In my instinctive standards I am essentially Parmenidean, like Nietzsche.
My premise is pure skeptic empiricism, I dont take words to define contexts, but contexts to define words; so let me give you a Parmenidean context.
The world is evidently necessary, and necessity is good. For If one uses the word good at all, it would be insane to understand good as anything other than necessary.
From the certainty that the worlds existence is good, it follows that value conflicts are good.
This is not the end-all to VO. The word is the end-all to it and the world has no end. But it is a tangent you can follow into the curve I’m riding.
You’re not wrong. Essentially all clarity comes in the form of a question. It’s just that your question can be developed much deeper.
Valuing oxygen has considerably less to do with the manner in which I construe the meaning of dasein above. To value oxygen is to value life itself. Without it we die.
But suppose someone places a bag over her head in order to prevent oxygen from reaching her lungs. She chooses this method to commit suicide.
That’s the part that revolves considerably more around my understanding of dasein here. Why did she choose to do this? Is this something that she ought not to have done?
And who knows how many men and women might possibly value shit in a way that most of us do not. And how could that not be the embodiment of dasein?
Okay, cite a few examples of this. Note particular moral and political values that you now subscribe to. Note how you react to others you come into contact with who embrace conflicting or opposite values.
My own argument is that whatever values you embody here and now they are derived largely from the life that you have lived, the experiences that you have had. And that had this life and those experiences been considerably different, you would likely have different values. And that given the manner in which human interactions are awash in contingency, chance and change, you are likely to come upon new experiences, relationships, sources of information/knowledge etc., that precipitate still more shifts in your perspective.
That, finally, there does not appear to be a way for philosophers to transcend this in concocting – using the tools at their disposal – a moral or political narrative/agenda that is argued to be the obligation of all rational men and women to embrace and to embody.
On the other hand, “values per definition” are, well, anything that you define them to be.
And, provided they stay that way [“in your head”], they remain that way.
Consequently, if I ask you “what on earth does that mean?” and you choose not to go there, all that remains is what you have managed to convince yourself that “by definition” values are.
You can tell Iambig “what on earth” it means in terms of actual human behavior and he will still insist that you are just making up a definition which could JUST AS EASILY been different. “What about the narcissist’s definition? Who can say that there is anything wrong with a narcissist’s thinking?”
And on and on it goes …
The final answer is the one you give when you walk away from a discussion with Iambig. There is no other final answer.
Okay, note a few examples where you have yourself clearly drawn a connection between the manner in which you have come to understand the meaning of your terms, and the manner in which you then integrate the meaning into actual behaviors of your own that have come into conflict with others over value judgments.
Over and again I note the manner in which I have come to understand the meaning of dasein, conflicting goods and political economy and how re the actual existential trajectory of my life …
1] I was raised in the belly of the working class beast. My family/community were very conservative. Abortion was a sin. Both in and out of church.
2] I was drafted into the Army and while on my “tour of duty” in Vietnam I happened upon politically radical folks who reconfigured my thinking about abortion. And God and lots of other things.
3] after I left the Army, I enrolled in college and became further involved in left wing politics. It was all the rage back then. I became a feminist. I married a feminist. I wholeheartedly embraced a woman’s right to choose.
4] then came the calamity with Mary and John. I loved them both but their engagement was foundering on the rocks that was Mary’s choice to abort their unborn baby.
5] back and forth we all went. I supported Mary but I could understand the points that John was making. I could understand the arguments being made on both sides. John was right from his side and Mary was right from hers.
6] I read William Barrett’s Irrational Man and came upon his conjectures regarding “rival goods”.
7] Then, over time, I abandoned an objectivist frame of mind that revolved around Marxism/feminism. Instead, I became more and more embedded in existentialism. And then as more years passed I became an advocate for moral nihilism.
…I have brought my argument “down to earth”. Abortion here but it is applicable to all conflicting goods.
And yet in no way would I describe this as my “final answer”.
But then you never did come close to grasping the existential nature of ironism.
But even Rorty’s argument itself is not the exception, right?
As for the narcissist, what “on earth” is she defining? What “on earth” is he thinking?
The human decides what to do via its’ spiritual enlightenment. Once enlightened, the human makes certain choices…the human may desire to commit suicide, but deep down, doesn’t know for sure suicide will increase the quality of it’s life, so it does not take the risk.
Picking a toy at the store, that’s dasein. Rational choices are not.
More important than any answers, is the first question.
