[MD] Social Darwinism

[david buchanan]

Krimel said to SA:
Have betterness as your central thought is problematic. It leaves open the 
question of worseness. In theological circles similar arguments caused 
similar problems. The existence of evil has been used often as a proof for 
the non-existence of God. The devout offer up all kinds of theodicies to 
discount this critique but frankly they are all pretty lame. You are seeing 
basically the same thing here.

dmb says:
Worse is just the negative face of better, so your first objection makes no 
sense. And I think you have the theology backwards in at least two different 
ways. I was recently re-reading William Barrett's "Irrational Man: A Study 
in Existential Philosophy" and there the author explains Heidegger's 
critique of Western Philosophy, which is amazingly like Pirsig's. They both 
take sides with the pre-Socrtatic thinkers against Plato's moves to 
encapsulate or intellectualize "truth". They both think Aristotle made 
things much, much worse than that. They both think that Western Philosophy 
lost something big in this developement. Heidegger's critique is of a thing 
called the "metaphysics of presence", which is pretty much what Pirsig means 
by the "metaphysics of substance". They both attack subject-object dualism 
as thee manifestation of this ancient metaphysical regime and they both 
offer a kind of Taoism as an alternative to it. (see "Heidegger's Hidden 
Sources".) Barrett explains how this same metaphysical mistake found its way 
into theology and more specifically he points to the move St. Thomas Aquinas 
made in saying that evil "has no being in things". This was an attempt to 
bannish evil from the universe because a perfect God would never create such 
a thing. But the faulty logic of this is exposed, Barrett points out, when 
we consider the case of a man who has just gone blind. Using the logic of 
Aquinas, vision is a real thing but the absence of vision is not a real 
thing. This is where we get the phrase "absence of the good". Thus evil was 
explained away. It has no existience as such but it rather the label we 
apply to an absence. In the same sense, blindness has no being in things 
either. But, as Barrett points out, for the man who suffers from it, it is 
as crushing as a brick being dropped on his head. It is the most 
overwhelming fact of his life. And denying the reality of blindness and evil 
is thus exposed as completely ridiculous and a bit cruel too. So anyway, the 
existence of God was used to deny the reality of evil, not the other way 
around. And the assertion of betterness does not deny worseness. Not at all. 
Betterness means nothing except in relation to worseness. Its a relational 
concept. This commone critique by Pirsig and Heidegger is an attack on 
theism and scientism, both of which use the same dualistic metaphysical 
assumptions, assumptions that are so completely ubiquitous in the West that 
alternatives are hardly available except by going East or looking among the 
pre-Socratics. Somehow you've managed to convince yourself that Taosim is 
compatible with your scientific outlook but not with the MOQ. That is also 
backwards.

dmb

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