Posted on 07/25/2010 1:37:12 PM PDT by betty boop
You have any examples to back this up?
You don't answer direct questions; for instance, what does the word "good" mean to you? What does "evil" mean to you?
#507 kosta to betty boop: "Without looking up a dictionary definition, I would say that to [me] it means something which is implicitly or explicitly beneficial. Evil, on the other hand, is that which is implicitly or explicitly injurious.
Only ten post ago and you don't remember? This is what you call not answering the questions directly? Reality check time, betty boop, big time.
These seem to be pretty direct and simple questions.
And they seem to be pretty simple and direct answers from me.
But no response from you!
Well, I can't help you there betty boop. Perhaps you need to read more. Or pray more, whatever helps. But it is clear that your accusations are baseless and these types of nonsenses you post is what detracts form the topic.
And it seems you're constantly trying to change the subject anyway.
No betty boop, what changes the subject is debunking your unsubstantiated allegations, like now. We are not talking about the topic but about your clearly unfounded claims.
I understand you to be saying that societies are completely free to establish their own criteria...to make whatever changes to them that seem justified
Yes they are, and that's self-evident and easily demonstrable.
(justified by what? the coercive demand of a powerful ruler or ruling group?)
No, I am talking about the society in general. Think of what was considered morally acceptable 50 years ago in this country and what is today. Then think what was morally acceptable in 1776 and what is today.
But this sort of thing strikes me as necessarily a rule of men — which as you know, was something the Framers deeply deplored.
On earth people rule. I don't know of any other rule on this planet. Do you? They decide what is right and what is wrong, individually or in groups. The Founding Fathers included. They felt that what King George was doing was wrong, but many Colonists disagreed. The Framers simply held to a different standard.
Why do you suppose the Framers deplored the idea of a rule of men? Why were they so committed to a rule of law instead?
Because they did not believe in the Bible-backed idea that all authority on earth is from God and must not be questioned. The main Framer, Thomas Jefferson, specifically referred to St. Paul—the chief protagonist of the all-authority-is-from-God idea—as the first corrupter of the doctrines of Jesus.
And is not the "rule of law" also the rule of men? All they did was substitute one ruler with many. We still end up with 0bamas.
Stop being such a cry-baby and THINK for a change.... Stop making these discussions "about me" — who is allegedly being so mean and abusive to kosta!!!
Unlike you, I can substantiate my posts. Unlike you, I am not in the habit of disparaging you for your opinions or associating you with imbecils as you do me (see your post #510). Comparing me to idiots who can't differentiate math from musical notes is not being "allegedly mean" or abusive. That is being mean and abusive.
And what prompted you to liken me to a Laputan was nothing more than my opinion (which you solicited) of what good and evil mean to me personally.
Otherwise, our conversations are a complete waste of time and energy.
I told you pretty much the same thing long time ago, but I wouldn't expect you to remember it given that you don't even seem to recall what happened only ten or so posts ago.
kosta wrote [at #507]: "Without looking up a dictionary definition, I would say that to [me] it means something which is implicitly or explicitly beneficial. Evil, on the other hand, is that which is implicitly or explicitly injurious.
Beneficial/injurious to whom? And why? Who gets to decide what is beneficial or injurious if there is no common, agreed standard of judgment?
And if the standard of judgment is to be your "Good = beneficial and Evil = injurious," you instantly fall into a quagmire of moral relativism. For "one man's good is another man's evil." [E.g., the "might (physical power) = right (to oppress weaker others)" argument of Plato's Gorgias.] Who/what can adjudicate competing claims of this type? Do the weaker others have a right not to be tyrannized, or do they not?
You use the language of "implicitly or explicitly." But what can be implicit or explicit about something that hasn't even been identified yet?
I asked you the two questions, which IMHO you still have not answered. You speak of "beneficial" or "injurious" as if they were mere abstractions; that is, without evidencing any awareness of (1) to whom something is beneficial or injurious or (2) recognition that there is a standard by which to judge such matters that is completely independent of human preferences. If people were free to simply make up their own standards, on the fly as it were, that would be tantamount to having no standard at all.
Of course, although I'm almost totally sure you and I disagree about this, (2) recognizes the existence of universal moral law. The world is the way it is because it is structured by universal laws, physical and moral.
It seems you want to move beyond the moral law, to exist "beyond good and evil."
At least it seems you don't take the moral law very seriously....
Why is that?
lol. You gotta admit, that's pretty funny coming from you, Kosta.
The majority of your posts come in the form of questions to other FReepers.
Doncha think?
Adjustment, concession, accommodation.
The only [sic] possible compromise with evil is abject surrender (see Ayn Rand).
Ayn Rand...hmmm; let's not go there. The reality of life shows that such absolute statements are abjectly false, or just plain unrealistic.
I take your point just the same. I agree that Madison did not literally mean evil with his “necessary evil” remark. It was more a rather unartful “term of art.”
Or simply things that we would normally not prefer, things that are less than the ideal choice, even hurtful.
Which is why I remarked that, despite their remarkable and unmatched achievement, the Founding Fathers didn’t quite hit it square on the screws.
Well said. No one is perfect.
Knowing that the perfection of Mankind is not possible, they nonetheless sought to better the condition of the United States. My conclusion is that they hit it better than anyone who came before, or has come since. I take it from your remarks that you agree.
Yes, and by a long shot.
Referring to the phrase ‘a more perfect union,’ you ask how can perfect be made more perfect. I’ll not insult you by assuming you fail to understand the meaning of the phrase “a more perfect union.” So, I’ll simply ask what you meant by that query.
It's an oxymoron. That which is perfect cannot be made more perfect. In the best case, it is an inelegant way of saying better.
You’ve said a mouthful there, and you would find it instructive to examine exactly what values have been attacked in the Progressives’ drive to demolish, brick by brick, what the Founding Fathers had built, and try to also divine the reason for their attacks against specific values. But, never mind. You’ve demonstrated repeatedly that you don’t want to go there.
I have no idea what you are talking about.
you speculate a misunderstanding or an adulteration of the Rousseau philosophy. Perhaps an adulteration occurred, but I don’t think there was any misunderstanding. The vast majority of the French people were too ignorant to be guilty of a misapprehension of either liberty or reason.
And you think public in general is much better informed about current issues? Do you think the pubic at large is much smarter than the French revolutionaries were? Polls seem to think not by a wide margin. Cable news and other telecommunication devices seem to have done very little to make people "smart." Here is what one research group found:
Since the late 1980s, the emergence of 24-hour cable news as a dominant news source and the explosive growth of the internet have led to major changes in the American public's news habits. But a new nationwide survey finds that the coaxial and digital revolutions and attendant changes in news audience behaviors have had little impact on how much Americans know about national and international affairs.
On average, today's citizens are about as able to name their leaders, and are about as aware of major news events, as was the public nearly 20 years ago.
The vast majority of the French people were too ignorant to be guilty of a misapprehension of either liberty or reason. They were all too happy to serve the interests of the thugs who took control of France
So, what has changed. People don't vote on issues. We have special interest groups who block-vote for a candidate up to 98% simply because he is "one of them."
And so I feel perfectly entitled to ask Kosta questions, and to expect answers. I have some more questions for him, borrowed from Eric Voegelin for the occasion:
...[W]hy do important thinkers like Comte or Marx refuse to apperceive what they perceive quite well? why do they expressly prohibit anybody to ask questions concerning sectors of reality they have excluded from their personal horizon? why do they want to imprison themselves in their restricted horizon and to dogmatize their prison reality as the universal truth? and why do they want to lock up all mankind in the prison of their making? — E. Voegelin, "Remembrance of Things Past," Collected Works of Eric Voegelin, Vol. 12, p. 304f. Emphasis added.Why indeed???
Thank you so much, dear sister in Christ, for writing!
People do. And they do have an agreed standard to which they agree, usually based on their narrowly defined interests.
And if the standard of judgment is to be your "Good = beneficial and Evil = injurious," you instantly fall into a quagmire of moral relativism.
I never said morality was anything but relative. By being a product of a man-made society it can only be relative. Without a society there is no morality.
[E.g., the "might (physical power) = right (to oppress weaker others)" argument of Plato's Gorgias.] Who/what can adjudicate competing claims of this type? Do the weaker others have a right not to be tyrannized, or do they not?
Might is right in reality. We just dress it up in fancy terms to make it look benevolent. You can bring Platon and his imaginary cosmic entities inot this, but I have news for you: they don't exist, except as ideas. There is no such "thing" as Morality floating up in the air.
You use the language of "implicitly or explicitly." But what can be implicit or explicit about something that hasn't even been identified yet?
What? You asked what "good" means to me? The answer is: that which to me appears or is perceived, implicitly or explicitly as benefinical. is that not a direct and complete answer to your question? Or is it just not to your taste?
I asked you the two questions, which IMHO you still have not answered.
Because I didn't answer them to your satisfaction? I know I answered them. You asked for my opinion. I gave it to you.
You speak of "beneficial" or "injurious" as if they were mere abstractions; that is, without evidencing any awareness of (1) to whom something is beneficial or injurious or (2) recognition that there is a standard by which to judge such matters that is completely independent of human preferences
Obviously to whom it applies is to the person answering the question. And what standard are you talkling about? Where is that standard except in human heads?
Well, they do make up their standards, and when a group of people agree that this is their standard as well, then it becomes the common standard.
At some point in our history, the common standard was that the country should be divided along racial lines, equal but separate. Then someone decided to change that standard, and convinced others that this was the way to go. That wasn't so long ago.
Likewise, when the Founders were writing their magnum opus, slavery was the standard, which they actually opposed but were unable to abolish because there was no sufficient political will for that to happen. Another example that the society dictates what is morally upright.
Of course, although I'm almost totally sure you and I disagree about this, (2)[?] recognizes the existence of universal moral law
Yeah, we do disagree on that because there is no evidence of any "universal moral law" in the world; nor is it possible to prove that it "universal moral law" actually "exists" as some imaginary hypostatic entity somewhere in the Platonic cosmos.
At least it seems you don't take the moral law very seriously....
I do. It effects how I live, and what others ca do to me. I am very much aware that the tolerance introduced by the Founders did not take into account that the American society of their day will be radically altered in not such a distant future.
But the changes introduced into the society since then have created a situation where we are facing the real possibility of some communities in the United States eventually introducing sharia law, or that Christians get arrested for advocating Christian books in public (happened already in Muslim-predominant city in the US).
Or that millions of illegal aliens get rewarded for their illegal activity with a citizenship of the country whose laws they loathe; or that any anchor baby dropped on US territory automatically get American citizenship, etc. Isn't this in line with the Founding Father's ideals? sadly I think it is.
All this is a product of the unrestrained rights and freedoms introduced by the Founding Fathers and their liberal philosophy that served their purpose at that time, except that now they seem to work exactly in the opposite direction they were intended to work back then.
I think the Founding Fathers, in their desire to rid the Colonies of what they perceived as morally wrong (tyranny of their supposedly God-appointed King) opened a flood gate that accomplished by a slow process two and a quarter centuries later what took the French Revolution only a few years to achieve.
But, ironically, today it is France that is forbidding burkas and deporting illegally settled Gypsies, while we can't even imagine banning burkas, nor actually enforcing the illegal immigration laws, but rather find it "morally upright" to offer amnesty to those who are illegally here and prefer those who hate America (whether they call themselves Christians, such as Rev. Jeremiah Right, or Muslims) to built their monument of victory on the 911 Ground Zero. Where does this self-destruct phenomenon come from and how does it differ from what the French anarchy achieved except that we do it by the "rule of law?" LOL!
Do you have anything factual to back this claim up or is this just your unsubstantiated opinion?
And this is possible — HOW??? If standards are narrowly defined according to personal interests, then what is there to agree about?
You speak as if you were some kind of "law giver," kosta — evidently you aver statements as if they were already the laws of the universe, without putting up one single shred of evidence to back them.
Case in point: you wrote —
Might is right in reality. We just dress it up in fancy terms to make it look benevolent.Shades of Callicles here! He, the "advocate" of the "might = right" school of thought, confronting Socrates, who will have none of it....
Near the end of Gorgias, that surly cur Callicles threatens Socrates' life. And evidently makes good on it; as we find out in the Apologia.... Evidently the matter in contention is not some idle divertissement, but literally a matter of life and death.... Then and now.
Your answers to my questions so far are neither direct nor complete. It's not a matter of my personal taste; it's a matter of evidence, of logic, of reason.
I don't want your "opinion," Kosta. Doxa is not Logos.
You wrote:
And what standard are you talkling about? Where is that standard except in human heads?If the standard is "in human heads" at all, it is because it first exists in natural reality. If it weren't there already, "human heads" couldn't discover it.
Obviously Voegelin's questions do not apply to me. I don't know whom he had in mind when he wrote those. Let me guess: he was referring to Hitler's Germany? Wasn't he?
So, I see your label-maker works even when it is supposedly turned off. First you compare me to Laputan idiots and now to Hitler's Germany? I can't wait to see what's next.
What did I do to "deserve" dishonor? Because I said the society makes up morality; morality doesn't exist in nature; what is moral is relative; good is what we personally perceive as beneficial, etc.
How does this, in your peculiar mind, justify asking me "why do they expressly prohibit anybody to ask questions?" Can you back this up with examples?
why do they want to imprison themselves in their restricted horizon and to dogmatize their prison reality as the universal truth? and why do they want to lock up all mankind in the prison of their making?
Maybe you should ask yourself that question.
That was no kind of "standard," kosta. It was a rebellion against the universal standard. For purely pecuniary reasons.
No, not specifically in "Remembrance of Things Past."
Perhaps you have in mind his essay, "The German University and German Society."
You don't have to know HOW your TV works in order to know that it works.
Obviously, people agree on specific issues, such as race, sex, form of government, justice, etc. That is a fact, betty boop.
What is "just" in some societies is not just in others. That is also a fact. Put two and two together and you come up with a factual conclusion that justice is relative to the society in question, and that the each society has come up with a standard by some means.
You speak as if you were some kind of "law giver," kosta — evidently you aver statements as if they were already the laws of the universe, without putting up one single shred of evidence to back them.
The evidence is the REAL world around you which you may have left long time ago. The only ones who have no evidence are people who claim there are hypostatic entities, such as the Universal Law and Morality floating around in cosmos.
Oh that somehow "proves" might is not right? Such as America being the superpower has nothing to do with America having some influence in the world? No, of course not. Get real. Maybe reading current political events would be more helpful then some 2500 year-old Greek philosophical escapades.
I don't want your "opinion," Kosta.
Then don't ask me for my opinions.
If the standard is "in human heads" at all, it is because it first exists in natural reality. If it weren't there already, "human heads" couldn't discover it.
Oh yeah, Donald Duck exists in natural reality as a cosmic Platonic hypostasis. Otherwise Walt Disney could not have discovered him. LOL!
Oh yeah, it was all money, like slavery, right? Well then what changed? Was profitable any more>?
How about homosexuality? Up to the mid 1960's for example in England it was "against the law" to be gay. In our country they were officially diagnosed as sexual deviants, people who had a peculiar mental illness. Today the society treats it as the "other" normal [sic]. Was that pecuniary as well?
So, who are the people he addresses his questions to? I don't see the quote you reference.
Well you tell me. All I know is that a whole lot of people who "lobbied" the publishers of psychiatric diagnostic manuals to expunge all references to homosexuality as a "diseased" or "deviant" condition [back in the 1970s] are still highly paid and highly regarded "experts" today (if still living) — in academe and elsewhere. If not they themselves, then their students.... They are the recipients of the "spoils of victory" in a culture war they are determined to dominate, in which they fully expect to prevail against all dissent. By hook or by crook. For the ends justify the means....
[Personally, I suspect that homosexuality has less to do with psychopathology than it does with pneumopathology.... the latter seems to me always involves a sense of grievance against God and the Order He created.]
Nowadays, if it ain't about money, it's about power. And "power" has a magical way of transforming into pecuniary gain for power seekers. Always at other people's expense.
You can't defend yourself against such social predators if you have no truth to stand on. They create "second realities," by which to eclipse the world in which I actually live. But I cannot live in a second reality! For it has no Truth.
Still there are people who evidently believe that if you tell a lie often enough, it acquires a semblance of truth by virtue of sheer repetition.
Do you believe this, kosta?
The quote is at the bottom four lines of p. 304 in the facsimile at your link, and carries over to page 305....
Go look again.
Anyhoot, what's your point? Are you suggesting that I "cheat" WRT my sources???
As to the people Voegelin is addressing in this piece, well I'd opine: Any person interested in preserving his reason and his sanity, in the bedlam of an age that's lost its moorings....
Certainly that would include little moi.
A social system is a complex system; a TV set is a simple system. Why/how do you find any direct comparison between them for your present purposes?
No, Donald Duck doesn't "exist in natural reality as a cosmic Platonic hypostasis." Donald Duck exists as a fictional creation of Walt Disney's mind (a spiritual entity), based to some extent (but not too much) on a naturalistic model or example of "duck," an actual observable creature often found in barnyards or on bodies of water....
If you cannot apperceive the difference between "Donald Duck" and a phenomenal duck, then kiddo, I'd have to say you're pretty far gone already....
Betty,
Please read my earlier post at 520.
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