Critique of Pragmatism. One.

One of the advantages of idealism is actually the cession of individual, isolated responsibility to DUTY. No longer is the question one of “what I chose to do” or “what I did not choose to do”, but rather “What was NEEDED of me” and “whether or not I succeeded”. What was the duty? What was the requirement? Fear can never totally conquer the idealistic deontologist, for one all ways knows that one has refuge in only one haven, and one only REQUIRES refuge in that: “It felt like the right thing to do.” NOT “it felt right at the time”, though that idiom may just as well be used to express the idea that only the former idiom can express*. But the latter idiom has an other meaning: “It felt like it would make me happy, and what bad consequences came of it would not affect me detrimentally.”  This is quite obviously a self-defeating strategy, which is ironic given that it is so self-aggrandising. When the strategist tries to advantage his self, the strategy destroys its self.

If you were suicidal and I called you, it would be on the authority of this critical intuition: I think that you are in danger. And I HOPE that you are okay. but beyond that hope there is the anxiety that the hope may not be realised without action. Were you to reprimand me later for the act, I could never be blamed. If the call its self were to intrude upon your psyche and push you into the act, I at least had meant well. And if you know this you know better than to distrust me, for you’d know that you owed me your allegiance at least for my good will.

But a pragmatist would never see it as “what needed to be done” but “what was arbitrarily chosen”. And now each of the players is held EQUALLY responsible. Yet of course this dis-incentivises any one from ever being a player. In stead, every one becomes isolated and begins to pursue one’s own dubious “self-interest”. And this is totally anti-social. Now rather than thanking me for caring you meet me with suspicion and lead me to carve out my own spiritual innerds until I cannot distinguish my self from the villain. And then what can I rely upon? There is no moral scalpel to discern my concerns from mere whims, and on your own whims you may condemn me not as caring but as over-bearing and tyrannical. And so no question arises as to how one might identify the difference between the friend and the tyrant. For, you see, to arrive at that sort of assessment of virtue one must first make the theoretical DISTINCTION. No experiments, mental or other wise, can be performed without theory.

 *obviously, I mean to say: only the former idiom can express it without question as to another meaning. Or: The former idiom ONLY expresses THIS meaning (the meaning that both the former and the latter idiom share in common).

Dm.A.A.