GRGR (15): Good & Evil (was Enzian...)

[jporter]

Peter:

>I don't believe GR's little details of coprophagy (I had to look that one
>up), sadomasochism, and pedophilia, are the part of any moral question. I
>see them as the demonstration of an unambiguous moral judgement.


What you see is what you get. GR is not a good place to go looking for
examples of moral behavior, let alone unambiguous moral judgements. There
are lotz of examples in the text that demonstrate the paving properties of
good intentions. But then maybe it is...

I am (admittedly obliquely) reminded of the pope's dilemma vis a vis
Galileo. It took all the best and the brightest of the church to finally
make acceptable the brillance of Aristotle, et. al., the more remarkable,
as the pure light of ancient greece had come streaming in through the dark
moorish lens. Then along comes Gallileo- high priest of the new empiricism-
and disses the authorized Ptolemaic/Aristotelian version of reality, by
cannonizing Copernicus- the first saint of the new secular religion. Under
the circumstances, I think, Urban- a luddite before his time- demonstrated
remarkable patience. Don't you?

After all- what would center the soul of man if man were not found to be
the center of all things? {"women" comes the heckle from stage left- where
is Henny when I need him?} And if the center of the earth is found not to
be that around which everything revolves....well, you know the rest.

It's worth noting, however, that what seemed to really get Galileo in
trouble in  _Dialogue Concerning The Two Chief World Systems, Ptolemaic and
Copernican_  was Galileo's placing in the mouth of his fictional character,
Simplicio- the foil for the scientific argument, and so made to seem as a
"donkey" throughout the book- the very essence of Urban's pet theory: "God
could have made the universe any way he wanted to and still make it appear
[to us] the way it does." The pope didn't like the implications of being
pegged as Simplicio, and again, you know the rest. Even the patience of the
pope is limited.

And therein lies the crux and the beginnings of co-optation. A pynchonian
interpretation might be- to the prevailing power structure, in this case
the pope and the counter-reformation- whatever worked best. The Inquisition
was a working bureaucracy, and Urban VIII was as beholden as any CEO.
Galileo was on the cusp. It would take the growing merchantile class and
their interests awhile to become aware of the fruits of the New Science,
put them into practice, and achieve sufficient wealth and power to "lend"
self-interested support to the next generation of scientists, on whose
talents their new wealth was becoming ever more dependent. Until then
Galileo was on his own.


But what's really interesting, to me anyway, is Urban's argument.
Urban/Simplicio was saying, in effect, that no matter what the empirical
observations of you (Galileo) and Kepler and Copernicus appear to
demostrate, as an article of faith, the earth is the physical and moral
center of the universe. What you see is not what you get. What you get is
the rack. Especially when you're the front man for a whole new way of
seeing, one which places faith in observations. In this century, empiricism
has led to some rude updates. The system of objectivity invented and
applied by Galileo, as glasses for the myopic vision of man, became focused
on man himself, and revealed just how deeply ingrained is the critter's
wish for control, i.e., subjectivity. The scientists have made our bed,
Darwin has stolen our dreams, and now Heisenberg, Bohr and Einstein have
ruined sleep. We lay (lie?) awake in our procrustean bed, waiting for King
Lud. What's left but faith?

Was Urban VIII evil?

I don't know; history is full of twists and turns, but Aristotle sure looks
funny.

jody