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

[Paul Mackin]

OK, pleasure and pain doesn't cut it for a lot of people, though Seb
picked up on it quite nicely. Are pleasure and pain too Freudian
mebbe including the  fact pleasure and pain to some of our brethern (not
to exclude sistern), and speaking in a certain way at least,  conflate all
too readily into each other. The pleasure of GR to not an inconsiderable
extent IS pain. I suppose I did frame my arguments quite heavily in
psychological terms, though necessarily novel-reading IS a supremely
psychological business I think we would have to admit. Trouble is, 
the  alternative to psychology might be to veer more in the direction
of the DISMAL science namely Economics--the Good being the Maximization of
Utility. Bearing on what I think rj alluded to, would it do us any good
discussion-wise to fall back on the Utilitarianism ideas of Benthan and
the Mills--that is that the aim of moral action ought to be the
maximization of the balance of pleasure over pain in the world (back to
p&p though somehow differently). Not sure I see where this would get us
however since it has a slightly sterile feel to it. Worth a try. Heck I'm
nothing if not flexible.


But here's something we all might agree on. Might it be said that both
Heller (RIP) and Pynchon (in GR) clearly wrote about at least ONE kind of
Evil, namely Existential Evil--the Evil consisting of the fact that we ALL
are "fucked" from the word go--one author in terms of military 
regulations, the other based on Christian theology--P's equivalent to
"Catch 22" being "passed over."


			P.