Hugo Fjelsted Alroe (alroe@vip.cybercity.dk)
Sun, 26 Oct 1997 06:33:34 +0100
Bodvar, thanks for your reply:
>This, and what you wrote before, was good Hugo. Even if the "creating
>and fulfilling of roles" idea was a new approach to me (is it from
>Charles Peirce?) I think this interpretation of morals is more in
>line with Pirsig's than the (post- Christian)
>"responsible-for-one's-own-actions" one.
No, it is not straight from Peirce I believe, although Peirce plays a part.
It came to me as part of an answer to the question of what drives evolution
towards ever more complexity, when I wrote my masters thesis (on
evolutionary theory) in 1989, and I did not know Peirce at the time. I dont
believe I have snatched this particular idea from anyone else, but one
never knows. It is closely connected with the idea of actualizations
preventing other actualizations which you refer to below. The ideas behind
it can be found way back in Aristotles potentiality-actuality distinction
(which, come to think of it may have arosen out of the potentiality
involved in arete?), which Peirce later used; Poppers work has many
similarities with Peirce though he apparently did not know Peirce when
doing it, and I was inspired by Poppers work on probability theory back
then. Pirsig discusses something like this as well in the last par of ch.
12 and the first part of ch. 13.
I am not sure I understand your notion of 'the (post-
Christian)"responsible-for-one's-own-actions" moral'?
Bodvar:
>That the "Quality term is identical with the Greek "Areté" is after
>all Pirsig's main thesis. See the section in LILA where he follows
>the RT trail (page 386).
Thank you for that, Bodvar, embarrasingly I had forgotten Pirsig himself
had made that connection (its on p. 433 in the Bantam edition of LILA).
There is a lot of stuff playing around in my sub-conscious mind and I dont
have much to say on what goes on. I thought :-) that this came from a book
I read discussing 'the good' in greek thought, and I can't find my notes on
it right now. Anyway, I used it in a discussion on christian ethics versus
'character-ethics' on another list, a line of thought which originated in
the ethical questions concerning sustainability and a long personal search
for firm ethical ground. The difference I found most important was between
a christian sort of absolute moral, eternal values of good and bad, and a
contextual sort of ethics based on arete, on being true to one self, on
fulfilling ones place in life; trying to avoid the relativism one is faced
with when letting go of the absolute good and bad.
On p. 437 (bantam ed.) Pirsig writes that the greek term arete adressed the
static quality and not the dynamic unlike the Hindu terms. I tend to
disagree with this due to the fact that arete not only meant the static
ability to fill a role, as the arete of the hammer, but also the ability to
develop ones full potential as a human and a citizen, and this seems to
involve dynamic quality.
But perhaps we will never grasp what exactly the greeks meant, and we
should not feel to certain on our interpretations.
Bodvar:
>I seem to think that you Hugo once said that
>the filling of a role/niche closes the window upon other trying to
>reach it. A while back we spoke of other species - primates
>preferably - on the verge of entering the Intellectual level
>(realization of freedom as more valuable than social constraint). I
>think this is true. Humankind has closed the door behind itself. No
>other life form on earth can now develop societies advanced enough to
>support intellect.
Actually, I am not quite sure this is right. I would say that no other _kind_
of intellect can develop, where one is already present. This does not
preclude that other lifeforms or artificial creatures can enter 'our'
actualization of intellect; - in fact this is exactly what I see happening
today. We are teaching various animals different sorts of languages for
instance (such as the sign languages taught to Bonobos), our kind of
languages. And we are creating artificial creatures in our own image. I am
not enthusiastic about the latter, rather I say 'are you sure you know what
you do?' in a sort of anxious way.
>Also do I think that you are right when comparing the Viking's
>seeming callousness to "Areté". In my view the Viking culture was a
>"hibernation" of the arch-quality metaphysics, long after it had been
>replaced by the Subject/Object one (later to become the morals of
>Christianity) in the Middle East/Mediterranian region. The question
>then is if the MOQ is a regression? In my opinion, yes, but in a
>spiral sense; on a higher level.
These ideas on ancient nordic ethics I took from a book with the funny name
'Odin and the harddisc' (only in danish I believe) on the nordic worldview
and moral, written by John Carlsen. He did not link it to arete, but the
similarity is obvious.
Regards
Hugo
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