From: Mark Steven Heyman (markheyman@infoproconsulting.com)
Date: Tue May 03 2005 - 19:08:19 BST
On 3 May 2005 at 9:12, Sam Norton wrote:
msh said to matt:
The difference, I think, is in the universal accessibility of the
objects of their thought. The concept of liberty, personal
freedom, is immediately accessible to everyone. No one needs to be
told that freedom is better than being buried alive. That the
concept of God is not immediately accessible to everyone is obvious
in that not everyone believes in God. Pirsig's Quality, like Mill's
Liberty, is immediately accessible to everyone. This, I suggest, is
why belief in God is idolatrous and belief in Quality or Freedom or
Liberty or Equality is not.
sam:
I think this is a very revealing exchange. Two things. In saying "No
one needs to be told that freedom is better than being buried alive"
you are comparing an idea to a biological state, not one idea to
another. That seems to beg the question.
msh:
O, c'mon. Would it help if I dropped the metaphor and said "The
idea of being free is more appealing than the idea of being
restricted?"
sam:
But more importantly there are indeed societies where the concept of
personal freedom is incomprehensible. I quote from Alasdair
MacIntyre's 'After Virtue' - he's a philosopher/theologian I greatly
admire.
msh says:
Thanks for the quote, which is beautifully written and which I like
very much. But I can't regard it as evidence that modern people in
general prefer the restrictions of society over their freedom; or
that even the people from MacIntyre's heroic age would be unable to
understand the idea of personal freedom if they were exposed to it.
And maybe I'm just dim today or, as Chomsky says, missing a gene or
something, but I also don't see the connection to my failings as a
philosopher ( which are beyond enumeration, I'm sure), as suggested
by:
sam:
What really strikes me as odd is that, for someone so lucidly
critical of modern ideologies in the political and economic spheres,
you seem remarkably at home with the very same ideology in the
philosophical sphere - which is ironic, in that it is precisely the
ideology which you are here defending which provides the main
justification for the practices which you so cogently condemn
elsewhere.
msh:
As it's not "immediately accessible" to me, could you explain the
connection between what I'm defending here and the ideology "which
provides the main justification for the practices which [ I ] so
cogently condemn elsewhere."
Ironically yours,
Mark Steven Heyman (msh)
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