From: johnny moral (johnnymoral@hotmail.com)
Date: Mon Jun 16 2003 - 20:30:34 BST
Sam, Rick, and all (even me),
> SAM
> > 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?)
>
>RICK
>Okay, I'll accept all of that.
Me too, but I want to point out that there is an internal contradiction
there. If the intellectual level love is all about individualization, or
personal, each person seeing themselves as the person to please, their own
eudaimonia the highest goal, how does that relate to loving someone else?
Love ends up being just a tangential side-benefit, if you're lucky: I happen
treat you right because it makes me happy. That's fine, and we do like to
believe that our friends are with us entirely for their own pleasure, and
not out of a sense of duty to us, but are there not times in a marriage when
it is the other person's eudaimonia you are supposed to think about? Are we
not just believing our own white lies? (which is also fine, don't stop
believin') How can eudaimonia reconcile with sacrifice? I don't like to
think that it is just a calculation, a quid pro quo for oral attention later
or future devotion or smug self-satisfaction or something. That said, I DO
believe that the most sublime happiness comes from doing one's duty, and in
a marriage that is loving your spouse (my definition of love is simply doing
what should be done), but I don't see that as a calculation, even if a
person does their duty just to feel better about themselves afterwards.
Well, actually maybe I do think it is less savory than just doing the duty
for the duty's sake, but I approve of it as opposed to not doing the duty at
all. Sometimes we are aware of what we are doing, othertimes we are not, we
can't help that.
Here is one of my favorite poems, please tell me what you think about it:
XIV. If thou must love me, let it be for nought - Elizabeth Barrett
Browning
If thou must love me, let it be for nought
Except for love's sake only. Do not say
"I love her for her smile---her look---her way
Of speaking gently,---for a trick of thought
That falls in well with mine, and certes brought
A sense of pleasant ease on such a day"---
For these things in themselves, Belovèd, may
Be changed, or change for thee,---and love, so wrought,
May be unwrought so. Neither love me for
Thine own dear pity's wiping my cheeks dry,---
A creature might forget to weep, who bore
Thy comfort long, and lose thy love thereby!
But love me for love's sake, that evermore
Thou mayst love on, through love's eternity.
I nominate this poem for the "everything I'm trying to say about morality"
award :-)
>SAM
>The
> > question here is: what is adultery? ...
Main Entry: adul·tery
Pronunciation: &-'d&l-t(&-)rE
Function: noun
Inflected Form(s): plural -ter·ies
Etymology: Middle English, alteration of avoutrie, from Middle French, from
Latin adulterium, from adulter adulterer, back-formation from adulterare
Date: 15th century
: voluntary sexual intercourse between a married man and someone other than
his wife or between a married woman and someone other than her husband; also
: an act of adultery
Adultery requires a penis entering a vagina, which is the defintion of
sexual intercourse. Other forms of genital or mental contact are not
adultery, not even sex. (Same with fornication). Whatever anyone may say
about changing attitudes, sperms and eggs aren't hearing it, they still are
fairly 'archaic' things. None of us are here because of a nipple-pinching
clothespin.
>RICK
>Well, I think it depends on what "sanctions" you have in mind. I think
>legal sanctions are too extreme. Perhaps "disrepute" is the justified
>social sanction.
Stocks would have kept me in line. In Massachusetts, we have a liberal law
that sets a maximum fine of a three years in jail or five hundred dollars.
That's the maximum, we don't stone here anymore.
http://www.state.ma.us/legis/laws/mgl/272-14.htm
>SAM
> > 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.
>
>RICK
>I picked that name because I don't think biology has to be a part of it.
How about if a person is more emotionally attached to work than to their
wife, is that adultery? How does one measure that, anyway? Adultery is
very clear cut, it's entirely biological.
>RICK
>Well, in the legal past, adultery was the only recognized ground for
>divorce.
What convenient snapshot of history are you selecting from now? I think
liberal divorce laws of most states right before the changes in the 70's
were highly evolved and should be what we are use as our standard in this
discussion as the alternative to current laws. Things like abuse,
alcoholism, and neglect were grounds for divorce, but barrenness and getting
fat weren't.
Johnny
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