Day 10
I think that jealousy is often a sincerer form of flattery than imitation.
Today was slow. Went to class, ate food, went to the bathroom a few times, read stuff for class, mulled about in the rain, moped to myself about the cold, won an epic-length facebook chess game, finally. Took all of 50 moves each before the opponent resigned.. there would have been another 10 each had he made me complete the game.
I assume this is true for most people: we want the end results of things more than we usually want the process. Heidegger would be batting me ofer the head, but still, I find this problem apparent when I ponder career possibilities. There are plenty of things I'd like to be, but few things I'd like to become.
Now, something philosophical:
Some moral theories don't get any of the attention that they deserve. I wonder if, for example, moral relativism is so darn popular merely because it is (a) very easy to understand, and (b) with virtually no restrictions. "Morality is what you make it," say so many people I've heard and met, I could not begin to count them all.
I'll borrow a point from the feminists here: "armchair philosophy," conceived by the rationalists, is no advantage to the person engaging in it. Pure reason, as explained by Kant, is blind, while pure experience is meaningless. The feminists note that morality ought to be conceived of more in social terms than in individual terms. Their criticism of moral philosophy's history is that there isn't in fact any such thing as moral autonomy. Not only do all our actions have consequences to ourselves and others, but the decisions we make prior to acting are informed by cultural relations and norms, family relationships, and the like. I personally like the way this applies to theories of democracy.
We often conceive of a democracy as an aggregation of preferences. That is, each individual votes for the candidate that best 'represents' him/her, and all these votes are aggregated such that the candidate who is most prefered wins. This, in my opinion, is very flawed. It's not so much a problem with the system, but a problem with the way we imagine ourselves as independent cogs within it.
Back to the point about moral relativism. It does have a bit of clout in anthropology and sociology, but it breaks down so very quickly. "We must respect the customs of other cultures, even if their customs seem morally wrong to us. Who are we to judge?" But, the moment we are faced with issues such as infanticide, genital mutilation, or India's treatment of the Untouchables, most thinkers qualify their original thought: "Well, of course our respect has to have reasonable limits."
"Reasonable limits"
Or, more to the point, "reasonable." The argument has collapsed in on itself, for 'reason' cannot be any kind of universal moral arbiter, lest the theory no longer be relativism, but something entirely different. Does it surprize anyone that moral relativism is adopted much more often by people who live in privelege; who don't have to worry particularly about direct or systematic injustices being committed against them? Machiavelli's "Prince," was written for somebody in particular, after all.
Today was slow. Went to class, ate food, went to the bathroom a few times, read stuff for class, mulled about in the rain, moped to myself about the cold, won an epic-length facebook chess game, finally. Took all of 50 moves each before the opponent resigned.. there would have been another 10 each had he made me complete the game.
I assume this is true for most people: we want the end results of things more than we usually want the process. Heidegger would be batting me ofer the head, but still, I find this problem apparent when I ponder career possibilities. There are plenty of things I'd like to be, but few things I'd like to become.
Now, something philosophical:
Some moral theories don't get any of the attention that they deserve. I wonder if, for example, moral relativism is so darn popular merely because it is (a) very easy to understand, and (b) with virtually no restrictions. "Morality is what you make it," say so many people I've heard and met, I could not begin to count them all.
I'll borrow a point from the feminists here: "armchair philosophy," conceived by the rationalists, is no advantage to the person engaging in it. Pure reason, as explained by Kant, is blind, while pure experience is meaningless. The feminists note that morality ought to be conceived of more in social terms than in individual terms. Their criticism of moral philosophy's history is that there isn't in fact any such thing as moral autonomy. Not only do all our actions have consequences to ourselves and others, but the decisions we make prior to acting are informed by cultural relations and norms, family relationships, and the like. I personally like the way this applies to theories of democracy.
We often conceive of a democracy as an aggregation of preferences. That is, each individual votes for the candidate that best 'represents' him/her, and all these votes are aggregated such that the candidate who is most prefered wins. This, in my opinion, is very flawed. It's not so much a problem with the system, but a problem with the way we imagine ourselves as independent cogs within it.
Back to the point about moral relativism. It does have a bit of clout in anthropology and sociology, but it breaks down so very quickly. "We must respect the customs of other cultures, even if their customs seem morally wrong to us. Who are we to judge?" But, the moment we are faced with issues such as infanticide, genital mutilation, or India's treatment of the Untouchables, most thinkers qualify their original thought: "Well, of course our respect has to have reasonable limits."
"Reasonable limits"
Or, more to the point, "reasonable." The argument has collapsed in on itself, for 'reason' cannot be any kind of universal moral arbiter, lest the theory no longer be relativism, but something entirely different. Does it surprize anyone that moral relativism is adopted much more often by people who live in privelege; who don't have to worry particularly about direct or systematic injustices being committed against them? Machiavelli's "Prince," was written for somebody in particular, after all.
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