Divergence

Most of the propositions and questions to be found in philosophical works are not false but nonsensical. Consequently we cannot give any answer to questions of this kind, but can only point out that they are nonsensical. Most of the propositions and questions of philosophers arise from our failure to understand the logic of our language. (They belong to the same class as the question whether the good is more or less identical than the beautiful.) And it is not surprising that the deepest problems are in fact not problems at all.

Wittgenstein

Quotes for Encryption

"I sit in place for days. There's nothing I want to do, nothing that gets me up. The world is too rotten. I'm not so convinced that existence precedes essence, because what's so inherently bad with the world that we turned out this way? In fact, the material story is quite beautiful. Only with consciousness does death come to life.

'The flaw is in that which finds the flaw.'

Judgment is not the perpetrator; it is perspective. There ought to be no perspective, and I mean that technically. Our bodies tuned to pleasure and pain are not just the framework for evil but its catalyst. Experience turns the eternal dance of atoms into moral pandemonium.

'And whatever's charming disappears, while all things lovely only hurt my head.'

Any fascination with the world is in vain. The charm of physics is mere witchcraft, warped by our metaphysical projections, our conquests for glory and the causality between mind and body, so to speak. Even consequences might be local to our perception, so if there was hope - hope for change - would it just be an illusion?

'Everything was beautiful, and nothing hurt.'

I can't find anything worth living for. Ambition is spoiled by human dominion; I'm bound to this wretched place. Ten billion innocent and harmless creatures are murdered in the United States every year for two reasons: power and pleasure. I can't live with this, and it's only one of society's countless transgressions. I don't understand people, and the only person who might understand me is fictional. I hope there is a God, and I hope he is good."

Aristotle's Naturally Just War for Slavery... Yep

Bk. I, chap. 8 of Aristotle's Politics is littered with complex ideas and notoriously difficult notions. These include slavery, war, justice and the natural. In this particular piece of literature, Aristotle explains that some people are born as natural slaves. Their natures are such that they are instinctively (naturally) submissive and compliant. From Aristotle's other works, such as the Republic, we know that these slaves are the blood in the veins of society. They take care of the dirty work (farming, cooking, cleaning, etc.) so the Greek citizens can spend their time philosophizing and debating about politics, virtues and the higher qualities of life. Concerning the obtainment of these slaves, Aristotle is famously quoted in the Politics bk. I, chap. 8 as saying, "the art of war is a natural art of acquisition." [1256b1137] What he means by this is that war can be justified if its end is the acquisition of natural slaves. Of course, this doesn't mean that anything goes; there is still a strict set of ethical rules that must be followed. So, not only is a war for slaves justified (a seemingly warped notion on its own), but it's natural.

What bugs me is that Aristotle also posited a notion of "natural law" and "natural justice." They each refer to the natural order of the world - the way things were "meant" (I'm not implying a divine creator here) to be. The reason that acts like murder, rape or lying seem wrong is because they are not part of the natural law. They are inherently unjust. Now, it seems to me that there is a problem between Aristotle's notion of natural justice and his idea of a naturally just war in pursuit of slaves. The problem is not that slavery is unjust, but that stealing is unjust. Indeed, it seems that the only reason one would have to wage war for slaves is because one would need to steal slaves from someone else (a different nation or empire, of course). So, assuming theft is not a quality of natural justice (admittedly, I am not aware whether or not Aristotle specifies what natural justice is, but I would guess that it aligns with the virtues, in which case theft would obviously be unjust), a war that aims to essentially steal slaves from someone else cannot be naturally just, as Aristotle claims it is. Perhaps I am missing something, but, if I have not made a terrible misinterpretation or unwarranted assumption, this is a searing contradiction in Aristotle's ethical and political theory.

Whisnant on Moral Responsibility

Rebecca Whisnant, a radical feminist and professor at my school (University of Dayton), claims that one necessary aspect of any fully responsbile moral agent is self-value. In her essay "Woman Centered: A Feminist Ethic of Responsibility," she proposes her own theory of "self-centering" as a way of obtaining proper and actual self-value. She draws her theory partially from recent work by Harry Frankfurt, of which I'll provide an example:

This wholehearted identification means that there is no ambivalence in his attitude towards himself. There is no part of him - no part with which he identifies - that is opposed to or that resists his loving what he loves.

Moral Psychology: Feminist Ethics and Social Theory, p. 209

This particular picture of self-love, i.e., endorsing and identifying with what one loves, is viewed by Whisnant as "distinctive of how one must approach one's own loves in order to be properly self-valuing." (p. 209) Self-centering involves more than this brand of love, but no other aspect of her theory seems to me as controversial as this. Take, for instance, a man consumed and obsessed with pornography. He is ignorant of the relavent moral issues, so he feels no guilt or shame. In fact, he and his buddies all share in the same perverse enthusiasm. Assuming he is content with other aspects of his life, this man is, according to Frankfurt and Whisnant, self-loving, self-centered and a fully functioning morally responsible agent. Do you see the obvious problem here? Whisnant is full-heartedly opposed to pornography and has devoted much of her life to researching and uncovering the direct harms it causes. If she condemns this man, she contradicts her own theory, because he should be functioning as a morally responsible agent, but he is obviously not. This paradox applies not only to pornography but to other immoral habits as well, such as stealing, drug abuse, etc.

It seems to escape this dilemma we must either draw a line between love and immorality, finding a way to demonstrate their incompatibility, or declare those who profess love to any immoral acts as morally inhibited, diminished or incompetent in one way or another effectively disqualifying them as candidates of self-centeredness.

Friedman on Caring

John Doris summarizes Marilyn Friedman's opinion of a certain "care ethic" delegated between men and women as such:

While men's caring, as revealed in earning a paycheck and providing material goods for the family, has to do with protection and material forms of help that men control, women's caring, as revealed in emotional work, has to do with admitting dependency and sharing or losing control, which contributes to their own oppression (Friedman 1993, 175 and 177).

Feminist Moral Psychology, p. 5

At the very least from a Christian perspective, this is outrageous. Ask the next stay at home mom you talk to if she thinks she's oppressing herself by raising her children. Then, after she most likely affirms you of her love for her kids and family and her desire to be there for them, ask her husband if he loves his family. Then, after he tells you the same thing, only that he must subject himself to long days of work in order to provide the basic, necessary materials of life for them, go tell Marilyn Friedman that she is a paranoid, sociopathic propagandist who must be experiencing a reality distorted from the cross so far as to exclude love from the underlying motive of human relations.

Perhaps I am asserting an overly optimistic image of the modern day family, but I assure you that I am aware of the alarming amounts of brokenness that exist today. I am rather, just as Friedman seems to be doing, targeting the "healthy" or "normal" homes of the world. Regardless, the fact remains that this excerpt and the context from which it was taken are not only very far-fetched but also quite dangerous and threaten to tear families apart with, ironically enough if you read the article in its entirety, what could be seen as "deformed desires" of neglecting their families' needs to "reclaim their autonomy" in the minds of household mothers everywhere.

Eagleton on Nietzsche

This is why we would fail as God:

There is a sense in which replacing a transcendent God with an omnipotent humanity alters surprisingly little, as Nietzsche scornfully pointed out. There is still a stable metaphysical center to the world; it is just that it is now us, rather than a deity. And since we are sovereign, bound by no constraints which we do not legislate for ourselves, we can exercise our newfound divinity by indulging among other things in that form of ecstatically creative jouissance known as destruction. In Nietzsche's view, the death of God must also spell the death of Man - that is to say, the end of a certain lordly, overweening humanism - if absolute power is not simply to be transplanted from the one to the other. Otherwise humanism will always be secretly theological. It will be a continuation of God by other means. God will simply live a shadowy afterlife in the form of respectable suburban morality, as indeed he does today. The infinity of Man would simply end up doing service for the eternity of God. In Faustian spirit, Man would fall in love with his own apparently boundless powers, forgetful that God in the doctrine of the Incarnation is shown to be in love with the fleshly, frail, and finite. Besotted by his own infinity, Man would find himself in perpetual danger of developing too fast, overreaching himself and bringing himself to nothing, as in the myth of the Fall.

Reason, Faith, and Revolution, pp. 15-16