I keep in touch with my oldest daughter at college through this thing called Facebook. Maybe you've heard of it, dryly comments the inventor of the internet; but whatever... .
There are games and apps and quizzes which friends use to interact and all, and she uses it a lot since she's pretty verbal and pretty shy at the same time, and recently she posted a game which was a challenge to open the book closest to you at the moment, go to pg 56 and find the 4th sentence and post it, producing an interestingly random collage of thought. Well... I did it. And since it seemed apropos of a few debates on md, I thought it oughta be reposted here: It's my man Josiah, of course... "My preference for myself is based on a feeling called the selfish interest. But this interest is emotional; it is not based on my postulation of what is not given as real. To allow my interest in myself to determine my conduct is parallel to the imprudent man's allowing short range consequences to govern him." To give you some context, Royce is taking on Schopenhauer here, as I'll illustrate by reading from Kucklick's Intellectual History of Josiah Royce, a page previous to his quote above - which I will analyze in depth in another thread regarding the emotional basis of that great big "S" in SOM. Reading from Kucklick: "For Schopenhauer the goal of life has a 'neutral' worth at best. But human beings can rarely come off 'even', and can never do so while alive; in these circumstances there is little reason for the goal to win men's commitment. Impressed as he is by these conceptions, Royce cannot accept pessimism, and the persuasive arguments he uses against it lead to a solution of the problems of ethics. He first urges that we cannot define life's goal in terms of INDIVIDUAL satisfaction.... 'The one goal is the rendering as full and as definite as possible all the conscious life that at any moment comes within the circle of our influence... ' He also rejects the view that we calculate the goal's worth by a pleasure and pain arithmetic. It is impossible to carry out this summation, and, more importantly, human beings have to make their own appraisal of the value of life. Neither need we believe that the goal we have postulated is unobtainable, as is Schopenhauer's. The union of each being with the whole is achieved, Royce contends, if only in moments. Whatever impresses on each of us his own insignificance and 'the grandeur of the great ocean of conscious activity' accomplishes this end. Self-sacrifice, work for an impersonal end, or even the contemplation of active life may exemplify it. Since we postulate our goal by 'independent volition', we may also choose the extent to which occasional success will compensate for failures to reach it." Since self is volitional, so is the goal of self and the definition of success. I want that one point made perfectly clear. Many feel pessimistic about success in our time or success in our dialogue - but pessimism is not only a choice, it's a self-fulfilling one. So stand rebuked ye naysayers, whomsoever ye may be. Now, back to the emotional basis for being.... Moq_Discuss mailing list Listinfo, Unsubscribing etc. http://lists.moqtalk.org/listinfo.cgi/moq_discuss-moqtalk.org Archives: http://lists.moqtalk.org/pipermail/moq_discuss-moqtalk.org/ http://moq.org.uk/pipermail/moq_discuss_archive/
