david gordon bain says:
7/5/2008 at 6:51 pm
“The tragedy in the realm of the ethical is to fall between the spell of two equal moral imperatives; thus the subject is constrained by the inextricable fate of failure no matter which he might choose.”
Unless a creative synthesis can be arrived at that circumvents the prospective tragedy on either or both ends of the apparent paradox/ impasse.
david gordon bain, author of dgb philosophy
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david gordon bain says:
8/11/2008 at 7:25 pm
Step outside the realm of the ethical — or at least partly — and you have sufficient room for an even greater human tragedy — whether you choose to call it an ancient Greek tragedy as expounded on later by Nietzsche with a strong Hegelian influence or you choose to believe that these are all simply different archetype examples of what is an inherent division or contradiction in the human psyche — specifically the ethical vs. the unethical, the moral vs. immoral, the narcissistic vs. the anti-narcissistic…
Here the moral imperative — or shall I say dilemma — is simply this: to transgress or not to transgress; to be selfish or to restrain myself on the grounds that my behavior could either hurt somebody else, particularly someone I care deeply about, and/or in the end, it could hurt me more than the simple adventure into unbridled pleasure is worth…
To finish with a Shakespearean flourish — that is the question.
There is no template answer.
As Kierkegaard woud say: either/or.
It’s your life, your decision, your accountability — both to yourself and others. Self-assertiveness, passion, and compassion for others are all important. Choose.
– david gordon bain, Aug. 11th, 2008.
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David Gordon Bain says:
11/9/2008 at 8:35 am
Life is a pendulum swing between 'balance' and 'unbalance', between stretching in different degrees towards one particular brand of extremism, before reaching a point of judgment where one decides that one has had enough of that, and then swinging back again towards the middle, if not past the middle point and out towards the opposite polarity. This pendulum process of life never stops.
This is the Hegelian (or post-Hegelian) 'life-cycle' of thesis, anti-thesis, and synthesis — then start the whole process over again, ideally at a higher state of experience and wisdom but that is certainly not guaranteed because man has a high propensity for narcissism, greed, love, ***, jealousy, envy, hate, unilateralism, power, revenge, imperialism, '*** for tat', destruction, and self-destruction. These factors inevitably undermine the 'ideal' element in the Hegelian evolutionary life cycle, undermine the 'learning from history' factor — and, indeed, add a very common 'tragic' element to the whole process — life and death, evolution and regression, continually hanging in the balance of man's individual and/or collective, reason and/or stupidity.
There is no way of predicting whether man will learn — and/or not learn — individually and/or collectively — from his or her earlier acts of transgression and/or narcissistic/righteous stupidity.
This adds an 'existential, free-will' component to any Hegelian thought of 'predictable historical determinism'.
– dgb, Nov. 9th, 2008.
David Gordon Bain, author of 'Hegel's Hotel: DGB Philosophy'
