Platt, Krimel, Arlo and All --
[Platt, to Krimel]:
Pirsig proposes a universal moral order. Postmodernists
propose moral relativism.
[Platt, reconfirming to Arlo]:
Both true, a universal moral "order" that "orders" things according to
their "relative" morality in layers.
A far cry from postmodernism where it's all relative.
Yes, Platt, but on page p.317 of LILA, Pirsig says:
"Morals have no objective reality. You can look through a microscope or
telescope or oscilloscope for the rest of your life and you will never find
a single moral. There aren't any there. They are all in your head."
If morals are all in my head, morality is what is good for me. In other
words, it's relative to the observing subject. By what ontological
principle, then,.does the author posit morality as the order of the
universe? Is he saying that individuals are programmed by the universe to
prefer certain values? If so, we are predetermined (by nature or genetics)
to live out our lives in a prescribed way, which means man is not a free
agent. Or, is he saying that Reality, as Quality, has a moral conscience of
its own that determines the course of evolution? This would suggest a
teleological principle akin to Divine Authority. In either case, individual
behavior is made subordinate to universal law, karma, or a "higher source".
I'm no postmodernist, either, but I happen to be a moral relativist. As a
believer in an absolute primary source, I find myself in the awkward
position of having to defend moral relativity against objectivists who are
holding out for a "Higher Authority". I call your attention to these
paragraphs from Steve Edington's "Confessions of a Moral Relativist".
(Edington is a Unitarian minister.)
"The assumption being made about morality and codes of moral behavior here
is that they are ultimately rooted in some source beyond human experience or
human construction. It could be either in a Deity, however conceived; or in
what our Enlightenment ancestors-Thomas Jefferson, for example-called
'Natural Law.'
"This is a common, and quite understandable, assumption. What parent, for
example, has not said, at some point of exasperation, to his or her child
after running out of offering explanations for a parental command: "Because
I said so, and that's all the reason you need!" ...There may be debate over
just who or what this "I" is that is "saying so" but the idea that Morality
(with a capital 'M') ultimately derives from a fixed source that is beyond
us is a commonly held one. And there are those who firmly hold that to
question, or to deviate from, such an idea is to teeter on the precipice of
a very dangerous chasm called 'moral relativism'.
"Well, teetering or not, I'd like to make the case, the positive case, for
moral relativism today, with my underlying point being that it is really the
only kind of morality there is. A related point is that it is the reality
of moral relativism that calls us, as human beings, to moral responsibility
and moral decision making.
"...Since my concept of God is really that of a Life Force or of a Power
within Ourselves similar to what Ralph Waldo Emerson called the 'Spark of
the Divine' he felt resided in the souls of all people, then I believe we
have this power within ourselves to draw upon as we make our moral choices
and as we take responsibility for them."
My point, of course, is that "moral decision making" is precisely what human
beings are put on earth to do. My "evidence" is that man is the only
creature endowed with the value-sensibility to discriminate good from bad in
a moral context. In other words, man has the power of his own authority,
which is why I object to Morality or Value preferences being attributed to a
higher authority.
I submit that if the primary source--whether it be God, DQ or Essence--were
to control the conduct of mankind or grant him "special favors", there could
be no such thing as an autonomous agent, which in my philosophy is the
'raison d'être' and core morality of man's existence.
Essentially yours,
Ham
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