Yuri Tarnopolsky
ESSAYS
21. On Ethics
ethics. Albert Schweitzer. Niels Bohr.
understanding. Use Firefox browser or see essays-complete.pdf |
![]() ![]() Essay
21.
On Ethics
Here,
following
Essay 20, I would like to summarize my previous
twenty Essays. In Essay
3 I noted that Montaigne designed Essays
as a tool of understanding. His Essays included
a large part of the contemporaneous map of knowledge
(and fragments of the knowledge itself) that was mostly
based on the authors of classic antiquity. His
introspection, however, expanded the continent of human
nature and daily hum of human body almost up to the
literature of the nineteenth century. I believe
that Montaigne, widely read in all European countries,
including Russia, was one of the precursors of the
European novel of morals and manners. Montaigne
wanted to understand himself, following one of the
commandments of the Antiquity : "know thyself,"
attributed to various sources, including Thales of
Miletus. Writing
these Essays I have come—jumped, rather—to a conclusion
that self-understanding is not as difficult as Thales of
Miletus was said to
believe. It comes automatically with age. We are
embedded in the network of relationships, receive
signals, send our own signals, think, and act. The way
we do it is what we are. Understanding
is not only the road map of what we know but also the
edges of the map beyond which we cannot go: the
laws of impossibility, like the laws of thermodynamics,
competition, and selection that adamantly oppose our
equally stubborn liberal ethics, including the Albert
Schweitzer's reverence for life. The very fact
that the tug of war still goes on (example: the European
attitude to death penalty) makes this
life bearable. It does not make it either good or bad. If I had to
offer a single ethical principle, I would repeat what I
said several times in these Essays: No idea is good or bad
on its own. Any idea is evil if there is an unopposed
violent force behind it. Any idea is good if there is a
skeptical opposition. The most
productive reverence we can possibly have is reverence
for Niels Bohr. I would half-seriously paraphrase
his view as: "no single ethical principle exists." If so, we
have a coupled principle, not quite symmetrical to the
first: One has to stand for his
or her own idea with utmost energy and conviction, as if
it had a proof of goodness, and one should not be
outright skeptical to any other idea. Every deep
idea is shallow, however, because most people act out of
their deepest instincts in the basement of the soul that
preclude ideas in the mind's loft. As far as the ethics
of action is concerned, I am rather a traditionalist. To be wise
in the spirit of Montaigne is to be both skeptical and
tolerant. Including toward yourself, I would add. It was from
Montaigne that I learned to be skeptical of propaganda
and authority. It took my entire life to become tolerant
to myself. P.S.
(2016). In other words, what is not disputed by
somebody, is neither right nor wrong. |
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Revised:
2016 Essays 1 to 56 : http://spirospero.net/essays-complete.pdf Essays 57 to 60: http://spirospero.net/LAST_ESSAYS.pdf Essay 60: http://spirospero.net/artandnexistence.pdf |