From: zeleny@husc10.harvard.edu (Michael Zeleny)
Newsgroups: talk.philosophy.misc,rec.arts.books,alt.politics.homosexuality
Subject: Re: Morally good necessary possible sometimes possible reproductiveness
Date: 20 Dec 92 00:50:06 GMT
Article-I.D.: husc3.1992Dec19.195008.18707
Organization: The Phallogocentric Cabal

In article <92354.140142HERSCH@auvm.american.edu> 
<HERSCH@auvm.american.edu> (Herschel Browne) writes:

HB:
>Again, little good can come out of arguing with Zeleny; in fact,
>it's difficult to do without feeling dirty. But I would like to
>clear one thing up.

Your preference for masochism and coprophilia has been noted.

>In article <1992Dec18.105621.18663@husc3.harvard.edu>,
>zeleny@husc10.harvard.edu (Michael Zeleny) says:

MZ:
>>>>As a disciple of Stirner, you ought to be happy with this credo.

HB:
>>>God he's a jerk. "Disciple of Stirner"...yeesh. Discipleship
>>>may be something that Zeleny indulges in, in his silly little
>>>Platonic other-world; some of the rest of us are a little more
>>>able to think for ourselves. This is actually just another
>>>"whig interpretation of history" remark, and quite unimpressive.

MZ:
>>Mr H, you brought up Stirner, not I.  Of course, that is just a code
>>word for "right is whatever I can get away with".  Enjoy your moral
>>principles, such as they are.

HB:
>I brought up Stirner on 3 May 1991, not since. I claimed no
>discipleship. I happen to have a copy of the relevant passage.
>Here, then, from 3 May 1991:

>-------------------------begin quotation--------------------------------

HB:
>>>Again, the "nature" that you're alluding to is outside the realm
>>>of rational argument. If you care to believe that there is a "nature"
>>>inherent in men that they couple with women with the telos of
>>>baby-making, and that other sorts of coupling are denials of their
>>>own "essential" "nature", then you are welcome to indulge in that
>>>fancy.

MZ:
>>I do, and thank you for your kind permission.

HB:
>>>      But to make that a premise of a syllogism, and then to
>>>point to the consistency of your logic with a triumphant sneer,
>>>as vitiating everything all your interlocutors say --
>>>well, what have you really accomplished, when you've done that?
>>>I could say "All men have green spiritual emanations.
>>>             Socrates is a man.
>>>             Therefore, Socrates has a green spiritual emanation."
>>>and my logic would be faultless. But since my major premise
>>>is unapproachable in non-mystical terms, the argument is
>>>unassailable outside the bounds of the kind of mysticism that
>>>deals with spiritual-emanation coloration. Your argument occupies
>>>similar territory.

MZ:
>>All arguments rely on unprovable assumptions, substantiated by
>>rhetorical devices, as you undoubtedly know. Shall we test our eristic
>>mettle, my good poof?  But you still haven't told me how you do justice
>>to your nature as a sexual and mortal being.  I see this nature as
>>imposing a moral obligation to choose, whenever possible, a partner of
>>an appropriate gender, age, species, and metabolic status.  Do you
>>think that sexuality and mortality are morally irrelevant?

HB:
>Yes, arguments insescapably rely on unprovable assumptions. Every
>choice we are confronted with in life is reducible to unprovable
>assumptions. But your manner of proceeding is to introduce new
>unprovable assumptions without any particular reason except that
>they serve your argument. Entia non sunt multiplicanda praeter
>necessitatem. The undeniable reality that we must deal in
>unprovable assumptions does not make your particular unprovable
>assumptions desirable. The fact that you introduce them as
>novelties, on the other hand, makes them suspect.

To parrot Gene Ward Smith, not an argument.

HB:
>You've made excruciatingly clear that you see one's "nature" as
>imposing a moral obligation to choose "whenever possible" a
>partner of an "appropriate gender, age, species, and metabolic
>status". Your definitions of those terms, and your support for
>your assertion of the obligation, have been logically specious,
>and shown to be so...oh, perhaps a hundred times by now. You
>continue in your one-man clamor, impervious to all the
>controversion with which you have been confronted.

If defining gender by genotype qualifies as logical speciousness,
you should address your complaints to the Olympic Committee.

HB:
>There are, perhaps, matters of metaphysics involved in your
>questions of mortality and sexuality, as irrelevant as they
>may be to the concerns of real people actually living their
>lives. As you formulate the issues, though, no, I do not
>think there are moral values involved. I think most moral
>issues are wholly bogus, and that most invocations of moral
>issues involve special pleading, self-justification, and
>hypocrisy. On the whole, I think the last word on such questions
>was pronounced by Max Stirner in "Der Einzige und sein Eigentum."
>I wouldn't go quite so far as he went, in some ways; I do believe
>that there is a validity to at least one moral formulation.
>I do believe, for example, that gratuitous cruelty is immoral.
>As I have said before, the only moral "rule" that I find to
>have universal applicability is the golden rule. Note that I
>don't make the extravagant claim that it's an "absolute value,"
>only that it has universal applicability. The claim that loving,
>mutually desired, and pleasurable sexual relations between
>two persons of whatever sex, age, metabolic status, or what
>have you can be, in themselves, immoral is utter nonsense to
>me, as I suspect it is to most people reading this, despite
>all your look-at-me-ain't-I-clever attempts to show that they
>can be.

This is precious indeed.  To renounce Stirnerian discipleship after
having said, with reference to moral issues, that "the last word on such
questions was pronounced by Max Stirner", is a classic instance of
making a distinction without a difference.  As for your doctrine of the
universal applicability of the golden rule, I am not quite prepared to
grant you the license to treat me in accordance with your own projected
coprophiliac masochism, evidenced above.  For that matter, I do not have
to stretch my imagination too far, to envision a fag-basher, who would
feel justified in his action by his sincere desire to be put out of his
misery, should he ever deviate from his standart of sexual probity.  In
my own case, I happen to believe that the ideal social arrangement of
pecuniary matters is constituted by the city of happy debtors, described
by Rabelais; should I then borrow money without intending to ever pay it
back?  In the present instance, I certainly act in accordance with the
golden rule, for I honestly wish that some kindly soul would berate
mercilessly, should I ever come to imitate your manner of a strident
Nancy-boy.  You get what you ask for, Herschie-poo!

>----------------------end of quotation-----------------------------

HB:
>So much for "right is whatever I can get away with".

Mr H, you live in full awareness of the fact that your sexual
proclivities could not be rationally willed upon every human being.  Yet
you persist in your abject depravity, because you like it and can get
away with it.  I rest my case.

HB:
>I think I'll repeat that Zeleny is a sesquipedalian jerk, and
>refrain from further comment.

I bet that you won't.  Any takers?

>H.
>
>Herschel Browne
>"The" American University

cordially,
mikhail zeleny@husc.harvard.edu
"Le cul des femmes est monotone comme l'esprit des hommes."
Xref: sparky talk.philosophy.misc:3011 rec.arts.books:22641 alt.politics.homosexuality:8096