From: MATTHEW PAUL KUNDERT (mpkundert@students.wisc.edu)
Date: Mon Jul 28 2003 - 21:38:34 BST
Johnny,
There are only two points that I think need closing out on, the broad point of our disagreement and the force of saying "immerse ourselves in culture (or history, etc.)".
Our disagreement is that you don't think its silly to say, "Wrong
things can become right, but it doesn't mean they started out that way," and I do when not doing historical analysis. The thing is, you say "OK" to the part where I distinguish between historical analysis and narratives of progress, but you continue to hammer on the, "If you are not following static patterns, you are immoral." I don't see the point in hammering on this. I think it is silly because today's immorality might be tommorrow's morality.
Now, this isn't to say that I think it silly to say, "Murder is immoral." What I think silly is not saying that "X" is immoral, but saying categorically that if you are not following static patterns, you are immoral. Its a truism and not helpful at all in making decisions. When you are making a decision, you weigh your options and you may know which option is traditionally thought of as immoral. However, your particular situation may present itself as a new particular context that needs a new set of rules, or should allow for an exception. If people follow in your thought that in that particular context there should be an exception, a new static pattern of morality is established. For instance, in "murder is immoral," a possible exception might be in war. God seemed to be fine with that for the Jews when he kept sending them out to kill people. When you start divorcing morality from the context, I think you begin to lose force in saying things about it.
Along those lines, when you say, "What I mean is we shouldn't always be
trying to escape history, we should immerse ourselves in it," I think you are using misleading phrasing. We both agree on the inability to escape history. The difference is that "immerse ourselves in history" loses all force when it isn't counterbalanced by "escape from history." When you take the contingent turn, as we have, there is no counterbalance for immersion. When you say it, it implies that the opposite is an option, whereas for us, we should simply erode away the distinction between immersing and escaping and therefore erode away the force saying, "We should escape from history to someplace transcendental," which consequently erodes the force of saying the opposite. Its a tactical rhetoric point, as far as I can see we basically agree on contingency.
Matt
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