Saturday, November 26, 2011

Is Goodness Absolute or Relative?

Alexander the Great, George Washington, Adolf Hitler, Martin Luther, Saddam Hussein, Cotton Mather, Osama bin Laden and Mohandas Kirmachand Gandhi all had AT LEAST one thing in common: all by nature desired the good. Perhaps they were all mistaken in their understanding of what constitutes goodness, but Alexander never said "hmmm it is better to sit in a hut and meditate but I instead I will conquer the known world. "
George Washington never said "Hmmm... I think I should seize autocratic power and be a dictator, but I guess I will step down from public office."  

That is the tricky, deceptive nature of Socrates's dictum that all by nature desire "the good."  We ASSUME that there is an absolute good. We assume that the law of excluded middle (or whatever they call it) is true and universal ... ok I googled  (The rule of excluded middle asserts that : Either a statement P or its negation (~P) holds.) 

http://forums.philosophyforums.com/threads/is-euclidian-geometry-complete-699.html

Socrates's statement is... what should I call it... solipsism? tautology? 

The Jain (a small religious sect in India similar to Buddhism) notion of "anekantavada" (no one single view) offers an alternative way to see things http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anekantavada

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