Re: BHA: Gary on FEW

[Mervyn Hartwig <mh@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

Dear Gary

>I am also interested in my own negative reactions to the notion of
>unconditional love.  You made a remark about loving our fleas, I
>think.  There is a Yeats' poem which has a line - Why should a dog praise
>his fleas?  Why indeed?

That remark of mine (at the ethics seminar last year) has acquired a
certain notoriety; some are worried that I might or did back down. Roy's
response was that we should love the essence or higher self of the flea
- fleas are lovely creatures in themselves, it is only their bites that
are not (from our point of view). As a transcendental realist, I had to
accept this, and the wider position of which it is a part: that all
being has value in itself, and that it is appropriate for us to respect
if not love the essence of all beings in the open totality of which we
are a part. The only trouble is that in actuality fleas and many other
creatures bite other creatures to stay alive, and I wonder whether Roy's
position can handle the fact that nature is 'red in tooth and claw'. In
a recent informal discussion he suggested that good is 'ontologically
prior' to evil. While some sense can be made of this from an
evolutionary perspective in that the intra-species situation is that
good (in the form of co-operation, reciprocity, love etc) must on the
whole prevail over evil (in the form of aggression etc) within the
communities of a species if the species is to survive, the opposite
seems to hold in innumerable cases at the inter-species level, and the
mind boggles as to how he thinks it possible for all beings eventually
to live in harmony and love, in 'unity existence', or as to what he
means by this.

Mervyn

Gary MacLennan <g.maclennan@xxxxxxxxxx> writes
>Well Mervyn,
>
>I do not think there is much more to say about Bhaskar's materialism and
>idealism in FEW after your last post, which if you will forgive me saying
>so was really very good.
>
>What else is there?  I am interested in the various versions of God that
>are around- I would quite like to compare FEW's  god with that of Aristotle
>and Spinoza etc. There does indeed seem to be a veritable smorgasbord of
>gods available. Though I wonder when I say that whether that is my residual
>Feuerbachianism asserting itself.
>
>I am also interested in my own negative reactions to the notion of
>unconditional love.  You made a remark about loving our fleas, I
>think.  There is a Yeats' poem which has a line - Why should a dog praise
>his fleas?  Why indeed?
>
>I have been reading Bhaskar now for nearly seven years and I think I am
>beginning to get some measure of him as a thinker.  I have said this before
>but it strikes me that he is above all he boldly goes - a veritable Captain
>Kirk of the metaphysical realm.  I love for instance when on page 132 he
>chides the Buddha for not engaging in metaphysical speculation, thereby
>creating a "serious problem for Buddhist epistemology."  Now that is chutzpah!
>
>Must dash -I am about to be finally swamped by work but should reemerge
>within a few weeks.
>
>warm regards
>
>Gary
>
>
>
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--
Mervyn Hartwig
13 Spenser Road
Herne Hill
London SE24 ONS
United Kingdom
Tel: 020 7 737 2892
Email: mh@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx


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