Michael: Would a moral philosopher attach any qualifier to the event of the
lion in your illustration devouring, not a gazelle, but instead, the moral
philosopher?
Geoff C
From: Michael Brady <[email protected]>
Reply-To: [email protected]
To: [email protected]
Subject: Re: Enough "taste"
Date: Mon, 22 Dec 2008 17:23:24 -0500
On Dec 22, 2008, at 4:33 PM, William Conger wrote:
Living according to our elastic and ever-evolving beliefs is a form of
satisfying our desires which is the experience of the beautiful. In this
little plan, any and all experiences can be beautiful. Since we know
that is not the case then either our beliefs are faulty or the beautiful
is left undefined.
In moral philosophy, the will is understood to be directed toward the good
(for the individual), whereas the intellect is directed toward the true.
Desire is an impulse toward a thing, an urge to acquire or attain it, and
thus is a manifestation or expression of the will. It is active.
Beauty, on the other hand, is passive. It is an analytical formulation of
sensory experience, and thus beauty is a virtue of the intellect. Nothing
in nature is beautiful. Or ugly. No natural event is good or bad. Spiders
and slugs and shit are all alike in being neither beautiful or ugly. A
lion eating a gazelle, a fire consuming animals in the trees, crustaceans
crushed by the waves, all of these events are neither good or bad. And
because beauty is a perception that occurs at a distance, it is not a
quality that inheres in things in the world but a human (moral) conclusion
about their appearances.
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Michael Brady
[email protected]
