[MD] What kind of ethical theory is the MOQ?

[ADRIE KINTZIGER]

RTa as the golden ratio of reality/morality?

Stunning piece btw, Mr Buchanan.
greetzz, Adrie

2010/11/24 david buchanan <dmbuchanan at hotmail.com>

>
> Steve said:
> ...The question is, for whatever that situation is, what considerations
> does the MOQer make in order to decide what is moral? .. The answer may be a
> combination of these (consequentialism, deontology, teleology) or none of
> them.
>
>
> dmb says:
> I think it would be pretty tricky to fit the MOQ into any particular type
> of ethical theory, especially if the options are limited to Western
> philosophical theories. As far as I know, there is no Western school of
> thought that says morality goes all the way down. Pirsig thinks that
> "morality" as most people understand it is actually just one kind of
> morality, the social level of morality. He defies conventional notions to
> include everything from subatomic particles to scientific creativity, from
> the bottom all the way to the top. But by tracing the linguistic roots of
> Quality as far back as he can go, he finds a sympathetic view among the
> ancients. In fact, there he finds "exactly what the MOQ was claiming".
>
> Pirsig says, (In Lila, chapter 30):
> "One of Phaedrus' old school texts ..contained a good summary: 'RTA, which
> etymologically stands for 'course' originally meant 'cosmic order', the
> maintenance of which was the purpose of all the gods; and later it also came
> to mean 'right' so that the gods were conceived as preserving the world not
> merely from physical disorder but also from moral chaos. The one idea is
> implicit in the other; and there is order in the universe because its
> control is in righteous hands.'The physical order of the universe is also
> the moral order of the universe. Rta is both. This is exactly what the MOQ
> was claiming. It was not a new idea. It was the oldest idea known to man."
>
> "Dharma, like rta, means 'what holds together'. It is the basis of all
> order. It equals righteousness. It is the ethical code. It is the stable
> condition which gives man perfect satisfaction. Dharma is duty. It is not
> external duty which is arbitrarily imposed by others. It is not any
> artificial set of conventions which can be repealed by legislation. Neither
> is it internal duty which is arbitrarily decided by one's own conscience.
> Dharma is beyond all questions of what is internal and what is external.
> Dharma is Quality itself, the principle of 'rightness' which gives structure
> and purpose to the evolution of all life and to the evolving understanding
> of the universe which life created."
>
>
> dmb continues:
> There is nothing wrong with classifying the MOQ's stance on ethics or
> morality if it helps to make things more intelligible. Both books have
> subtitles that make it pretty clear that morality is very much on the front
> burner. But I also think Pirsig is offering a fairly radical departure from
> the standard views AND his alternative view is about as all-encompassing as
> it can be. For these reasons, putting the MOQ into any of the existing
> theoretical categories probably won't help much. It would probably be more
> useful to reverse the question, if you will. By that I mean it would help to
> clarify these ideas by asking where each of the existing moral and ethical
> theories would fit in the MOQ's moral hierarchy.
>
> Did it ever occur to anyone how odd it is that the ten commandments do not
> include a prohibition of slavery or rape? If you were going to make a top
> ten list of no-nos, would you leave those out? In any case, that sort of
> traditional morality is going to be very different from the kind of thing
> Kant did or Habermas is doing. A professional (medical or legal) ethics
> board is usually going to be much more specific and far more likely to be
> applied in some actual situation than is the work any philosopher is likely
> to be.
>
> I think the MOQ's moral hierarchy is a good way to think about these
> differences. It makes it easy to see that we aren't supposed to pick the
> best moral theory. The social level traditions prohibit lies, theft and
> murder and that's perfectly valid whenever we're talking about human
> behavior. But a medical ethics board is not going to seriously consider the
> commandment to keep the Sabbath Holy. But again, it not that we pick one and
> reject the other so much as apply the most appropriate one, depending on the
> particular issues and circumstances. It's a much broader and more complex
> notion of morality, so broad that all the other moralities fit inside it, if
> you will.
>
>
>
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