From: Scott R (jse885@spinn.net)
Date: Fri Oct 18 2002 - 21:54:28 BST
Steve,
Steve Peterson wrote:
I guess I'm thinking that a rejection of all violence could be a response to
> dynamic quality that cannot actually work in society as it currently is.
It will work, one just has to accept death as a possible consequence.
Which, for some reason, is made easier by thinking an afterlife is
likely (I say "for some reason" since, logically, those who don't
believe in an afterlife should be the ones least concerned with dying,
since there is no one to regret being dead, while those who believe in
it assume an unending responsibility. But somehow it doesn't work out
that way. Makes one wonder...).
>
> Doesn't moq reject such static moral rules as saying all violence is wrong?
In practice, it is not at all a static rule, since it is exceedingly
rare. That is, for the typical person to decide to act under the rule
that all violence is wrong is to aspire to something that will take a
lot of DQ to make come about.
> I recognize what King is saying as motivating high quality behavior and
> motivated by DQ, and if everyone agreed that would be great, but what if...
What if what? One chooses non-violence to show its moral superiority,
not to wait for "everyone".
>
> When I say "work in society" I guess I am taking a utilitarian view. Is moq
> utilitarian, deontological, or none of the above? I'm assuming none of the
> above, but can someone contrast moq with these classical understandings of
> morality?
Well, the "greatest good for the greatest number" would seem to be a
social level decree, as would Kant's Categorical Imperative (if that is
what you mean by "deontological" -- correct me if I'm wrong). Here's an
interesting Barfield quote that may be relevant (it's not about
non-violence, but more about asserting individual/intellectual value
over society's existing values):
"It is in the nature of the case that, if at any point in time something
like a *new* moral demand is made on humanity, moral judgments grow for
a time double and confused. Thus...I spoke of certain "symptoms of
iconoclasm", in the shape of a new willingness to apprehend
symbolically. If I now maintain that these have a moral significance, I
am at once in the difficulty that the scale of values I have set up not
only does not correspond with the generally accepted scale of Christian
moral values, but appears to cut right across it. There are plenty of
people with a natural taste for dream-psychology, or for art or
literature of a symbolical nature, for sacramentalism in religion, or
for other things whose meaning cannot be grasped without a movement of
the imagination, who are arrogant or self-centred or in other ways no
better than they should be. And conversely there are prosaic, humdrum,
literal souls before whose courage or goodness we are abashed. It is
not a happy task to have to maintain that, from one point of view, and
that an all-important one, the former must be accounted morally
superior.... The 'needful' virtue is that which combats the besetting
sin. And the besetting sin to-day is the sin of literalness, or
idolatry." [pp 161-2]
[Some of this is referring to stuff explained elsewhere in the book
("Saving the Appearances"), but I think the point is there. Of course,
it is the same point as Pirsig's Brujo story.]
- Scott
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