From: Elizaphanian (elizaphanian@tiscali.co.uk)
Date: Tue Jun 17 2003 - 10:40:38 BST
Hi Johnny,
First a question. When addressing a post, what is the proper convention - to address everyone who is
participating, or to address the comments specifically? Twice I put your name on the 'Hi... ' bit,
twice I took it off, because I realised that I hadn't said anything directly to you! I didn't mean
any disrespect by 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?
This is somewhere that I would want to refer to Aristotle, specifically his discussion of friendship
in the Nicomachean Ethics. The highest form comes when there is a shared conception of the good; in
a marriage, there can be a shared commitment to various levels of Quality (eg raising a family) but
I see no contradiction between a pursuit of human flourishing and a (genuine?) love for another
person - ie a commitment to *their* flourishing. And 'using' another person for our own pleasure is
perhaps as far from eudaimonia, as I understand it, as it is possible to get.
The way I see level 4 is that it is only at this point that there comes to be a 'person' in the
relevant sense, so person to person relationships are the fruit and realm of that DQ innovation.
"Seeing themselves as the person to please" - that would be placing level 4 in isolation from level
3, undercutting it, and thereby following a path of self-destruction, as I see things.
> 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 :-)
So the person is the end in themselves, and not instrumental for a separate good? I'm *very* happy
with that - it's exactly what I'm banging on about!
Cheers
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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