I thought you might be interested in this argument I have been having (I only copied my side, but you can find it on Feelies begin a couple of days ago):
Even Nietzsche, the Great Immoralist, is covertly invoking natural law when he posits that
certain values are decadent and certain others conducive to health. Even Freud invokes it
when he supposes that there is a healthy outcome to psycho- sexual development. Even
Marx invokes it when he supposes that society is tending towards some end which will
fulfill the species nature of humanity. Natural law never really went away, it just went
"underground"........
Natural law does not require a belief in God. It only requires a belief that there is an
optimum state for the organism.......
I am afraid that you are mistaken. Man is a social and rational animal, and depends upon
the right ordering of society to fulfill his needs........
So, you do not think that human beings fulfill themselves in society, and through the
exercise of intellect?
Natural law means nothing other than what can be reasonably inferred about how human
beings flourish given their nature. It is utterly unnecessary to hold particular metaphysical
presuppositions, any more than one has to be a Thomist to suppose that one knows what
is a healthy physical state, within limits......
Human beings perennially argue about morality. If it doesn't matter, then we may as well
have slaves on Monday, Wednesday, and Friday, and free them on Tuesday, Thursday,
and Saturday, with wild card Sundays. If it is a question of era, how do we know when the
time of a certain practice has passed, or come again? There is still slavery in the Sudan;
maybe the South shall rise again. If it does matter, than there must be a context, however
inexact, for argument, and the concept of "natural law" provides such a context.......
Shall we be arbitrary, or shall we have a basis of decision?
Well, Steven, one can go a couple of ways with that question. If we create values, but
there is no consensus, then whoever can control the levers of cultural power wins. In that
case, since I want to impose values, it is in my interest to perpetuate certain fictions, such
as that the values I am propagating derive from natural law.....On the other hand,
supposing that I want to find a non- arbitrary basis for seeking consensus, than I have an
interest in hypothesizing that there is substratum of shared values, a primitive conscience,
if you will, that people have because of "human nature", that supplies the grounds of upon
which moral discussion may proceed.......
Well, we have narrowed our points of disagreement sufficiently that I am happy. Sorry
that the urge to sleep closed me down before getting your reply.......
If we have respect for those qualities which define humanity, we will not sanction slavery,
since it reduces people to the status of cattle. Aristotle argued that there are natural slaves.
While it may be true that there are those more suited to servile positions, the very success
of democratic regimes puts the lie to the idea that they need to be treated as wards, and
under perpetual guardianship. That, of course, is the difference between real slavery and
"wage slavery": that the "wage slave" retains substantial control over his affairs. In other
words, whether Aristotle is right to move from the less controversial observation that
some people are suited to servility to the more controversial justification of slavery hinges
on a factual question, that in modern times has been largely resolved......
I have always thought that absoluteness of the fundamental terms, tempered by the
qualifications involved in their application to circumstance, was a better way to look at the
problem......
I do not think that you are grasping the philosophical point. There are varying degrees of
uncertainty in our assertions about things, and some command a high degree of
confidence, while others are much more doubtful. Even if one cannot eliminate the
possibility of revision entirely, there is, for example, a high degree of confidence in the
laws of thermodynamics. "Moral absolutes" are just those fundamental assertions about
the best way for human beings to comport themselves about which we have a high degree
of confidence, despite the possibility of revision. Many moral judgments may be subject to
a higher degree of controversy and doubt. Of course, if you prefer to say that there is
nothing that can be asserted with any confidence about morality, I cannot stop you. But be
it noted that reasonable argument stops at that point, and people either go their own way,
or resort to irrational persuasion or force to get their point of view across.......
If you do not think that humans are observably distinguished from the other animals by
their capacity for speech, culture, and civilization, by their ability to build pyramids and
computers, to write poetry, establish colleges, develop jurisprudence, research the physical
properties of the stars, and engage in just such abstract conversations as this, then I am
not sure what to say......
Natural law theory takes for granted that there is a conflict of motivations in many
instances,which is why society seeks to buttress certain behaviors. There would be no
stern prohibition against adultery if people were never tempted. The very fact that certain
behaviors are widely disapproved of even while widely indulged in is taken by those who
believe in conscience as evidence, since the disapproval and guilt are "against interest". In
any event, the most current contemporary form of the theory would take a Kantian stance,
and invoke free-will as a rational belief, or, if you will, postulate, essential to the
understanding of morality. In this view, there are those who might vindicate a claim to be
insane, or to have diminished capacity, but normally one assumes that there is
responsibility, not necessarily for each action (since there are habitual vices and virtues),
but for one's overall moral disposition, and thus, ultimately, for one's choices.......
As I said to Steven, supposing that values are self-generated rather than discoverable from
the nature of things, there is nothing to constrain one against seeking to further one's
values. It cannot be wrong to impose one's values, nor can it be wrong to found them
on "myth". Since all societies require values, and all core values are equally arbitrary,
there can be no harm in it, and even if there were, there is nothing that constrains us to
condemn the harm. Thus, since alleging a natural law would be an effective rhetorical
device, it is useful to wield. Relativism merely means never having to say you are
sorry for your preferences, or for seeking to impose them.......
First, Marxists were moral relativists, and contributed more than the Nazis to human
misery. Secondly, a good number of Nazis believed a bastardized version of Nietzsche's
moral relativism, and were the most horrific of mass criminals. It is true that beliefs were
involved, but not per se moral beliefs. Thus, relativists have created more havoc than
anyone else......
In any event, relativism does not save one from strong preferences,not even strong
political preferences. Rather, it makes it less likely that one will care if one's preferences
comport with moral truth. What you consider a matter of philosophy is merely a matter of
temperament. People are motivated to rape, pillage, and murder without moral sanction,
why should they not do what they want on a larger stage?
Marxists believed in class morality, in other words, that what was necessary to further the
interests of the working class, as they perceived them, was right, and ordinary scruples
were ridiculed. Nazis believed in race- morality: that anything necessary to advance the
interests of Aryans was right, and ordinary scruples were ridiculed. They were most
certainly relativists........
A relativist believes that there are no moral absolutes, and that values are "group bound",
and largely functional to promote the group to which they belong, right? Then they were
moral relativists. Sorry to break the news.....
You are inferring a moral rule from the equality of beliefs, that therefore you have no right
to impose yourself on others. They are the more consistent relativists, since they did not
have a bad conscience about imposing their values and pursuing their ends. There was no
seduction: it is a bit like Dostoyevsky,"If God does not exist, then everything is
permitted.".........
Yes, they believed they were superior, on supposedly scientific grounds, just as, on
supposedly scientific grounds, Marxists thought that the future belonged to the working
class. Anyway, it doesn't matter much what they believed, since the point is that a
conception of the arbitrariness of their values need not have impeded them in the least,
unless you derive a moral rule from it......
Yes, X, I have read a great deal of Marx. I did not say that it does not matter what they
believed. But it is fruitless to argue over whether or not they lost sight of the implications
of their relativism. You assert that they did because they did not behave the way that you
think relativists should. I say that that does not prove that that they were not relativists,
because relativism does not necessarily entail tolerance. I can be a relativist, understanding
that there is no ultimate ground for my preferences, and yet impose them because they are
my preferences, and the way I would like the world to be. Thus, it was useless to continue
the "yes they did, no they didn't" phase of the argument.......
The problem is the blanket condemnation of conflict. Some things are worth fighting for,
and one does not have to be a zealot to think so. Goldwater merely said," Okay, if you call
the willingness to be combative for principle extremism, then guilty as charged." The issue
should not be the combativeness, but the reasons for it......
There is no line to step over. Each acts according to his preferences. Your preference is
for tolerance, and you would be willing to shoot people to enforce it. The Nazis
preference was for the hegemony of the "Aryan race", and they were willing to shoot
people to enforce that. They did not need to justify it by reference to some ultimate moral
ground, and there were no overarching principles by which they could be criticized......
There is a general duty to conform the positive law to the natural law as much as
circumstances permit. Actually making morality efficacious is doubtless a messy business,
since moral opinions do differ, and conflicting interests vitiate adherence to right. I have a
conflict over John Brown, personally, since I sympathize with the exasperation which
drove him to violence, but also think that he was taking too much upon himself in
challenging the Rule of Law. Had he been treated with clemency by the Federal
Government, it is doubtless that the Civil War would have occurred sooner, and there was
still some hope of resolving things without a general conflagration. On the other hand, I
would have hated to have signed the order of execution.....
Believing that there is a rational framework for discussing morality does not at all cure
moral ambiguity in many situations. In fact, I would assert that thinking that there is a
standard to conform to makes one more hesitant to act in immoderate ways. It is the
relativist, who need not justify anything, because all is a matter of taste, who is more likely
to do whatever he pleases......
You are not under oath, but okay...LOL! Excuse me for using this post as a point of
insertion to clarify matters brought up earlier, but germane to the morals discussion:
I wanted to say something about the Decline of the West, before I forget. I agree with you
that some conservatives denigrate American society too much, and I have said so in
several public forums. But for those of us who believe that Western Civilization is the
source of whatever is valid in the modern world, and that promoting Western Civilization
amounts to helping other societies learn the necessary underpinnings of modernization, the
continued denigration of the West which has become pervasive in academic and left- wing
circles is threatening to the progress of the world, and therefore to the peace and
prosperity of the United States, which has not only idealistic reasons to hope that other
countries adopt democratic capitalism, but which, as a trading nation, is dependent upon
stability and a broad prosperity.
On the home front, it is simply true that the fabric of family life has been frayed in the
liberationist era, to the detriment of children, and that ill- considered social policies have
created an underclass totally unprepared for the world of work and responsibility, and
frequently criminal. I live in the Washington metropolitan area, as you might have guessed,
and recently there were five separate instances of young men shooting other young men
over Eddie Bauer coats, two of them fatal. How many socio- paths can a society afford to
create?
I purposely did not mention the race of the offenders, because it does not matter. There
are white sociopaths. The various school house murders have been perpetrated by whites.
As I have mentioned in the past, my sister- in- law is African- American, and I have a
niece and a nephew of mixed race, and that is fine with me. Not to put too fine a point on
it, the racial world of the '50's sucked. On the other hand, I have been at a conservative
meeting with James Meredith, who integrated Ol' Miss, and as he said, "different times,
different issues". Actually, the clearest proof that the social programs of the '60's were at
best ineffectual, and at worst destructive, is the fact that the ghettoes have become less
livable since the general conditions of blacks in society, including educational and income
levels, have improved.
Perhaps I should not have used the phrase "simply true". But the moral hazards of welfare
are generally agreed upon, the question has usually been how to address them. And even
many liberals agree that there is a cultural problem among the underclass (which is not
only black, but also Hispanic and white, generally migrants from Appalachia or the
Ozarks. In fact, there are many more whites on welfare than blacks, it is the percentages
that make it a "black problem").
Yes, I do think that the main problem in inner city schools is a lack of discipline, and that a
sense of shame and responsibility should be instilled in everyone. That is where the Clinton
stuff comes in. We cannot effectively encourage a sense of honor when the President so
obviously lacks one. Clinton is not responsible for the troubles cited, but we are obliged to
show that we take issues like lying under oath seriously.
No, those Nazis that followed a form of Nietzscheanism simply thought that the strong
imposed themselves upon the weak <edit>, and Marxists simply thought that the ruling
class calls the tune, and that it was inevitable that the proletariat become the ruling class,
and therefore impose its values.....
Racial- morality is founded on nothing other than the sentiments that organically grow
from the Volk, and class- morality is founded on nothing but the sentiments that are
expedient to sustain the way of life particular to the class. They are not based on human
nature, they are not "rational", and they are not universal. On any account, those are
relativistic beliefs......
No, the persons holding those beliefs believed what I said in my last post: that values were
"irrational" expressions of the Volk, or sentiments reflecting the historic experience and
needs of a given class..... |
