Organization: The American University - University Computing Center
Date: Sat, 19 Dec 1992 14:01:42 EST
From: <HERSCH@auvm.american.edu>
Newsgroups: talk.philosophy.misc,rec.arts.books,alt.politics.homosexuality
Subject: Re: Morally good necessary possible sometimes possible reproductivenes

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.

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.
>
>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.

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--------------------------------

>H>Again, the "nature" that you're alluding to is outside the realm
>H>of rational argument. If you care to believe that there is a "nature"
>H>inherent in men that they couple with women with the telos of
>H>baby-making, and that other sorts of coupling are denials of their
>H>own "essential" "nature", then you are welcome to indulge in that
>H>fancy.
>
>I do, and thank you for your kind permission.
>
>H>      But to make that a premise of a syllogism, and then to
>H>point to the consistency of your logic with a triumphant sneer,
>H>as vitiating everything all your interlocutors say --
>H>well, what have you really accomplished, when you've done that?
>H>I could say "All men have green spiritual emanations.
>H>             Socrates is a man.
>H>             Therefore, Socrates has a green spiritual emanation."
>H>and my logic would be faultless. But since my major premise
>H>is unapproachable in non-mystical terms, the argument is
>H>unassailable outside the bounds of the kind of mysticism that
>H>deals with spiritual-emanation coloration. Your argument occupies
>H>similar territory.
>
>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?

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.

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.

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.

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

So much for "right is whatever I can get away with".
I think I'll repeat that Zeleny is a sesquipedalian jerk, and
refrain from further comment.

H.

Herschel Browne
"The" American University
Newsgroups: talk.philosophy.misc,rec.arts.books,alt.politics.homosexuality