From: Elizaphanian (elizaphanian@tiscali.co.uk)
Date: Sun Jun 15 2003 - 15:41:14 BST
Hi Rick, DMB, all,
No need to worry about leaving me hanging on, it's a wonder that any of these conversations can hang
on given all the competing interests and stretches over time (I currently have over 20 messages
flagged as wanting answers/comments!). But I'm excited that you like the thesis, and see links with
Matt's work; I look forward to seeing the end result - as will Matt, I guess.
Anyhow, onto this thread. I think that we need to be a little careful about what counts as 'amor'
here - and therefore, what might count as a manifestation or fulfilment of it. But to set that up,
I'll flesh out my comments on Campbell, now that I don't feel so irritated(!).
Condensing complications savagely, I would say that whereas Christianity and the church started out
as one option amongst many, when Western Europe emerged from the Dark Ages, Christianity had become
the accepted convention. This meant that any reforms had to be made "against" that parent
(mythological/intellectual) pattern, although I think it is thoroughly misleading (actually: it's
factually incorrect) to describe this as a rebellion against the church. (For example, the monastic
reforms centred on Cluny were largely given impetus by the re-acquaintance with the writings of St
Benedict. The monks had thought that they were following Benedict when in fact they were following
custom; so the 'rebellion' against the past took the form of a retrieval not a rejection. Similar
patterns held elsewhere, so I would say that the notion of 'rebellion' against the church is an
anachronism - it is projecting Reformation and post-Reformation models onto pre-Reformation
realities (this is the 'conventional wisdom' that I accused Campbell of participating in. Whether he
in fact does hold such a belief I am happy to leave to Campbell exegetes to determine).) Anyhow, to
get to my point. The mystical approach within Christianity was all about 'theopoesis', ie that you
were made in the image of God and the mystical path was what turned you into a person - you became a
person through being loved and loving God. To tie this in with my 'eudaimonic' thesis, DQ pressure
formed an autonomous self from a third level self; this fourth level self was then able to 'go off
on purposes of its own' - including person to person love, which could not have existed previously.
My point about the Song of Songs stuff is that if you hadn't had this tradition being retrieved due
to the wider cultural renaissance of the time, and being developed within the monastic cultures,
there would never have been the suitable soil for the troubadour tradition to begin. Now, I think it
is fair to say that the church *didn't* have a good attitude to marriage at this time. As Scott
mentions, celibacy became compulsory for priests shortly after this (as much to do with inheriting
property as anti-marriage), but more to the point, there was no church-sanctioned backing for
"amor" - which is what the troubadour tradition catered to. Yet there *was* a church-sanctioned
tradition (deriving from the Song of Songs mysticism I mentioned) which dealt with friendship
between individuals - another important person-to-person fourth level activity IMHO. So clearly the
conflict is not about the role of persons but about the role of sex. And there Christian history
doesn't have a good story. If that's what was being rebelled against, then I will moderate my
irritation!
> RICK
> It would seem to me that if our equation of the 3 loves to the upper 3
> levels is right, then there are several conclusions we can draw about love
> and marriage. Adulterous sex is immoral because it's putting a biological
> pattern of values (eros) over a social one (agape). But more interesting is
> that it would seem putting agape over amor is equally immoral. That is,
> staying socially married to one, while another is your true amor, is also
> immoral. We might be seeing two different 'adulterous' patterns here. An
> immoral 'biological adultery' founded in sex and another kind of adultery
> which maybe we can call something like "emotional cheating" which is not
> itself immoral, but renders the pre-existing marriage immoral because it's
> reduced to a social pattern standing in the way of the higher species of
> love. [I couldn't find the 'sex, lies, and videotape' example in the
> archives so I can't comment on that.]
Okeydokes, this is good. Lets have some 'terminological exactitude'. Let us accept: eros =
biological love (lust?); agape = social love (compassion?); amor = personal love (eudaimonic love?)
(I would prefer 'philos' I think, as 'amor' has various wider connotations that might confuse, but
let's ignore that for the moment, and I also take it for granted that 'intellect' doesn't really
describe what we're talking about here <grin>.)
Now, holding on to Pirsig's point that the levels don't intermingle, I agree that we have two
'ethical' boundaries: eros vs agape, and agape vs amor where, as you point out, it would be just as
immoral to emphasise agape over amor as it is to emphasise eros over agape. So far so good. The
question here is: what is adultery? ie what behaviour relating to marital relations is of low
Quality, and what is not?
Eros over agape - let us call that simple adultery. A person seeks biological satisfaction and sets
aside the claims of the social values, with various undesirable consequences. (Implication - society
is justified in sanctioning those who do this?)
Agape over amor - what is this 'vice'? It is to place social constraints on the activities of an
autonomous individual. Yet, in what contexts would this be 'adultery'? Does this have to have a
biological expression? Your language of 'emotional cheating' comes closer to it, I think.
If we accept some form of person-centred MoQ, rather than intellect-centred, which is what my thesis
is trying to do (that might be a better name for it, come to think of it), then the highest Quality
relationships are those where each of the different levels are satisfied, ie it is erotic,
compassionate and eudaimonic. Can there be a situation where the DQ demands of eudaimonia require
"Eros over agape"?
Let me describe the 'sex, lies and videotape' example, as it is something which represents the
dilemma very well, I think (good film, worth watching). The Andie McDowell character is a) sexually
repressed and b) married to a man who is having an affair (with her sister, I think, although I
could be wrong on that). Along comes a man who is an old friend of the husbands. At the end of the
film, they have sex, and this is presented very much as a liberation, ie a breaking out from (level
3?) bonds into autonomous self-hood. It is still adultery, but it's presented as a righteous act -
and it may well be, I don't know, that's why I asked the question. (But was it an "intellectual"
act - Hmmm ;-)
Yet this is a particularly constructed story, which makes the eudaimonic liberation of the McDowell
character a function of her biological liberation. I wonder how far that is normally the case.
A better example might be the 'Shirley Valentine' story (which British readers might be more
familiar with than others). In this example, a dutiful wife and mother gives up all her social
obligations to go on a holiday to Greece, where she has an affair, yes, but she then abandons that
(it was a threshold) in order to get a job and start up a new life. So here the drive is much
clearer - DQ pressure to autonomy results in the breach of level 3 bonds; the aim wasn't sex but new
life in a wider sense.
The thing is, in each of these cases, there is no real person to person relationship (or if there
once was, it has now died). I would imagine that the real 'vice' is where there IS a person to
person relationship, but that is turned over for either biological reasons (lust) or social reasons
("I don't think you're the sort of person I want to be seen with" - I'm sure there are dramatic
examples of that, but I can't think of any just now. Maybe if Lady Chatterley had decided to reject
Mellors in favour of Lord Chatterley? Or the 80's teen movie "Some Kind of Wonderful" dealt with
these issues a bit). But I think this would be rare, simply because I can't conceive of a fourth
level individual having that much respect for society. Perhaps it might happen in an individual
still struggling out of their social constraints.
I feel this is very fragmentary, but it's an interesting issue.
Sam
"Phaedrus is fascinated too by the description of the motive of 'duty toward self' which is an
almost exact translation of the Sanskrit word 'dharma', sometimes described as the 'one' of the
Hindus. Can the 'dharma' of the Hindus and the 'virtue' of the Ancient Greeks be identical?" - The
Eudaimonic MoQ says yes. "Lightning hits!"
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