Philosophy Now Forum

when last seen, it seems to be that good and evil are the
same thing...depending on which side your bread is buttered....

let us take a larger picture of good and evil... the bible, upon which
much discussion of good and evil, relies on, says this....

"thou shall not kill'''

and yet, the state, does not only kill, but even protects those
who kill.... think of policemen.. such as the ones who
killed George Floyd... if, if we depend on the bible,
then the policemen violated the bible injunction that

''thou shall not kill'''

but some/many argued that the policemen were only doing their
jobs or, they in some fashioned felt threatened... but that isn't
a question then of good vs evil.... that becomes situational ethics...
and situational ethics has nothing to do with good or evil..
the situation dictates the ethics...
and I would suggests that the state, the US Government for example,
practices situational ethics... for example, when the state practices
capital punishment, a state execution, for example, they are not
engaged in the question of good vs evil, for the bible has already
spoken to that fact... the state, according to the bible,
is committing a sin... practicing evil... that is very clear from
the bible... for the biblical statement is this:

''thou shall not kill''

but that leaves no room for interpretation... that the state
may kill if, if it feels threaten.. for that isn't in the bible...
that is an interpretation of the biblical injunction...
the state, can kill if it deems it necessary, just
as an individual can kill if they feel threatened....

but that is no longer about good or evil, that is the practice
of situational ethics... the situation dictates the ethics....
and we have passed outside of the bible when practicing
situational ethics...

to be blunt, there is no such thing as good and evil, if
we are engaged in situational ethics.... as the state
and us individually, practices....

if we have removed the concept of good and evil, in favor
of situational ethics, then how can we call the Holocaust,
for example, evil? recall, the situation dictates the ethics...
Hitler is evil, well if engaging in situational ethics, then
is he still evil? where exactly are you going to be drawing
the line in the sand if a person is evil or not?

Henry Kissinger, who just died, directly or indirectly,
caused the death of an estimated 4 million people...but his
defense was that he was promoting American interest..
his defense was he was protecting America.. defending
America....does that make him good or evil? if he
is practicing situational ethics, then we can't actually
call him good or evil... if the situation dictates the ethics,
then how can we call anyone evil or anyone good?

If we cannot discover who is good or evil, then
how are we to work out rational thought versus
irrational thought? how do we know a thought is
rational or a thought is irrational?

Kropotkin

if we remove the concept of good vs evil,
and basically, the state and us individually,
practices situational ethics, then
there really is no such thing as justice..
justice in Modern day America is based on
situational ethics, and as that is random, chaotic,
full of chance, we must conclude that justice itself
is random, chaotic, situationally and full of chance...

but that isn't how ''Justice'' is portrayed... a blind lady
dispensing justice equally and without bias... but we
know that not to be true.... the case of IQ45 disproves the notion
that we in America, have a system that is just....
Justice in America is biased and thus random, full of chance,
and very, very chaotic...

Kropotkin

to change the topic a bit, I have been reading Kierkegaard for
over 40 years...and in all those years, I have never been able
to put my finger on my discontentment about his writings....

and finally, finally, I figured it out.... as described by William Barrett,
in his book, "Irrational Man"... Barrett writes about one fine day in
Copenhagen, smoking his cigar, he suddenly realized that unlike
many of his peers, he had no career, no occupation...
while many of his peers were becoming celebrated as ''benefactors
of humanity'' by making life easier for the people.. as his cigar
burned down, he thought while everyone else was making life
easier for others, perhaps someone might be needed to make
life hard again, to be a Socrates, as it were...and that being a
''gadfly'' could be a career and a destiny for him.....for me
and apparently for Kierkegaard, any type of life following in
the footsteps of Socrates is a life well spent...

and so K. went on the offensive in his attack on the modern world...
this question of the mass society vs the one/individual was high on
K. list... and one of the many reasons that we should read K.
is his promotion of the individual over the mass society......
and his exploration of the ethical life, and the aesthetical life
and the religious life should be required reading in schools today...
but where I believe that K. failed is in his very basic premise...
how does one become/be a Christian in our modern age?
for K. that is his starting point.... and his biggest failure....
for it is not possible to be a Christian in our modern age,
for the basic reason that we have become too aware of the costs
of being Christain really is...if one reads modern history or science
or political philosophy or even philosophy itself... one becomes
aware of the world outside of, beyond the Christian world....
the only real way to be a Christian is to be ignorant of the modern
disciplines like science or history or philosophy...
or to say another way... god is dead and we have murdered him....
we cannot reanimate the dead and that includes religions and matters
of faith...

to state this in once again another way, think of it like a marriage...
the wife and husband are happy married... the husband, for whatever reason,
cheats on that wife.... once she finds out, she cannot, ever return to their
previous state of being married... the knowledge of adultery has changed
her perception of marriage and of the husband.... a flip has been switched
and that switched, once flipped, cannot be undone...
she might not leave him, but she will never trust him again....
this new knowledge has irrevocably changed their marriage...

just as the new knowledge of science and history and philosophy, will
rent asunder a human being faith in Christianity....the new
knowledge will prevent a faith in Christianity from coming anew...
once faith is lost, it cannot be recovered...it cannot be recreated,
it cannot be reclaimed....it is lost, forever.....and how does a one time
religious person, recover or reacquire faith after it is lost?

K. as far as I can tell, never lost his ''vocation'' of Christianity.....
he never lost the faith... he, at no point in time, became
separated from his faith... and thus Christianity is still possible for
K.....and few, very few exist in that sphere of not having lost their faith...
can one really believe, I mean truly believe as fact, in Santa Claus, once
that faith is broken?

I didn't think so.....

in our modern age, being a Christian is not possible...and thus I
cast doubt on the voice of K..... who lives in a previous time where
faith was once possible... but no more... he lives in the faith of
being Christian when such a faith is no longer possible....
or as Nietzsche once wrote, the last true Christian died on the cross....
everyone else since then has been trying hard, but they are just pale
imitations of the one, true Christian.....

or as my mom once told me, you can't go home again, no really, I changed
the locks after you left... there is no going home again.....

words of wisdom and I suspect, a bit of anger.....

Kropotkin