Hugo Fjelsted Alroe (alroe@vip.cybercity.dk)
Wed, 22 Oct 1997 19:19:33 +0100
Dough wrote:
>Five codes of morality bottom-up, quoting Pirsig on page 345 of the
>Bantum paperback:
>
>"The Metaphysics of Quality says there are not just two codes of morals,
>there are actually five:
>
>Code1 - inorganic-chaotic,
>Code2 - biological-inorganic,
>Code3 - social-biological,
>Code4 - intellectual-social, and
>Code5 - Dynamic-static.
>
>"This last, the Dynamic-static code, says what's good in life isn't
>defined by society or intellect or biology. What's good is freedom from
>domination by any static pattern, but that freedom doesn't have to be
>obtained by the destruction of the patterns themselves."
The way I see it, Pirsig uses 'moral' in an unusual way here (not that I
mind but just to be clear on what we are talking about) where the common
sense of moral is closely connected to the concept of free will. We don't
hold people morally responsible for actions they did not do out of free
willing, whether it is due to war, insanity, self defense, etc. Just like
we don't hold the cat morally responsible for killing the mouse.
The way Pirsig use moral (and value) is obviously different, perhaps more
like the discussions of 'The Good' in ancient Greece and later in theology.
In Greece they used the concept 'arete', which does not really translate
well to english, it is often translated by virtue but it means something
more like full-ness and functionality, 'to fill ones place' (da: fylde);
the arete of a hammer is its ability to fulfill its function as a hammer,
the arete of a warrier is to be a 'proper warrier', filling the role and
life of a warrier. While obviously having to do with value, arete is not
very similar to the present day moral of good and bad.
The wikings had a similar conception of moral, the good people filling
their place in life and society and the not-good (value-less) people not
living a full life, being shallow existences. Hence the wikings would value
the well-done killing in the heat of the moment, because it was well-done,
even if there were no cause to kill. (This does not mean such a need-less
kill did not cause them trouble - fees had to be paid or a feud might
arise.) Kirkegaard similarly distinguished between the proper (or true) and
non-proper existence (da: egentlig og u-egentlig eksistens), where proper
existence is living by the will of one self while non-proper existence is
living by the conventions of society.
Is there a connection between arete and full-ness and the higher value of
higher levels in MoQ? If one takes a very broad view on what evolution is
about, then the evergrowing filling of places, the ongoing simultaneous
creation and filling of 'roles' or 'niches' could be an apropriate picture,
the becoming of levels being a step into a new possibility-space of
existence. (And incidentally, I believe this nothingness, this empty
possibility-space, is the very potency or dynamis which causes evolution.)
Given this evolutionary picture, the morally good (in Pirsigs sense) of
higher levels is that they increase the 'space to fill' of existence, and
hence the world would in a sense be less rich without them. This then,
given that the very existence of higher levels is conditioned on the
constraining or limiting of the possibilities of the already existing, is
this what Pirsig calls a moral code?
Perhaps someone can offer a quote or commentary to cast more light on this?
Regards
Hugo
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