Friday, November 03, 2006

Ethics is Not a Branch of Philosophy

That's probably one of the more controversial consequences of the pangrammatical homologies. It goes nicely with the idea that neither psychology nor sociology are proper sciences: they are crypto-politics. The only relevant psychological "experiment" is a democratic election. The only relevant sociological "observation" emerges from negotiation. I'm not fully committed to these consequences right now, but I thought I would just note them down to keep track.

If this is right, a just society will not emerge from philosohy and science, but from poetry and politics. (Whitman would back me up on this. Pound would too. Kung, also, I think.) This of course explains much contemporary injustice.

1 comment:

Thomas said...

That "even" in "even the Italian Fascists started to squirm" is interesting. You make it sound like Pound's political ideas where therefore worse than fascism. Another way to read it is that Pound's Confucianism set a standard that fascism couldn't live up to in practice. I think Pound misjudged Mussolini (an error some have called "an excess of emphasis"). His utopia, his kulchur, is defensible.

Anyway, yes, philosopher kings were never a good idea.