I have a great many questions, but let me see if I can narrow their scope by starting with these:
How subjective are increases in aesthetic worth? If Amanda edifies Michelle, who can discern that Michelle is now more valuable? Michelle? Amanda? Me?
Also, I think I’m getting whooshed somewhere. The assignment of value is subjective, and goodness is that which increases value. Let’s say I value physically dominating people. If Michelle falls down a flight of stairs and breaks both of her legs, it will be much easier for me to physically dominate her, so for me, goodness would include “arranging” for Michelle to fall down and break her legs, yes?
Michelle and Amanda. (I added Amanda, since you stipulated that she was the one who lifted Michelle up.)
No. Goodness is about increasing the value of all concerned. If Michelle is devalued in the process, then there was no goodness. That’s very much how the modern Christian fundamentalist church operates. It dehumanizes Michelle with the most hypocritical moral judgments imaginable. (Its congregation wears cotton-wool blends without batting an eye.) It pushes Michelle, not down the stairs, but out of the church.
(Hope this makes the edit window)
That’s the problem with moral judments. They are worthless. They have zero value.
I think this is an important clarification in your definition of goodness. Could you elaborate? For instance, if goodness edifies all parties involved, what about evil? Does evil devalue all parties involved, or only the parties who are the casualties of an evil deed?
Also, if Amanda holds Michelle in great value, but is unwilling or unable to convey that to Michelle, has edification (goodness) taken place? (and the words “unwilling” and “unable” were chosen deliberately).
BTW, I forgot to thank you for sharing the Amanda and Michelle story. Makes me want to bring them some lemonade :).
While you’re at it, could you elaborate on this too?
Evil is simply the obstruction of goodness, and so it may not devalue anyone. It may simply leave all parties with the same aesthetic worth as before. But if there is a devaluation, there is a devaluation only of the party committing the evil. That’s because we’re assuming that goodness has value; therefore, if there is an agent who obstructs goodness, then he is devalued in the sense that he could have done good but did not. In other words, he is worth less aesthetically because he is refusing to edify others. Just like a clock that works is worth more than one that doesn’t.
I think those are two very different questions. Ability, to me, invokes a modal condition. But volition (willingness) invokes a moral decision.
So, I’d say that if Amanda is unable to convey goodness to Michelle (which conveyance I call “love”, but we’ll get to that shortly), then it may be that Michelle is edified in any case. Say, Amanda is in a coma and cannot communicate. Michelle might likely be sitting beside her holding her hand and telling her how much she loves her. Michell is edified by that emotional connection (even if suffering is involved; i.e., the sadness and tragedy of it all, etc.)
However, if Amanda is unwilling to convey goodness to Michelle, and yet she is able, then Amanda is acting as an agent of evil. Michelle is certainly not edified, and Amanda’s own asesthetic worth may lessen.
You know, my wife went over there the next day — what was that, yesterday? Anyway, she introduced herself and showed them some old pictures that she (my wife) had found in an old clutch purse in an old barn on our property. Amanda, having lived in the neighborhood her whole life, verified that the pictures were indeed pictures of the people who lived here until the early 1990s, when the house was right up on the road and had no running water. Amanda told Edlyn that it was a picture when the lady who lived here was much younger. It’s kind of interesting to discover things about the history of one’s home.
There’s really not a lot of elaboration that I can think of to do. Morality, by our definition, is subjective (or internal). Therefore, for say, me, to judge Amanda’s morality would be a foolish exercize in futility. It is a theme that Jesus stressed often. Just don’t judge the morality of other people. Your judgment will be worthless.
Now, you may judge their ethics — how they influence you externally — all you like. Which is exactly what we do with juries and such. But even God Himself does not make moral judgments, according to Jesus.
Simply put, yes. But very well put indeed. It’s very much like how a man loves his wife and does good things for her. Then they have a child. (We’re speaking under normal circumstances here.) The love for the wife does not diminish with the love for the child. If anything, the love for both increases. (And you will find me shortly defining a particlur kind of love (of interest to us) as that which facilitates — or “conveys” as other-wise put it — goodness.)
I disagree. Yes, good and evil are a matter of aesthetics, but they’re also of ethics and morality. Aesthetics as a whole are a matter of ethics and morality. Everything potentially is.
Yeah, well okay, since things are moving along pretty slowly, and only a few of us even care, we may as well take a breather and discuss general philosophy. There are, it seems, as many ways to divide and classify philosophy as there are philosophers.
However, the purporse of these threads is witnessing. And therefore, I am attempting to communicate my ideas to you. In order to do that, I have to make sure that you understand what I mean by words and phrases, and as well, I have to make sure you understand how I divide up philosophy.
For me the overarching discipline called “philosophy” concerns man’s contemplations about himself and about the world around him. Its various divisions (components, subgroups, child-nodes, whatever you wish to call them) are, to me, different ways of examining the same thing. Like a die. Turn it one way, and you see three dots on top. Turn it another, and you see six. And so on
In some ways, I’m actually pretty close to the way Ayn Rand classifies it all. Surely this is not exhaustive, but it’s complete enough for our purpose (which is for me to communicate to you).
Just underneath the highest level itself, “Philosophy”, are these, in no particular order:
Metaphysics: examines the nature of reality
Ontology: examines the nature of existence
Epistemology: examines the nature and source of knowledge
Ehics: examines the relations between man and his fellow man
Morality: examines the inner consciences of men
Aesthetics: examines beauty, state of mind, worth, or value
Politics: examines the nature of government and the governed
There are, then, further sub-groupings. They are of no interest to us, but as a matter of curiosity, logic, mathematics, science, and religion would fall under epistemology as siblings. (Like 3a, 3b, 3c, and 3d). There can be overlaps, of course. Religion, for example, might also fall under morality. And law would fall under 4 as 4a.
And so, based on that model and mapping of philosophy, what I’m talking about when I talk about aesthetics has nothing to do with — unless coincidence interferes — ethics or morality. And granted, sometimes coincidence does interfere.
In any case, for purposes of my witnessing, aesthetics will not be treated as a matther of ethics and morality. Even in other models, to be quite honest and (forgive me) quite blunt, such a statement seems jarring to say the least. And so, even for most other models, I believe, with respect, you have it backwards. Most would say that ethics and morality are a matter of aesthetics.
But here, neither is the case. Ethical judgment is a matter of expediency; moral judgment is a matter of hypocrisy, and aesthetical judgment is a matter of volition.
Sure. I only offered my opinion on that particular point because you were asking for opinions on it. I’m happy to accept your definitions as far as the base of a debate goes.
I’d say pretty much all of those topics overlap, or at least, potentially overlap and therefore require looking into.
Simply by believing that it is so, it is so in the case of ethics, since it is something others need to take into account in their interactions with those that believe so. Morality as a matter of aesthetics depends upon morality requiring value, which I don’t believe it does, and moreover that aesthetics do not depend on morality, which I believe it is possible they do.
I greatly respect your beliefs, Revenant Threshold, and would be a glad participant in a thread of your own, witnessing about your philosophical beliefs. Meanwhile, I’m delighted that you are “happy to accept [my] definitions as far as the base of a debate goes”.
And so, I have assigned good and evil as aesthetical considerations: good being that which edifies or adds value, and evil as that which obstructs goodness. Evil may tear down, devalue, or leave value unchanged. Goodness edifies all agents concerned, but evil tears down or devalues only the agent of evil.
I do realize that a great many analogies can be drawn from this, but I’m going to avoid them because analogics often gets torn to pieces, with the pertinent parts ignored and the irrelevant parts brought up. So I’ll leave the definitions as are.
And now, finally, the greatest aesthetic is love. It is the conduit of goodness.
I define “love” as that which facilitates (or conveys) goodness. Love may be seen as a network with agents as nodes, edifying one another and increasing one another’s worth. To be metaphorical, love is the space-time of aesthetics. It is the fabric of goodness, much like space-time is the fabric of the universe. But here I go with analogies. And so, please be cognizant of the portions that apply, and do not dwell on insignificant irrelevancies where “love is not like the universe because…”. I’m not saying that love is like the universe. (At least, not yet.)
And so this chapter, this part II of the Aesthetics of Jesus, dealing with aesthetics itself, closes with the definition of love. As we will see, this sort of love — which you may call agape (ah-GAH-pay) — is a living thing. But we’ll talk about that at metaphysics time.
That leaves us at the end with the opposite of love. Since this is not an emotional sort of love that we’re talking about, it should not be surprising that its opposite is not hate. The opposite of agape love is, in fact, sin. I define sin as the obstruction of goodness. Sin, therefore, is the exercise of evil, just as love is the exercise of goodness. Love and sin are opposites.
Anyone still with questions? Points of clarification? Just plain complaints? Incidentally, although there are quite many views, I’m glad that only a few of us are participating. It certainly decreases the noise.
I do have one question. It’s not a definitions one, thought it may look like it. Your definitions of good and evil are based upon your definition of aesthetics, which is a matter of volition - it requires a will behind it. Would it be correct to say that as this is so, for something to be good or evil too requires that there’s a will behind it, and specifically a will intending the results as far as value goes?
To use an example; if I give you five pounds as a gift, i’m adding value, and choosing to do so, which makes my action good. If you find five pounds, that acts value, but because there’s no will behind it it is not good (or evil). If this is the case, how would you define that which edifies or adds value but is not the result of volition, and if there is a “larger” definition of that which facilitates that which edifies or addes value (of which love is a subset), what would you define it as?
That’s a great question. And I don’t say that to be patronizing. It really is.
But you see, hypotheticals are always very complicated. Almost any answer can be met with a “yes but”. Or there can be a tweak, and a revised question. Or there can even be a complete misunderstanding. I can see that you have attempted to be as clear as possible, using money as a metaphor for value. However, money is of such a nature that it can often do as much harm as good. Money given to the bum on the corner might end up causing his final heart attack after his buys his crack.
So if you don’t mind, rather than deal with a hypothetical, allow me to generalize your question so that I am dealing with a principle rather than with an out-of-context event. I think the general question is whether agency is required for there to be goodness or evil. And the answer to that is yes.
The universe is neither moral nor immoral. It is amoral (that is, unconcerned with morality). And so serendipitous events are merely the universe unfolding, whether it drops a gold rock at your foot or an asteroid on you head. Aesthetics doesn’t necessarily mean you have been enriched. There is value in self-worth — a new found dignity, a glad heart, satisfaction from being charitable. It is not necessary that you are aesthetically evaluated on the basis of your net worth.
(And let me add that I think you knew that, but a few people are reading, and so.)
Volition is necessary because agency is necessary. It is the volition of the agent that conducts the goodness (or evil), in other words, who decides who (or what) has value and who (or what) does not.
Most often, judgments that we tag as moral ones are in fact aesthetic ones. Moral judgments go something like this: “That pedophile is a monster, a lesser person than I.” While aesthetica’ judgments go something like this: “I cannot for the life of me comprehend what that pedophile finds so attractive about children.” With the moral judgment, you have condemned his morality while accentuating the superiority of your own. With the aesthetical judgment, you are comparing what he values to what you value (adults, by implication).
Consider this parable told by Jesus. (And remember that those who collected taxes for Rome were considered the scum of the earth):
To some who were confident of their own righteousness and looked down on everybody else, Jesus told this parable: "Two men went up to the temple to pray, one a Pharisee and the other a tax collector. The Pharisee stood up and prayed about himself: ‘God, I thank you that I am not like other men—robbers, evildoers, adulterers—or even like this tax collector. I fast twice a week and give a tenth of all I get.’
"But the tax collector stood at a distance. He would not even look up to heaven, but beat his breast and said, ‘God, have mercy on me, a sinner.’
“I tell you that this man, rather than the other, went home justified before God. For everyone who exalts himself will be humbled, and he who humbles himself will be exalted.” – Luke 18:9-14Even in your daily life, consider the difference in how you react to someone who comes up to you blustering about how his time is valuable and you’d better get done what he wants, as opposed to a man who approaches you with humility and respect and asks no more of you than that you tend to his need when you can. Under normal circumstances, you will tend to take the first man down a notch or two, and lift the other man up. You are doing good both ways. The self-important man actually needs an attitude adjustment, and the humble man is appreciative of your kindness.
Same thing happens right here on the board. If someone comes at you with guns ablazing, you will tend to react in kind. But if someone is respectful of your opinions, you will more likely tend to respect his.
Goodness is not always baby cakes and sugar pie. It is sometimes good to intervene with strength of will and even physical force. It is sometimes evil to do nothing.
But no matter how it is sliced, the essential answer to your question is that goodness and evil both require agents — specifically free moral agents. (Agents who are morally free to make aesthetic judgments.)
Lib, before we start the next chapter (or maybe to start the next chapter), could we step back and recap? I would like to go into Part III with a cheat sheet of sorts; a summary of definitions and consequences of those definitions.
To get the ball rolling, could you tweak/correct what I’ve listed below? (An asterisk following a word or phrase means that I didn’t like using that word, but I couldn’t think of anything better)
Aesthetics is the evaluation of worth. Evaluations of value are made by the will.
Ethics and Morality are codified rules of behavior. Ethics are external and intrinsically public (being codified rules of behavior among people formulated by proclamation, e.g., “laws”). Morality is internal and intrinsically private (being internally codified rules of one’s own behavior).
From the above, valuation of a given human being’s behavior in terms of ethical worth is possible*. Valuation of a given human being’s behavior in terms of moral worth is not possible*.
Good and Evil are aesthetic considerations regarding the intrinsic* worth of a given human being. Goodness is anything which edifies/adds/increases the intrinsic worth of all human beings involved. Goodness itself is therefore valuable. Evil is that which obstructs goodness.
The above obviously needs work, that last part especially.
Also, for clarification… because evil devalues only the agent of evil, is evil intrinsically internal/private like morality?
Let’s take a situation where the volition and value result are opposed, then. Imagine if I, intending to do you harm, through my actions actually cause you benefit. My volition is to harm you, while the actual result of my actions was to aid you. How would this be characterised?
This seems more like a case of phrasing, in all honesty. You could just as well say “Irregardless of my own moral situation, that pedophile is in the morally wrong for their actions” and “I am superior in my value-assigning abilities as compared to that pedophile”. Moral judgements don’t have to be self-congratulatory condemnation, and aesthetical judgements can be.
Well, I’d quibble with just stating “The greatest aesthetic is love”, personally. It needs more justification. I’m not arguing with the sentiment, you dig? Just the logical flow. Seems a bit (and I use the word advisedly) incomplete to essentially choose to weight aesthetics using (I’m assuming) aesthetics.
Me too. This is fun. I think it makes us less likely to go off at each other, too.
All right. Fair enough. For whatever reason, I’ve had a really difficult time expressing myself about these matters, and you people have helped me formulate much better expressions. And so if I “correct” or change something you’ve written, I’m confident that it will be some minor nitpick. But sometimes minor nitpicks make a big difference, so let’s see.
Aesthetics is the evaluation of worth. Evaluations of value are made by the will.
Word perfect.
Ethics and Morality are codified rules of behavior. Ethics are external and intrinsically public (being codified rules of behavior among people formulated by proclamation, e.g., “laws”). Morality is internal and intrinsically private (being internally codified rules of one’s own behavior).
Yes, except that I would use law as an example of ethics only in the sense that law is a subset of ethics. There can be other ethical evaluations that are irrespective of law. A Congressional ethics committee, for example, might censure a member for something he did that was not unlawful, but nevertheless beneath the standards of Congress.
From the above, valuation of a given human being’s behavior in terms of ethical worth is possible*. Valuation of a given human being’s behavior in terms of moral worth is not possible*.
That’s correct, and “possible” is the correct word. And just to be clear, the statement is a metaphysical, and not an epistemic one. In other words, it is not the case that an evaluation of moral worth is possible for all we know. It is instead the case that any such evaluation is meaningless to a metaphysical certainty. In still other words, the correct interpretation is one with “possible” as a modal.
It isn’t just the case that you could make a correct moral judgment if only you had enough information and knowledge (which is epistemic). It is the case that you would need to be armed with all knowledge. Perfect knowledge. Knowledge of every possibility and necessity, as well as knowledge of every one of their contrapositives. At that level, a being is omniscient, and the difference between the metaphysical and the epistemic is effectively zero.
It is safe to say, in my opinion, that making moral judgments with respect to other people is a total waste of time. Self-examination, however, can often be edifying, but not necessarily so.
Good and Evil are aesthetic considerations regarding the intrinsic* worth of a given human being. Goodness is anything which edifies/adds/increases the intrinsic worth of all human beings involved. Goodness itself is therefore valuable. Evil is that which obstructs goodness.
I can understand why you chose “intrinsic”, but I believe it might be a word that carries too much baggage and controversy. We could spend time talking about what we mean by intrinsic, but I think we’re really ready to move on.
Maybe instead of “intrinsic”, I might at this point choose the word “perceived”. It is really the moral agent whose perceptions are filtered by their own moral imperfections. Example: although it sounded like the most bizarre defense imaginable, maybe it really is the case that Michael Jackson does himself have the emotional and psychological makeup of a pre-adolescent child. We don’t know. In fact, we can’t know. (That, by the way, is why “possible” was the right word before.) Until man is omniscient, he is unqualified to make moral judgments.
You did pretty damn good, it seems to me. The only thing I did was add some qualifers and caveats.
The old metaphor that evil is like darkness and goodness is like light has gone through a rigorous trial for the past several years, and I believe it has come out on top. The rather gothic argument had been something like this. “Why couldn’t the darkness be considered ‘good’ and light ‘bad’?”. (I realize I’m greatly oversimplyfying the opposition, but I hope I’m not straw-manning it.)
Light is the only sensible choice in analogics to represent the good. Even purely physically — all philosophy, excepting science, aside — light illuminates, it gives life, it radiates heat and causes work. It is the cosomological constant. Darkness is merely the void, which light easily erases.
I think arguments about there being “darkness waves” that deluminate light are so early 21st century now, and are not taken seriously by anyone but twelve-year-old boys who believe they’ve suddenly stumbled upon something that has never occured to any scientist.
And so, evil is like darkness, in the sense of an absence of light. The agent of evil is morally corrupt (because of his moral decisions) and, perhaps more importantly, the agent of evil is aesthetically worthless because of his own aesthetical judgments. On the other hand, there’s the capenter who is looking for a helper. His opinion of a computer programmer is pretty aesthetically worthless, even though it may be morally good. (But whether it is morally good, we cannot know.)
One more example, after which I’ll grant you the mercy of a last paragraph. Suppose you’re walking down a city street, and in an alley-way, you see a well suited man reach out from his BMW and hand a sandwich to a grateful homeless man, sporting a wide smile and giving thanks. You get only this glimpse as you pass by. You might think to yourself, ‘What a good man, giving food to someone more hungry than he’. But unbeknownst to you, the well dressed man in the BMW was executing his plan to lure the homeless man into his car, which he intended to use to take him to a secluded place, where he would rape, torture, and murder him.
“Do not make moral judgments,” Jesus advised, "Lest moral judgments be made of you.
What, are you kidding? You’ve contributed enormously to this attempt at “witnessing”, as it’s called here. Were it not for you, many of my statements would be far more weakly worded. You’re actually helping me to communicate my ideas.
It would characterize you as evil, because you did not consider me to be worthy even of being free from harm. If I benefit from your actions, it is the amoral universe dropping at my feet something that happens to be fortuitous. (You are a part of the universe, and your intentions were thwarted.)
You’re right. I agree.
I agree, and I’m pretty sure that I admitted to some prematurity in making the statement. Or if not, I should have. One aesthetic has no intrinsic superiority over another. Aesthetics are as internal as morality, which account for why there seems, at least, to be some much overlap between them.
That’s exactly what I was thinking. The sheer absence of ad hominems, mistrust, talking past each other, and general thread shitting is what has drawn me to continue with this series.
And I’m going to move on now, since we essentially agree on reasonable meanings of terms and phrases used for the sake of discussing my philosophical position on the Aesthetical Jesus.
Look for Part III. There, we will discuss the metaphysical questions and implications of good, evil, love, and all that. Please be so kind as to take up the new discussions there, and be prepared to leave these behind. We will not rehash what we mean by an ethical judgment, or a moral judgment, or an aesthetical judgment. We will look chiefly at whether goodness, evil, and love are real things. And whether they exist. We’ll cover ontology as though it were a subset of metaphysics, even though I would not necessarily arrange them that way. We will discuss whether there exists an aesthetical imperative.
