Topic: 33. TECHNOLOGY, THE USEFUL AND THE GOOD
What is useful to me is good to me! In the mode of Philosophical Anthropology we begin with a simple, straightforward assertion. But we are ready to make an extreme proclamation. That is that buried in this one sentence may be the history of Western philosophy and, centrally, the connection between human tecnics and ultimately the idea of God. We are not saying anything particularly radical. We must simply turn the proposition around, run it backwards and forwards, take out a word or add one here and there for the full transparency of the sentence to appear. Our purpose is to draw out the meaning. Of course what is useful to me may not be good for you, and vice versa. In this first instance of the word good, the fact that the good for one person may not be the good for another, or that one's good may actually hurt another person, identifies the word good as applying to an idea that must occur in some context. The important point is this: though a thing may be good for you and for me both, it may also not be good for both of us. This good that is good for me may be harmful to you. There is nothing necessary within this good that defines it as being good for both of us. That it may be good for one of us, but not for both of us, categorically excludes this good from being The Good. This latter Good is absolutely always Good. Whereas the limited good, which we find in charitable acts, is good sometimes and sometimes not, depending on individual circumstances. We must always qualify the word good by referring to the special application of the idea. What connects the use of a thing and the good of the thing is "me." Removing the word "me," we say, changes the entire relation between use and the good: there is no relation. We may indeed assert that the generally useful is the generally good, but we assume a sort of general person or community. The good we are talking about must be, if not good for you or me, good at any rate to someone. That someone is the purpose and object of the good that is done. On the other hand, the word "good" is actually commonly spoken of in a very general way that is removed from any context, as, that is, The Good. Plato made a whole philosophy separating The Good from everyday life. He introduced the idea of "participation" as mediating between this abstract idea and everyday reality, in which The Good could appear without contradicting itself.
In general terms we are saying that any idea of the good, as the notion of usefulness, resolves itself finally into a something--value or thing--that is particular and indvidual. We cannot say that a thing is useful without implying that it is useful to a person or persons. By the same token, the thing will not be good unless it is good to a person or persons. In any case, the good that derives from anything useful is good for a person served by that usefulness. Good, we are suggesting, is not simply done without there being something useful that is done and for some person or persons. One does not do good for the sake of good alone, except that he does this good for a person and that this good is done through something useful. The good that is done exhibits itself through individual persons and particular useful acts. It would contradict the idea of the good, as this idea has evolved out of ordinary human experience, if the good were done just by and for itself. The good cannot normally "be done." This is what we are saying. But there is the further consideration that, any good that is done involves a contradiction within the idea of the good were the good is considered by itself, as an idea abstracted from the particular useful and personal applications of the good. Good has evolved out of discrete and separate instances of useful acts toward individual persons. Here, if I do not say the good that is done is done for me, then I must say this good is for you--or someone. Again we thumb noses at the admonishon that one must acknowledge one's own limitations. Here we do not respect limitations. This I said earlier and I will stay the course on this theme. We are saying that an idea of the good--not as a thing but anyway as a quality--has its source in my own life. Good is the subjectivity in my experience. At the risk of appearing merely philosophical, it seems that usefulness and good are two sides of the (Schopenhaurian) world, as object and subject. The geneology of so-called The Good is not a particularly auspicious one, beginning as The Good does, in my own or someone else's most humble life experience. We are suggesting that The Good is simply an abstraction from your experience or mine. The august concept The Good does not exist from eternity in some Platonic zone but as a genesis but has a rather ordinary and humble family history. As Bruno Bauer said, the critique of religion is the history of religion. We propose to show the history of The Good. The real role of The Good the disputes and contradicitions that arise between the good of you versus the good of me. These disputes are inevitable. Human beings however, to preserve the continuity and efficacy of their relations, create the idea of The Good that suggests that in every instance of good there is a universal Good that unites every person in every relationship. The Good is an abstraction from my good and yours. That said, The Good is a high and transcendent idea that stands over society. We could suggest, at the risk of raising still another controversy and diverting attention from our basic theme, that The Good and God are the same. In English and German the words are similar; also these words already have a rather obscure origin which leaves us room to speculate. At the present stage in our discussion of The Good we have said nothing controversial. But we are about to. We are going on, finally, to suggest that "doing" The Good degrades and deprecates The Good. Our basic argument is that in the "doing" of The Good it is necessary to translate a hypothetical and abstract idea of The Good back whence The Good came, into, in other words, the particular Good of you and me. In that case, what is good for me might not be good for you. And vice versa. In its particular expressions, The Good actually contradicts itself categorically.
What is useful to me is good to me. I accept this as a categorical statement and basic to the ensuing argument. We are talking here about "the useful" and "the good." At the risk of appearing to fall in a Platonic or objective idealist mode of thought I speak of usefulness and goodness as qualities that may be abstracted from real situations and things. But there is more. We need not qualify this idea but we must go beyond it. There is here no assertion that the useful, in itself, is also the good. Mediating in our initial assertion is "me" or the self as what stands between the useful and the good. The good to me is what is useful to me and vice versa. But what is useful to another person may not be good to me. If this other person is my enemy and wants to hurt me, a tool or weapon or leveraged social principle in his hands will be, inevitably, hurtful to me. I need not dwell on this painful point. In the earliest days of humanity, every useful act was a good act inasmuch as, as I've already said, the human agent using the tool, and finding that artifact useful, could say of the tool "it is good." As use became general use, however--as the tool was of use to the general community and the tool's use was a general use--the relation of that same, general tool was only of ambiguous use to the individual. These points have been widely raised in classical economic theory. Where we may add to the discussion is in the point that here, in the general use of tools, the notion of usefulness and goodness have become separated. There is now no primal "me" or, in Heidegger's terms Being, connecting the use of a thing and the good of the thing. Use and good, or Platonic "The Good," are separated and, depending on the context of their co-existence, categorically opposed to one another. I must be more specific on this last point. If the good is not my own good, but someone else's, the good may actually oppose me or be antithetical to me. This good is now a "limited" good, or what is good about a specific instance of use or usefulness; and what is good for one man need not be good for another. We still may assume the existence of a good that, as a general good, may be good for you and me both. There may well be, and probably is, such a thing as a general good that is good for "humans in general." This good was talked about by the Utilitarians as a basis for morality and human behavior, not merely your behavior but mine as well. But we are not Utilitarian in our point of view. The only point to remember is, and we invoke this point as basic to Force Theory, is the obvious one that your good and mine may be the same, but may not be the same. A contradictory situation appears; and failure to mediate or reconcile this situation means in effect to dissolve society. We are now moving toward a final conclusion. Again, we are not Utilitarians. We propose that the idea of the personal good that mediates between the person and his own technics is now opposed by the good that, once his own good, now is antithetical to him. A resolution to this conflict may be necessary. The idea of The Good is invoked, in short, when the good that was once inhered in something's usefulness to one person now becomes, finally, a good in the hands of this person's enemy and thus constitutes a usefulness that opposes the person. This is not a question of empirical truth but of logic. The Good is a logical concept that mediates in the context of estrangement wherein humans are separated from the technics and objects that, once their own, are now their inimical "other." This is the way The Good appeared. The Good does not exist apart from the human agency or thought process that produced The Good. But The Good nonetheless has a majesty that sets it above other human productions and machinations and that allows it, in its transcendence, to "mediate" in antithetical relationships which would otherwise deprecate, degrade and destroy human collective existence. The next point we will raise is this: how does the "doing" of Good degrade that same Good?
Philosophical Anthropology does not take its main ideas from philosophy or anthropology either one. Both disciplines are emeshed in their own ways in onerous restrictions. Anthropology has laid down for itself draconian empirical rules and has thereby become lost in its own details. Philosophy has experienced much the same things. In pursuit of so-called truth philosophy has reduced itself to the uncontrovertable propositions of mathematics and logic. Philosophical Anthropology on the other hand, perhaps simply out of youth, is both unrestricted and undisciplined in its mode of experimentation. Philosophical Anthropology is only a relative few years old. It has taken from anthropology only a break from philosophy, which is thousands of years old and is the accumulation of that many years speculation. This--a primarily negative one of escaping philosophy--is what PA has taken from anthropology. Having done that, however, having that is separated itself from the evoloved commitment to logic, Philosophical Anthropology has played fast and loose with the rules of anthropology, or commitment to anything empirical. PA is an entirely new line of speculation. The original propositions of this field, which were those of Scheler and Plessner about some so-called "essence of Man" come as refreshingly vague but suggestive. PA we are saying has no sense of its own limitations. It does what philosophy should do, rebel against all limitations to thinking whatsoever. This was once the paradox of philosophy: that it set up rules to study rules; that it laid down restructions to think about what is boundless. Philosophy has resolved itself into a final contradiction of an entrapment within the law of non-contradiction. PA has declared its freedom from this law or any laws of thinking, really, whatsoever. But there is more. PA has assumed a revolutionary role in attacking the core of any civilization, which is a concept of Man that is not an empirical concept but rather a "moral" concept closely connected to, as I say, the idea that a society has of "The Good."
What is useful to me is good to me. This I said earlier and I will stay the course on this theme. We are saying that an idea of the good--not as a thing but anyway as a quality--has its source in my own life. Good is the subjectivity in my experience. At the risk of appearing merely philosophical, it seems that usefulness and good are two sides of the (Schopenhaurian) world, as object and subject. The geneology of so-called The Good is not a particularly auspicious one, beginning as The Good does, in my own or someone else's most humble life experience. We are suggesting that The Good is simply an abstraction from your experience or mine. The august concept The Good does not exist from eternity in some Platonic zone but as a genesis but has a rather ordinary and humble family history. As Bruno Bauer said, the critique of religion is the history of religion. We propose to show the history of The Good. The real role of The Good the disputes and contradicitions that arise between the good of you versus the good of me. These disputes are inevitable. Human beings however, to preserve the continuity and efficacy of their relations, create the idea of The Good that suggests that in every instance of good there is a universal Good that unites every person in every relationship. The Good is an abstraction from my good and yours. That said, The Good is a high and transcendent idea that stands over society. We could suggest, at the risk of raising still another controversy and diverting attention from our basic theme, that The Good and God are the same. In English and German the words are similar; also these words already have a rather obscure origin which leaves us room to speculate. At the present stage in our discussion of The Good we have said nothing controversial. But we are about to. We are going on, finally, to suggest that "doing" The Good degrades and deprecates The Good. Our basic argument is that in the "doing" of The Good it is necessary to translate a hypothetical and abstract idea of The Good back whence The Good came, into, in other words, the particular Good of you and me. In that case, what is good for me might not be good for you. And vice versa. In its particular expressions, The Good actually contradicts itself categorically.
What is useful to me may not be useful to you; in fact, what is useful to me may be hurtful to you. On its most basic level, where any good is connected (as subject and object) to a useful act, any idea of must include the many and opposite ways that what is useful can be good, and conversly what instances of good can be useful. On the primal level what is good is diverse; when abstracted, on the other hand, "the good" or The Good would be categorically self-contradictory. The ordinary good exhibits itself and exhausts itself in its particular manifestations. On the abstract level, on the other hand, The Good can be called consistent with itself and not self-contradictory. But this is on a transcendental level of thought wherein no particular displays of The Good are suggested. The "doing" of The Good would change this: doing would bring The Good down to earth as the everyday good of you or the good of me. We are now no longer doing something that is useful but something that is first good. "Doing" was originally an act that was useful and, as a consequence of the usefulness of what was done, became a good act. We have already concluded this to be true. But there is more. When the usefulness of what is done becomes in fact antithetical to the person who does this useful thing, that thing that is done is no longer good to the person. Is there anything to suggest that it is possible simply to do The Good? The assumption here among people who "do" The Good is that there will also be good that is done that may be translated into something useful. That is to say, they assume that "good" can be "done" that is also something useful. Here is where the whole human mentality that produced technology and technical progress--the whole entity of industrial civilization--started from a "moral premise" or idea of "doing" Good. In fact, this civilization was the consequence of humans who were doing something useful but which something was connected to anything good only through their individual selves. Creative people first of all act out of self-interest (this is all, disappointingly, that we may be saying!). Is The Good at all something that can be "done"? We have already said that the fundamental essence of The Good is its role in re-connecting (in the sense of religion or religare) the useful and the limited or personal good that, under conditions of mass society, are estranged and disconnected from the individual. What we would be saying is that in "doing" Good we would be restoring the individual connection between the useful and his own good. We have already said that The Good appears after, first, an individual has produced a thing that is useful to himself and is thus called good. The Good has a general existence. But its role is to mediate in situations of estrangement. It is not simply something to be "done." In "doing" good that is supposed to be a good derivative of The Good, we have degraded The Good and demoted it from its majestic transcendent position as uniting persons. Now, because doing is always individual doing, the same disputes arise between individuals that resulted, in the first place, the estrangement of use from the good of use.
If I do good for one person, that good that I do may hurt--not be good for--some other person. If I do good for someone that hurts me, that is not good for me. The good that is done means something bad for me. The Good has originally appeared out of instances of particular good; but finally contradicts that particular good. It is quite possible that I do do good for some person when that good that I do harms me or is not good for me. It is not possible, on the other hand, to do The Good without assuming that the harm or evil I do to myself is also The Good. I would have to assume that the harm that is done to me is also Good. This is an extreme position to take. In other words, I must assume that I myself, the doer of The Good may possibly be evil. In that case, we may proceed to the next proposition that I in doing The Good am possibly evil, in which case it would be logically impossible for me to do Good. Here we are in a tight situation and one whose ambiguity closes in on us in talking at all about The Good. No matter which way we turn, like a chess player hemmed in on all sides, our next move is going to result in defeat. The Good itself is an "eternal" self-contradiction. Is there any way out. I am saying that there is a way out, which the Catholics know expressly and which the Protestants also make use of: ritual. I'm saying that the ritual act is the act of doing The Good without contradicting the Good. But a ritual act is also a useless and impersonal act. A ritual act cannot hurt anyone but also is not of any use to anyone. But questions remain. We ask: Is it possible to do good? We have said: the good one does for another person, even without reward for oneself, is the same good one would do for oneself. If I give money to a charity, someone who is not me will use that money; but the manner he will use it is the same as I would use it. Moreover, what is good for that person may be harmful to some other person. The webb of relationships and interactions is so complex that we become burdened, forthwith, in imponderables. This act of charity I am saying is not a general good but an expression of some instance of utility. That good is not The Good. The Good does not engage itself in a self-contradiction. The absolute Good is not bad or harmful to anyone; while the good that, through use and utility, is limited to an individual might be also harmful to some other person. The general goodness of some utilitarian and individual act can be determined only by examining that good within a limited context. There is the whole issue of the majesty of good and the value of that good to a general community. There is in the idea of The Good the thought that any utility that that good would contribute or project is good for all people. That there is no evil or badness contained within that Good. A limited good, on the other hand, is a particular and, as such, has none of the majesty about it possessed by The Good. In order that I may do good for an actual person I must stoop to doing something merely useful, in which act any general Good is degraded into particular good. This limited good that I do is in no sense "moral" good, or good in other words that acquires "majesty" by participation in The Good. There is nothing moral or majestic about the good I do for some other person or persons. That is because the good that is "done" could be "the bad" for if not this person, then for that person. Whether the good that is done for individual persons (or whole groups) is good for all people whomsover, or whether that good while it helps some people hurts others--that is a question that still has to be answered. But likely the answer is lost in imponderables. Indeed, a good can be a general good, or in other words The Good, only insofar as such good is removed from any use or usefulness of some act. Usefulness transforms what is general in a good into a particular act. We evoke here the authority of Plato: Is this good we are talking about one or many? Plato says The Good is one. But in order for The Good to be good for any person it must become individual. We are left with the conclusion that to be moral--to have direct access to or participate in The Good--one must refrain from any outright action or from doing anything that is useful for any person. We are left with the image, more or less, of a Pope whose goodness is entirely vague and whose contact with the world is solely through empty ritual of no utilitarian meaning.
Last edited by richard_swartzbaugh (2010-10-05 15:35:46)