Old and New Morality (to Agamus)

[Chris Wright]

Hi Agamus,
Never mind the fascinating life-story, where does your name come from? I'm afraid it reminds me of the word 'animagus' in Harry Potter (a wizard who can transform into an animal), though I imagine the similarity is accidental.

[haselhurst]

Hey Chris,
Your going computer crazy like me!
Fantastic. And I'm really looking forward to these Morality discussions.
Bloody great.
And I don't resort to Tea!
Morally yours,
Geoffrey

PS -What are you studying now, how far progressed?

[Guest]

No need to apologize for the late night ponderings... i find that the earliest morning and the latest nights provide the juciest notions myself often. Here are some of my own:

PART ONE

Allow me to further elaborate, clarify and detail some of the notions that i have found myself unable to escape from. I'll add "Part Two tomorrow, when i get home from this hotel...

G.E. Moore published a work in the early 1900's, Principia Ethica, in which he began a conversation in philosophy that seems to have orbited about his work. Some philosophers see this forum as the only place for philosophy in a post-quantum theory world, a post-WW world, etc., (in, perhaps, a post/past-Modernist world). Where this lies today is an unfathomably complicated question, which i feel offers much to be explored. More on that later.

Principia Ethica was an entirely Morally Realist argument, based on invocation of Platonic Idea-lism. The Wittgensteinian, Linguistic resolve of the crisis manifests, realistically and irrealistically, (in the narrative of Metaethics,) in Ayer & co., fueling later cultural relativistic moral irrealists like Mackie & Co, and o! so many others. The recent Cornell-Realists have advanced interesting Realist positions and workings-out of the issue of Metaethics, though the Irrealist camp enjoys largely undeniable, (and oddly realistic - in a metaphysical sense, not in a morally realist sense,) ideas.

I wonder at what might be called "Opportunistic Prudent Moral Irrealism", when mixed with belief in some of the weirder, recently emerging metaphysical implications of high energy particle physics. The "Chaoists" invoke aether, something which i believe there is much (perhaps?) to be said for. So much of this reflects the problem of language to express what seems to be overtly and explicitly unexpressable, something that reaches out toward hermenutics for a comfortable dialectic, revolving harmoniously about a deeper integration of both podes.

I, personally, feel that extrapolations of the One-ness of things, of the underlying unified metaphysical gum-of-reality, which demonstrate Compassion as the moral understanding (i.e. Schopenhauer 1788-1860),
provide a core for the oscillation of this issue which points toward a kind of Moral Realistic phenomenon, call it the Good, as you will. HOWEVER, i feel that this "truth" can only be known through the Irrealism of the human experience. I "believe" in a morally irrealistic realism, etc. The crisis is pessimism, either way.

Pessimism resolves the largely criticizable Enlightenment-Era Idealism that breathes in the work of minds like Kant, Spinoza, Berkeley, & co. Hume shows later thinkers that there is perhaps a Realistic (*not moral realism now,) back-door if you will, from the absolutism of Idealism. It took the ebullient enthusiasm of Hegel to create a Schopenhauer, his arch-rival, in mind and career. Arthur (Schopenhauer) was a great critic of Kant, inspirer of Wagner, and later, Nietzsche, who - in the wake of Darwin (and a seemingly ominous downfall of Western Monotheim and Monotheistically-based morality, i.e.: Idealism,) argued for a return to Idealism, in the context of Existentialism, (something we can credit Arthur for the birth of,) though in complete rejection of the Pessimistic moral irrealism (or as i like to call Sch.'s Mitleid Hyper-Realistic moral realism...)

There seems to be some refuge from the discourse of the "Old Moralists" in the tradition of Symbolism in literature, (and the thought and writing of everything since then,) which retains the moral (i.e. good-parts:) of pessimism, (symbolism, that is,) though rejects the idea that word can synthesize necessary core concepts. Expressionists seem to find a catharsis in working-through the issue, (i.e. Mann, Adorno, & co.). I wonder at the moral inheritance in works like Ulysses.

*Other things:

-"Agamus" is a secret-name. It is derived from an individual who had difficulty pronouncing his own name "Adam" in his youth. It's a little sad, i know. "Kripaitis" is what should be my surname, though, (long-story), is not. It is a Lithuanian name. My ancestral people lived right near Konigsberg (Kalingrad - Russia, now), the town Kant never left.

*I learned "Black Dragon" fist kung-fu, contemporaneously with my learning of Oolong-brewing Gung-fu style, and only later realized the coinciding of Oolong, (which means Black Dragon,) and my martial studies, and of the fact that Gung/Kung-fu means "with-mastery" or "arete" etc.; SO, i ask you, what kind of tea?

...more to come; sleep insists...

[Chris Wright]

Gosh, what a lot of ists and isms! You shall have to put up with my ignorance of such words, though I will try my hardest to follow. Philosophy at Cambridge must be rigorous indeed.
I will wait for Part Two to reply properly, but just a few things, for now. It all seems very propagandaist to me (see, I can make up ist words too) - these philosophers often seem to be justifying their metaethical theories on vaguely utilitarian principles. For example, Nietzsche, you say, championed 'idealism in the context of existentialism', because he was woried about the political future of Germany! What sort of integrity is this in philosophy? Perhaps I have misunderstood.
An interesting etymology of your name - does this mean your ancestors set their watches by Kant's strolls in the woods, or is that just a myth? I'm sure this proves the interconnectedness of all things - wouldn't you say so, Geoff?
Finally: my tea varies depending upon the function I wish it to fill. For a standard caffeine boost, two and a half cups of Earl Grey are something equivalent, I find, to a decent cup of coffee, and much less bitter. However, if I merely wish to sip hot water for the sake of it, and am worried about the insomnia induced by the Earl Grey dosage, I will follow one of two paths of action: either I will have just one cup of tea, or I will switch to fruit tea, which grows on trees.
Chris
PS - To Geoff: I am now studying English, Maths, Phyics, Italian and Latin, and have exams in all these subjects in one month and five days. These exams will be easy in terms of complexity, hard in terms of memory, and pressurized in terms of time. O, education! Whither wander thee? I would that you might lose your chains and cease to be.