BTZ42: WvB's epigraph and Elie Wiesel

[Mark Kohut]

One of his principles is to say: The tragedy is (often) when an ethical
version is overgeneralized as the 'right' ethical response.

On Sun, Jun 12, 2016 at 10:18 AM, Smoke Teff <smoketeff at gmail.com> wrote:

> Thanks for sending that. It sounds like he is basically defining tragedy
> as an ethical paradox--or at least, an ethical version of one of the ways
> that I understand a paradox, a system in which two or more premises, which
> would seem to preclude one another, nevertheless coexist simultaneously.
>
> On Jun 12, 2016, at 6:29 AM, Mark Kohut <mark.kohut at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> A.C.Bradley was a turn of the 20th Century literary critic, most famous
> for his great work on Shakespeare, and also a literary theorist a bit. I
> learn.
>
> In writing about tragedy, particularly Hegel's influential notions and
> insights, he brings up this concept relevant to our GR, Weisel and general
> ethics conversation.
>
> [Background to Bradley]:  Ethics, because Aristotle's definition, pertains
> to individuals' choices between right or wrong, or what is perceived as
> that.
>
> Fiction, plays, etc. have a number of individuals in interaction, and as
> Hegel offers: tragedies (mostly) happen when two ethical "Goods" in
> themselves clash and cannot or are not compromised. Antigone: right of the
> family (to bury their dead) and
> the rights of the State. Or, the clash of human rights vs divine right of
> kings (then).
>
> Anyway, in talking about such works, most literary works, Bradley uses the
> phrase "ethical totality" to try to capture the concept of layers of
> ethical meanings of the characters in the work and within the author (as we
> can infer it) all wrapped up in a vision.
>
> A--And for this in Life: Bradley is famously scorned (by some) for
> thinking about characters in fiction---Shakespeare's say---as if they were
> "real". [When appropriate,  I add] (my kind of guy, basically)
>
> On Fri, Jun 10, 2016 at 6:43 AM, Mark Kohut <mark.kohut at gmail.com> wrote:
>
>> Universal human rights can provide The framework for the Universal human
>> ethics that you suggest are so deeply fraught.
>> The word 'ethics' and ' morality' can sometimes be defined too
>> small---not done on these threads necessarily--when the meanings and
>> judgments must be all-encompassing.
>> The last time I spoke of p's ' moral vision' here, some objected--because
>> he is more than that too, as I recall.
>> But it is, as with great writers. He sees with a fierce moral
>> intelligence, encompassing judgment (in some way) on Weisel's Germany, on
>> America, on the whole modern world.
>> PS although I know Weisel too superficially to say much, until someone
>> showed me real proof, I prefer to call him wrong on this, for example,
>> rather than dishonest. Yes, a moral judgment, I guess.
>>
>>
>> Sent from my iPhone
>>
>> On Jun 9, 2016, at 1:47 PM, Joseph Tracy <brook7 at sover.net> wrote:
>>
>> > I have to say that Weisel’s analysis and prescription seem dishonest,
>> simplistic, and inadequate, both for their historical inaccuracy as Kai
>> mentions and because of the larger historic failures of ethical systems
>> and teachings. The Torah celebrates ethnic cleansing aginst Canaanites and
>> Philistines as a great moral achievement.  The British Empire in totality
>> was as cruel and racist as Germany in WW2. The British also stopped the
>> African slave trade before the theoretically anti-colonialist  US did
>> without bloodshed.   The hypocrisies of ethical teachings increase as they
>> take political expression. In some ways the assumption that there is a
>> universal ethic that would address the mass violence which plagues humanity
>> is deeply fraught. In other ways the core of most ethical systems would
>> bring peace on earth if only they were embraced without coercion and were
>> flexible and reasonably non violent in application. It is the crisis of the
>> now which shows how we actually fare in this aspiration.   There is more
>> than one voice prophetically  shouting “fire, I see fire".
>> >
>> >
>> > The great difficulty of ethical teaching is the ease with which ethical
>> values are applied unequally, and the ease with which political sysems
>> rooted in violence use the plasticity of ethical ideas to organize armies
>> to steal land and resources and favor those with power. Just say 3 hail
>> Marys and blow them sand niggers away.
>> >
>> > I read Weisel for awhile some years ago. A theme of one of his later
>> books is the portrayal of God as mad, laughing insanely at the human
>> condition. In this work he seems himself honestly and justifiably unsure
>> that there is any foundation in this universe for ethics.   The strength of
>> his work is the degree to which it arouses compassion and resistance to
>> scapegoating.  He turns this social capacity to direct fear and blame into
>> a candle illuminating the infinite dimensions of the humanity of the Jewish
>> soul and by extension the dimensons of every people. If only Jews were
>> protected by the ethos that emerges, then it is destined to be the scaffold
>> for more of the same.
>> >
>> >> On Jun 8, 2016, at 3:55 AM, Kai Frederik Lorentzen <
>> lorentzen at hotmail.de> wrote:
>> >>
>> >>
>> >>> ... ethics. Germany did not make them a compulsory part of education,
>> as all nations now must.
>> >>
>> >> I don't know what this refers to. In a historical perspective, German
>> schoolkids were among the earliest in Europe to receive religious
>> instructions including ethical teaching, because Luther and others thought
>> that parents couldn't do the job properly.
>> >>
>> >>> Ganz allgemein gilt, dass der Religionsunterricht in Deutschland in
>> der Schule eine vergleichsweise starke Stellung besitzt. Darin spiegelt
>> sich geschichtlich gesehen eine Entscheidung der Reformation, die von
>> Anfang an die Schule auch für die religiöse Erziehung in Pflicht genommen
>> hat. Hinter dieser Entscheidung stand wiederum die Wahrnehmung, dass die
>> Eltern in vielen Fällen nicht willens oder in der Lage wären, die religiöse
>> Erziehung zu übernehmen. Deshalb, so etwa Luther, sollte die Schule - und
>> d.h. das Gemeinwesen - in diese Aufgabe eintreten. <
>> >>
>> >> http://www.rpi-loccum.de/material/aufsaetze/frieschw
>> >>
>> >> Sure, this was ethical teaching in the form of Christian religious
>> education (10 commandments, Sermon on the Mount etc.) - philosophy, as in
>> alternative in secular times, wasn't introduced before the 1970s (in
>> socialist East Germany there was a-religious ethical teaching in schools
>> since the late 1940s, though) - and it will certainly not always have been
>> good ethical teaching on how to treat Jews correctly. But to say that
>> Germany had, compared to other European nations, a lack in ethical
>> education appears to me as a pseudo-explanation without empirical basis.
>> Also when you look at philosophy. While Hegel is indeed not very interested
>> in ethics, Kant ("Primat der praktischen Vernunft") puts it in the center
>> of his philosophy! And in 1919 Max Weber said that politicians have to
>> balance out an ethic of moral conviction ("Gesinnungsethik") by an ethic of
>> responsibility ("Verantwortungsethik").
>> >> But perhaps you mean something else?
>> >>
>> >>
>> >>
>> >> On 07.06.2016 16:06, Smoke Teff wrote:
>> >>> I was skimming some of the Weisenburger in advance of leading this
>> next episode, here. Was reading the full source for GR's epigraph, which
>> source Weis calls "a little homily by Wernher von Braun."
>> >>>
>> >>> WvB opens: "Today, more than ever before, our survival--yours and
>> mine and our children's--depends on our adherence to ethical principles.
>> Ethics alone will decide whether atomic energy will be an earthly blessing
>> or the source of mankind's utter destruction."
>> >>>
>> >>> He says the desire for ethical action comes from a belief in A) a
>> Last Judgment and B) an immortal soul "which will cherish the reward or
>> suffer the penalty decreed in a final Judgment."
>> >>>
>> >>>
>> >>> Reminds me of seeing Elie Wiesel speak maybe five or six years ago
>> (with all kinds of protests going on outside the building).
>> >>>
>> >>> He said he has been persistently plagued by the question (from others
>> and from himself) of how WWII Germany, then the most well-educated,
>> culturally/technologically advanced civilization the world had ever known
>> would also be capable of producing such atrocity. And the pursuant question
>> of how something like that might be avoided.
>> >>>
>> >>> He said the answer was ethics. Germany did not make them a compulsory
>> part of education, as all nations now must. Knowledge becomes is at best
>> worthless, at worst dangerous, without ethics.
>> >>>
>> >>> Apologies if I've mentioned this around here before.
>> >
>> > -
>> > Pynchon-l / http://www.waste.org/mail/?list=pynchon-l
>>
>
>
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