Date: Sun, 5 Jan 2003 11:58:32 -0800 (PST)
From: "Gary C. Moore" <gospode-AT-yahoo.com>


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Dear Jud,

Unfortunately I concure with most of what you say. Even if a miracle economy was created somehow and poverty wiped out, it seems inevitable that poverty will come back no matter what. Part of that has to do with Adam Smith thesis that labor, not land, is the source of wealth which Marx agreed with. And such labor has to somehow be creative, productive labor, not make-work or bureaucratic paper shuffling. And the few laborers cannot support a growing class of useless paracites like the old, weak, and senile as I am. The implications of this are enormous, and I cannot imagine how any politician is realistically going to deal with this while pretending to be 'democratic.'

Which relates back to "ontological ethics." As I intend it, and Heidegger never directly did, it simply relates to the basic reality of how one MUST deal with other people. The above problem is a good example. Food is more important than art. But saying that food is more important than art, as Sartre tried to, and carrying that out with all its full implications is philosophy. One wants civilization and law so one can keep the bread one earns by the sweat of one's brow. One cannot keep one's bread either in a lawless environment nor in an artistic one. If water is scarce,then water comes first. If someone is seriously trying to kill you, then the survival of the mouth that eats the food and drinks the water comes before anything else. 

These are not things one can ever forget although, unfortunately, one can 'unintentionally' put them on the back-burner through abstractions -- when abstractions become more important than basic ever-present reality. But, as you just reminded me once again, and always need re-reminding, one one speaks of "reality" as if it were a 'thing' itself -- or "Sein" -- instead of "I need food and water and to keep my blood in order to live," then one is putting art, or abstraction, before food, a hierarchy that can never really be achieved very long before the reality of "existents," instead of "existence," intervenes fatally. And yet . . . and yet . . . all language is -- is abstractions. You can't do without language and compeat with those who use language. Yet you cannot survive wholly absorbed in language either.

'Sincerely'

Gary C. Moore

--0-1742391402-1041796712=:3129

HTML VERSION:

Dear Jud,

Unfortunately I concure with most of what you say. Even if a miracle economy was created somehow and poverty wiped out, it seems inevitable that poverty will come back no matter what. Part of that has to do with Adam Smith thesis that labor, not land, is the source of wealth which Marx agreed with. And such labor has to somehow be creative, productive labor, not make-work or bureaucratic paper shuffling. And the few laborers cannot support a growing class of useless paracites like the old, weak, and senile as I am. The implications of this are enormous, and I cannot imagine how any politician is realistically going to deal with this while pretending to be 'democratic.'

Which relates back to "ontological ethics." As I intend it, and Heidegger never directly did, it simply relates to the basic reality of how one MUST deal with other people. The above problem is a good example. Food is more important than art. But saying that food is more important than art, as Sartre tried to, and carrying that out with all its full implications is philosophy. One wants civilization and law so one can keep the bread one earns by the sweat of one's brow. One cannot keep one's bread either in a lawless environment nor in an artistic one. If water is scarce,then water comes first. If someone is seriously trying to kill you, then the survival of the mouth that eats the food and drinks the water comes before anything else.

These are not things one can ever forget although, unfortunately, one can 'unintentionally' put them on the back-burner through abstractions -- when abstractions become more important than basic ever-present reality. But, as you just reminded me once again, and always need re-reminding, one one speaks of "reality" as if it were a 'thing' itself -- or "Sein" -- instead of "I need food and water and to keep my blood in order to live," then one is putting art, or abstraction, before food, a hierarchy that can never really be achieved very long before the reality of "existents," instead of "existence," intervenes fatally. And yet . . . and yet . . . all language is -- is abstractions. You can't do without language and compeat with those who use language. Yet you cannot survive wholly absorbed in language either.

'Sincerely'

Gary C. Moore