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

Allen, one could take the position that A doing C is both a betrayal of B
and A (since A is denying himself fundamentally and thus betraying a need
{for C}); thus A and B could agree that C (being done or not done) is a
betrayal and thus perhaps a harmonious end to the discussion could ensue
without either party denying the denial, denying the betrayal (encompassed
by C being done). Then (perhapsing further) both parties might discuss and
find a C’, an alternative to C that does not present betrayal to either:
such a possible C’ then re-binding them in their efforts to not betray
(themselves or other), such a C’ bringing them together in becoming a new
hearth/trust around which they gather (to-gether)rather than (the old C)
that which divides them in the language of betrayal and the inevitable
endless hostility it affords…

regards

michael the Phantasist

Posted on Monday, March 3rd, 2008 at 6:10 am
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