You seem [he seems] to be suggesting that, technically, serious philosophers – as with serious scientists – don’t spend much time in the is/ought world. In other words, contemplating the existential interaction between identity, value judgments and political economy.
That the seach for philosophical wisdom here basically follows the path that Wittgenstein forged: “Whereof one cannot speak, thereof one must be silent.”
And, in my own way, seeing “I” as an existential contraption shaped and molded from the cradle to the grave by contingency. chance and change, I basically agree.
But here you are coming to your own moral and political conclusions on various issues in various threads as though this is “for all practical purposes” moot.
Still, for those do choose to engage with others in social interactions, these existential leaps are perforce a necessary factor in their lives. Then [for me] it just becomes a matter of the extent to which they see their own “I” here as “fractured and fragmented” in being down in the “hole” that I am in.
The part I explore in more detail here: viewtopic.php?f=1&t=194382
The part, in my view, that you/Jakob basically shunt aside by subsuming his/your own particular understanding of “I” here [intellectually] in, among other things, VO.
I would be most interested in witnessing someone making the point you do here to folks outside an abortion clinic. Explaining to those both for and against abortion the philosophical implications of “morality always being tyrannical.” Making certain they are familiar with exactly what philosophers can and cannot tell them about killing the unborn.
Oh yeah? Thats nice.
Yeah I think it would play out fairly well. Everyone would understand.
Actually, I think they would conclude that Jakob and his highly technical philosophical contraptions have almost nothing at all to do with anything that actually matters to them in regard to aborting or not aborting the unborn.
And, if that is how you would like others to approach philosophy in regard to conflicting goods as the embodiment of dasein in a world where political power ultimately prevails, fine.
We can just agree that other philosophers will have different takes on it and move on.
So in short, Jakobs answer is that when a woman wants an abortion, look at her world. She loathes that world and doesn’t want a perpetual investment in it. Pregnancy anchors a woman in her world.
A woman? Does he mean all women here? And that your answer here is not just an existential contraption in and of itself? That it is not just a particular political prejudice rooted in dasein, but reflects the most rational manner in which to approach particular women in particular sets of circumstances confronting – existentially – an unwanted pregnancy?
Legalizing abortion entirely would be of little consequence in a healthy culture. In a declining one it is following Nietzsches advice about helping decaying natures on their way down, speeding up the process. And thats no doubt why marxist and Islamic fronts push for abortion in the west.
Same here? This is not just one more “general description” of abortion as a moral and political conflagration, but reflects the optimal point of view all serious philosophers must come to? Where do you/he draw the line here?
Again, in my view, if you/he were to bring this to the attention of actual flesh and blood human beings dealing with the wrenching calamities embedded in an actual unwanted pregnancy, they would look at you in a way that, in my view, speaks volumes regarding how many view philosophy in the world today.
Either it can be made relevant to the lives that we live or it remains but one or another rendition of Will Durant’s epistemological contraptions:
“In the end it is dishonesty that breeds the sterile intellectualism of contemporary speculation. A man who is not certain of his mental integrity shuns the vital problems of human existence; at any moment the great laboratory of life may explode his little lie and leave him naked and shivering in the face of truth. So he builds himself an ivory tower of esoteric tomes and professionally philosophical periodicals; he is comfortable only in their company…he wanders farther and farther away from his time and place, and from the problems that absorb his people and his century. The vast concerns that properly belong to philosophy do not concern him…He retreats into a little corner, and insulates himself from the world under layer and layer of technical terminology. He ceases to be a philosopher, and becomes an epistemologist.”
Only, alas, my own reaction to this – fractured and fragmented and down in my hole like Dostoevsky’s underground man – is, in it’s own way, just as demoralizing.
You ask, is this good or bad?
I ask, for whom?
No, I ask how a particular individual living a particular life out in a particular world historically, culturally and experiential, comes to acquire [existentially] actual points of view about good and bad behaviors, given the manner in which I construe human interactions here in my signature threads.
I ask “for whom?” too. But my own understanding of how one comes to acquire a sense of identity here in regard to the morality of abortion, is only more or less in sync with yours. I too note the extent to which philosophy is of limited value in regard to value judgments. I would just never construe this as an ontological assessment.
Note to others:
Just out of curiosity…
This Fixed Cross, Jakob, barbarianhorde thing…is this anything like the Father, the Son and the Holy Ghost?
Seriously though, if they are all the same person, what do you suppose the point is? Are they characters he plays here?
Me, I don’t care what one chooses to call themselves at ILP. I’m only interested in what they actually have to say about identity, value judgments, political power, determinism and the really big questions facing us all.