[MD] Is Morality innate in the cosmos?

[David M]

Hi

very few people express Hegel's dialectic correctly,
Hegel says that you start with an abstract concept
that you hold up against the 'determinate' concept
that you find emerges from the inadequacy of your
abstract concept until eventually you have to start again
with a better abstract concept. This is a dialectic between
the abstract and the problems of using it to understand
actual experience.

DM


----- Original Message ----- 
From: "Ham Priday" <hampday1 at verizon.net>
To: <moq_discuss at moqtalk.org>
Sent: Tuesday, February 21, 2006 6:40 AM
Subject: Re: [MD] Is Morality innate in the cosmos?



SA (and David) --

What you (SA) were saying about not knowing "what can come out of, or be, in
Nothingness" until it becomes an event was also addressed by Hegel -- the
forerunner of existentialism who came up with the idea that all "being" is
"developmental", and who gave us a 3-stage paradigm for intellectual
progress: 'thesis'--'antithesis'--'synthesis'.  Because Hegel considered
beingness a dynamic reality, he felt that its meaning was implicit in its
"becoming" in the world, using the German term 'Dasein', which apparently
means roughly the same thing.

I found this analysis of Hegel's concept of Being on a philosophy website.
I think you'll see that it parallels your (and Reinier's) thoughts on Being
relative to Nothing.

"For Aristotle, there was nothing more certain that that being=being, or, in
other words, that being is identical with itself, that everything is what it
is.  Hegel does not deny this; but, he adds, it is equally certain that
being tends to become its opposite, nothing, and that both are united in the
concept becoming.  For instance, the truth about this table, for Aristotle,
is that it is a table.  For Hegel, the equally important truth is that it
was a tree, and it "will be" ashes.  The whole truth, for Hegel, is that the
tree became a table and will become ashes.  Thus, becoming, not being, is
the highest expression of reality.  It is also the highest expression of
thought; because then only do we attain the fullest kowledge of a thing when
we know what it was, what it is, and what it will be---in a word, when we
know the history of its development."

The French existentialist Sartre made Hegel's basic concept a psychological
paradigm.  His "Being and Nothingness" characterized man as a creature
burdened with having to create his own identity or "essence" by the exercise
of free choice.  The "essence" Sartre alluded to is a work in progress, just
like Hegel's 'being in the world', until it it is examined postumously as
the completed "event".  Only then does the individual's essence become
history for the world to assess.  Of course, I see this as a horribly
depressing philosophy that completely dismisses subjectivity, spirituality
(which he called "bad faith"), and value, instead positing human Freedom as
something to be dreaded.  (He published several novellas on that theme,
which is still the prevailing philosophy today.)

I also found this excellent digest of Sartre's phenomenalism which includes
his definition of Nothingness:

"For Sartre, Being is objective, it is what is.  Being is in-itself.
Existence, on the other hand, has a subjective quality in relation to human
reality.  Existence refers to the fact that some individual or thing is
present in the world.
Sartre distinguishes between two types of Being: "Being-in-itself"
(être-en-soi) and "Being-for-itself" (être-pour-soi).  Being-in-itself is
non-conscious Being, the Being of existing things or objects of
consciousness.  Being-for-itself is conscious Being, which is conscious of
what it is not.
Being-for-itself is conscious of itself.  Indeed, consciousness can exist
only as engaged in a being conscious of itself.  Being-for-itself is
consciousness of objects, and can be the object of its own consciousness;
i.e. it is conscious that it is conscious of objects.  Consciousness also
includes self-consciousness.
Sartre emphasizes that "all consciousness is consciousness of something."
This is an ontological proof of what appears in consciousness.  If
consciousness can only be consciousness of something other than itself, then
what appears in consciousness must already exist. ...
Nothingness is a state of non-being.  Nothingness does not itself have
Being, but is sustained by Being.  Sartre disagrees with Hegel that Being
and Nothingness are opposite, or are opposed as thesis and antithesis
respectively.  Sartre says that Nothingness is the contradiction, not the
opposite, of Being.  Nothingness is logically subsequent to Being. [?!]
Sartre notes that Kierkegaard described anguish in the face of what the
individual lacks as anguish in the face of freedom, and that Heidegger
considered anguish as the apprehension of Nothingness.  For Kierkegaard,
anguish is consciousness of freedom, whereas fear is dread of something in
the world.
Sartre agrees with both Kierkegaard and Heidegger that anguish is the
recogniton by the Self of the possibility of making choices, and that
anguish is the discovery of Nothingness as future possibility.  For Sartre,
anguish is the discovery that the Self faces Nothingness in the past and the
future, that the Self may nihilate itself, because nothing relieves the Self
of the responsibility for making choices, and nothing guarantees the
validity of the values that are chosen by the Self."

Cheery stuff, eh?  I was on my way to becoming an existentialist back in the
'60s, and actually read all 600 pages of Being and Nothingness, believing at
the time that Sartre had it all figured out.  (I also confess to using a few
of his expressions, like "negation", "beingness", and "hole in the heart of
being" in my thesis, but in a wholly different context.)

Having presented for your edification, and David's amusement, this
abbreviated course in Philosophy 101, I have a few personal thoughts to
express -- mostly for David's benefit.

I acknowledge that Being has a life of its own.  Things are drawn (or
pulled) from nothingness toward certain ends, either by the laws of Nature
or according to the plan of a Designer (the results are the same), and we
have the dust-to-ashes cycle.  I think it's important to include this
evolutionary transition of Being in our concept of the physical world;
otherwise we're just studying the relation of one thing to another in their
(hypothetical) static condition.  Hegel's genius was in pointing out that
Beingness has temporal as well as spacial dimensions; in other words, that
it changes over time in addition to merely occupying space.

However, there is another side to Philosophy: the immanent, subjective,
valuistic side that is too often trashed as "religious baggage" or
"supernaturalism".  It is no longer Freedom that philosophers dread; it's
fear of reverting to the mythos of theism and canonical dogma. Yet, if we
can't derive some meaning or purpose from a philosophy, if it's only an
exercise in dialectical gamesmanship, then what value does it serve?  I
don't know what they teach as Philosophy in universities today; but I do
know that we don't have to preach nihilism to this generation.  We have to
dig our way out of it.

I had wanted to explore Nothingness a bit more in this post but I've run out
of original ideas, and my research on the subject has come up empty.  (I
even found one new website called 'notes on nothing' that opened to reveal a
blank sheet of furled paper!)  Anyway, this was something I decided to get
off my chest.  Perhaps it will give you a better idea of where I'm coming
from.

Essentially yours,
Ham

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