[Mister Underhill]

Gone for a day and now it’s me who’s scrambling to catch up. I’ll try to keep things succinct.

Aiwendil, any relevance it may have had is now surely unimportant, but I am almost certain that you are in error as regards Plato (Aristotle is up for grabs at present; I make no claims one way or the other). In his Republic, Plato, like Kant, postulates an absolute, objective morality. Virtue is virtue for anyone. Practicing virtue (i.e., being in tune with objective morality) results in a “healthy soul”, while giving in to vice results in a sort of soul-sickness. Where am I going astray? My readings of Kant and Plato (which I grant may both be in error) seem to agree at least on this broad principle.

Physics and astronomy used to be casual hobbies of mine (I have less time to stay current nowadays, alas). My point about physics was that while it can describe in detail how its laws work, it can’t explain why they work. “Whence come I and whither go I? That is the great unfathomable question, the same for every one of us. Science has no answer to it,” said physicist Max Planck. I might add, “And why am I here?” This is neither an ill-formed nor an irrelevant question for a great many people.

You say, “...we can be as strictly rational as possible in admitting further evidence.” I say, we need be only if we conceive of logic as being the highest and most important avenue to truth. Logic and science have little of substance to say about, for instance, creativity – but that does not make creativity any less interesting, less useful, or less real. I contend that, just as we know a great many things about the laws of physics, we also know a great deal about the principles that govern human behavior. Just because they don’t lend themselves well to scientific study and incontrovertible logic doesn’t make them any less interesting or valid.

I find your explanation for personally living a moral lifestyle quite interesting. You seem to be operating on an intuition that there is a rational derivation for morality despite apparent evidence to the contrary. (!)

Legolas – nice post on 10/27 regarding Saruman. It’s an interesting point that in Tolkien, evil often arises out of an intention to do “good”.

Saucepan, it’s easy to hypothesize evil villains who are “fulfilled” by their immoral crimes and achieve “happiness” and “inner peace” only by doing bad, but I’d wager it’s difficult to scare up actual examples outside of fiction. Your argument seems to be that in the vast majority of cases, living a more or less moral lifestyle produces the expected results – healthy relationships, inner contentedness, and happiness – but that since a few possible hypothetical cases may contradict the rule, the rule is invalid. Well, fair enough. But I’d answer that I can just as easily hypothesize situations where the laws of physics don’t apply. You can’t definitively prove me wrong if I hypothesize that somewhere out there in the universe are a few planets that don’t obey the laws of gravitation. But you’d think me silly for arguing such a point when the vast weight of evidence suggests otherwise.

Your moral dilemma regarding Gandalf sacrificing Pippin and Merry to achieve Sauron’s downfall is an interesting one. Your conclusion seems to contradict your theory. An evolutional, societal model of morality would seem to logically endorse the sacrifice of a few (innocent or not) for the good of society. This sort of morality seems to give rise to situational ethics, as you hinted in one of your posts, where the individual good, the good of society at large, and the cost of the sacrifice called for are weighed in every decision.

Lush, you’ve made a characteristically provocative assertion – that people who suppress their immoral impulses are worthy of scorn because they not only have the urge, but they are hypocrites in some sense for not at least honestly following through on the urge. No doubt you have in mind seemingly innocuous and harmless “immoralities”, such as doing the occasional line of coke or hit of X. But we can easily imagine dozens of situations that have more obvious implications. A guy is alone with his passed out date after a night of partying. He feels the urge to have sex with her – to rape her, since she’s in no condition to say either yes or no to his advances. A frustrated mother feels the impulse to shake her baby because he won’t stop crying. A corporate executive feels the impulse to rob the company blind – no matter that his immorality may end up in financial disaster for hundreds of people. Surely in each case we can breathe a sigh of relief if the person is able to suppress the immoral urge?

Even supposedly “harmless” immoralities have deeper consequences. For instance, just by participating in the use of illegal drugs, a person is, at however distant remove, helping to perpetuate the deeply immoral structure that provides those drugs.

I’m hardly a paragon of virtue and I certainly don’t claim to have all the answers. I’m simply suggesting the idea that immoral actions have consequences, and that there can be a world of difference between impulse and action.

I take your point about what your priest says about the divine being unreachable through “works”, and that we are all fallen and corrupted somehow. This sounds like a bit of selective listening though. Check back with your priest on whether or not it is still incumbent upon us to do our best to live up to high moral standards. I think I can guess his answer – unless he’s one of those dudes who sent away to an ad in the back of Rolling Stone to get ordained, in which case he is much less likely to give an answer that would kill your buzz.

Child, great post, and one that brings us back around full circle in some respects, inasmuch as Tolkien strongly comes down on the side of a moral lifestyle being the best, in spite of its challenges, sacrifices, and occasional disappointments. And oddly enough, despite the great number and disparity of reasons why, people here on the thread seem to generally agree.

[ October 29, 2003: Message edited by: Mister Underhill ]