD, nowadays
Soceity), or a higher principle (Duty). In Plato's time morality was about
trying to fulfill one's potential for excellence, -to 'be happy' if you like
, and he thought and argued there to be a very good connection between
'being happy' and respecting the rules of behaviour we tend to regard as
morality (nb founding fathers). So for Plato, a moral imperative is
something within us, not outside: it appeals to our own best interests.
Kant says: 'don't lie: it offends against the moral law'. Plato says:
'don't lie: it tends to corrupt the soul and take away your chance of
happiness'. We can apply this to poverty in the third world: Kant -'We
should respect the poor as humans', v. Plato - 'Greed is the cause of
poverty, and greed is an unhappy sickness in the soul'.
In recent times there have been an attempt to revive the ancient greek
conception of moral imperatives as something internal, and it goes by the
title 'virtue ethics'. My supervisor published an influential book in this
line, now out of print. But there's still quite a bit of momentum around
for this approach in the academic world.
It's worth thinking about where Buddhism would fall between the Platonic and
Kantian conceptions of Morality. On the Platonic side, I think you will
find: moral goodness and compassion are Quality-seeking self interest, but
*enlightened* self interest, where one's interest is to transcend attachment
to the self.
Prisig's form of words here does seem a bit confused (how can quality be
morality? - good isn't morality, but what morality is concerned with), but
what he's saying is plain enough: becoming excellent and the search for
dynamic quality are one and the same thing. That's the Platonic way of
looking at things alright. The form of the good is the sun.
The sense in which morality is a local cut-off area of thought belongs to
the Kantian/Judeo-Christian thought of it as a relation to something
outside. If it is the name for the internal struggle for the good, then it
applies to everything, and can be identical with the the pursuit of Quality.
ELEPHANT had written:
Also, I'm not sure that you've yet answered my question 'What is the
"pragmatic mode of selection" by which the idea that "truth is a species of
good" is reached?' Maybe I'm being dim. I'll go read some James.
ROG:
According to James "The true is the name of whatever proves itself to be
good
in the way of belief, and good too for definite, assignable reasons." He
goes on to state that if believing truth led inevitably to terrible outcomes
that we would learn to shun the truth. But in general, it doesn't.....
ELEPHANT:
I want to challenge James here. Is "in general" enough - or even at all
relevant? What about the (the all too familiar) cases where tact or fear
defeat truth, sometimes completely? This does actually happen you know,
it's perhaps a definition of a totalitarian state. In order to analyse real
goodness (in the Republic), Plato imagines a man who is actually crucified,
but remains good. Can't we allow that beleiving the truth can also, even
when it is the pragmatic truth, sometimes or even generally "led inevitably
to terrible outcomes"? If we can't then it looks like we don't have a
pragmatic conception of truth, so much as an Orwellian one, where truth is
what is most conveinient, according to the wim of the most powerful, for us
to believe. There can be martyrs in the cause of DQ, can't there? - those
who stood out for what made real practical sense, and against the merely
conveinient (the consensus of the day, the moral majority, Dogma, academic
fashion, whathaveyou)?
tactfully yours,
Puzzled Elephant
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