From: David Buchanan (DBuchanan@ClassicalRadio.org)
Date: Sun May 08 2005 - 00:27:38 BST
Matt, Mark, Sam and all MOQers:
Matt said to Mark:
If there's a distinction in the area that might be of use, people might
first reach for the prudence/principle distinction. Lower level people act
out of their own prudent self-interest, but higher level people act out of
universal principles. But this distinction should look a lot like the
social/intellectual distinction, and we should stay away from it.
dmb says:
The reasons why we should stay away from it made little sense to me, but
let's just say you have SOME respect for the prudence/principle, at least
sometimes. I hope it might be enough to get started. See, what if we think
about the classic example in terms of that principle? In LILA Hitler is
depicted as the ultimate anti-intellectual and glorifier of social level
values. Its hardly different from saying he was the ultimate anti-democratic
human rights abuser and glorifier of Germany's narrow self-interests at the
expense of those principles. Same idea. I know you can see that.
But in case you missed it, the usefulness of Pirsig's distinction is its
ability to identify the underlying forces behind all the various reactionary
movements of the 20th century. In this way, a whole series of seemingly
unrelated movements in various cultures can be seen as part of a larger
pattern. In short, they are reactions to the rise of Modernity. The
distinction allows us to see that we are dealing with a multi-headed
shape-shifter. We can see, to use the classic examples again, that Hitler
and Mussolini both rejected Modernity in favor of trying to re-capture the
heroic Aryan warriors and Roman soldiers of the "glorious" past. And we can
recognize this beast wherever it rears one of its reactionary heads...
Sam Norton quoted Alasdair MacIntyre, a philosopher/theologian he greatly
admires:
"There is thus the sharpest of contrasts between the emotivist self of
modernity and the self of the heroic age. The self of the heroic age lacks
precisely that characteristic which we have already seen that some modern
moral philosophers take to be an essential characteristic of human
self-hood; the capacity to detach oneself from any particular standpoint or
point of view, to step backwards, as it were, and view and judge that
standpoint or point of view from the outside. In heroic society there is no
'outside' except that of the stranger. A man who tried to withdraw himself
from his given position in heroic society would be engaged in the enterprise
of trying to make himself disappear. Identity in heroic society involves
particularity and accountability.... what we have to learn from heroic
societies is twofold; first that all morality is always to some degree tied
to the socially local and particular and that the aspirations of the
morality of modernity to a universality freed from all particularity is an
illusion; and secondly that there is no way to possess the virtues except as
part of a tradition in which we inherit them and our understanding of them
from a series of predecessors in which series heroic societies hold first
place. If this is so, the contrast between freedom of choice of values of
which modernity prides itself and the absence of such choice in heroic
cultures would from the standpoint of a tradition ultimately rooted in
heroic societies appear more like the freedom of ghosts - of those whose
human substance approached vanishing point - than of men." (AV pp 126-127)
dmb concludes:
Notice how freedom is here depicted as a kind of horror, as a kind of self
annihilation so that there is only death outside of the social structure.
The Heroic age sounds like hell to me. I'm truly saddened by your admiration
of this sentiment, Sam. Its no wonder we don't agree about much. Yikes!
MOQ.ORG - http://www.moq.org
Mail Archives:
Aug '98 - Oct '02 - http://alt.venus.co.uk/hypermail/moq_discuss/
Nov '02 Onward - http://www.venus.co.uk/hypermail/moq_discuss/summary.html
MD Queries - horse@darkstar.uk.net
To unsubscribe from moq_discuss follow the instructions at:
http://www.moq.org/md/subscribe.html
This archive was generated by hypermail 2.1.5 : Sun May 08 2005 - 00:35:18 BST