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

[Terrance F. Flaherty]

Peter Petto wrote:
> 
> Tim Thomas wrote:
> 
> >But the Nazi program of genocide was carried out by real people who had real
> >support for their actions - this is the moral relativism, their actions seem
> >evil to us, but obviously not to them.
> 
> I would not assume that because someone does something, they believe it is
> right. (And there may have been many Nazis who believed their actions were
> moral.)
> 
> But I have on occasion done something that I knew was wrong. And I've known
> many Germans who knew that their wartime actions were wrong at the time.
> 
> Tim went on to say:
> 
> >There are plenty of examples in Pynchons fiction of groups of people sharing
> >alternative moralities eg: the folks aboard the Anubis, the guests at
> >Foppls's "villa" in V. These people exist in their own moral universe. And
> >the morality of relationships between characters - Enzian-Weissmann,
> >Slothrop-Bianca, Katje - whoever... they are all subjective.
> 
> I believe that these "alternative moralities" are both social analogies to
> the cruelty and evils of WW2, and the well from which it erupted.
> 
> 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.
> 
>     p3++


They are very much part of the moral questions posed by the
novel, but if we discuss them in the abstract (are these
acts good or evil) we can easily divert ourselves away from
the moral questions these acts call our attention to in the
novel. I'm not saying that this or that is by its nature
wrong, sinful, immoral, but take one from the text of GR and
lets discuss it. There is no ambiguity. What is happening
with Katje and Pudding? Why does Pointsman want to fuck
children? Why does Marvy want to control another? There is
no ambiguity, whatever we may believe about these acts in
the abstract, in the novel, they are evil.