Heidegger

>allen scult wrote:
>
>>> allen scult wrote:
>>>
>>>> Not only do morality and power correlate in the thinking on the
>>>> matter, but morality comes down to power in the raw acting out of
>>>> it. Two people in a long term relationship disagree about a matter
>>>> very important to both of them. As they work the dialectic through,
>>>> they reach the inevitable bottom line: Whose most basic grounding
>>>> moral principle will determine how we leave the matter, now and
>>>> forevermore, through all of history? And of course there’s no one
>>>> outside the two of them who can mediate some sort of compromise:
>>>> They already thought through all of the possibilities. It’s him or
>>>> her.
>>> On the contrary, the counterexample to your analysis is the morality
>>> regarding a parent and child in which the *parent* submits to a lesser
>>> power (as every parent knows when one has a newborn). It would be
>>> immoral to do otherwise, and yet the power relation is decidedly
>>> asymmetrical in favor of the adult. Hence Levinas’ analysis of morality,
>>> not Nietzsche’s.
>>
>> Your counterexample leaves out the determinative element in the
>> scenario: language. The morality Nietzsche speaks of is a linguistic
>> one. Levinas escapes from the dilemma all too easily and obviously.
>> No one can deny the moral thing to do in the face of the other,
>> especially when the other is a child.
>
>Doesn’t the latter undeniability show precisely that morality is *not*
>fundamentally linguistic, since “the raw acting out” between parent and
>newborn is decidedly not determined by the linguistic or power
>asymmetry? With regard to men and women, Nietzsche contends that women
>use trickery, cunning, and deception with regard to appearances to even
>out the obvious power asymmetry. But *none* of this applies to the
>relationship between parent and newborn. The latter is therefore a key
>case in determining whether a philosophical analysis of the ethical
>should prioritize power in the first place.
>

Anthony,

Let me try to make clearer what I had in mind with my example. I was
thinking of two persons, A and B, who are intertwined in a
relationship where what each says and does matters to the other in a
fundamental way. A informs B that it is necessary that he do C, which
B sees as a betrayal of a trust. They have talked through all
possible means of resolution, and it comes down to a bottom line
difference of moral principle. If A does C, it will be a betrayal of
B’s trust( as defined by B, of course, but B is the one being
betrayed). If A doesn’t do C, he will deny himself in a fundamental
way. There is no way for A to convince B that C would not be a
betrayal. Thus if A does C it will be a betrayal of B and betrayal
is something both consider to be immoral. And so morality and
immorality here come down to the incommensurate language in which
each defines the situation. Not exactly philosophy, I admit, but
perhaps something like it.

Allen

Posted on Monday, March 3rd, 2008 at 4:55 am
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