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Readers Question, and I Answer

Q. Is law a basic code of ethics that all people are forced to live by? And is a man a bad person if his ethical code is not contingent with the law?

A. People break the law all the time and get away with it. Not because they are not caught, but because there are times when we are forced to disobey the law and obey the higher authority of our conscience. That is presuming our conscience is of a higher standard than even the law.

For example, a felon breaks the law by owning a gun, but then in his home he kills a mass murderer in the middle of the night who broke in. He must face the consequences of owning that gun, but if the prosecutor or the jury decide that this particular felon has owned the gun for 10 years and never fired it, they might find it justified and merely give him a slap on the wrist. Otherwise, if he's fired it before, he could go back to prison. Ethics are often accepted in law as being better than the law--if and when there is justification for it.

Q. What is your ideology of excellence?

A. One example of "excellence" is meeting the standards Aristotle called "qua." What ever is the standard of the "perfect" this or that is its "qua". Perfection does not mean "free of mistakes." It means that a thing meets the standards that belong to the nature of that thing.

"Qua" is different for each thing, but it is the standard which best describes that entity. "‘Qua’ is a technical expression Aristotle uses to indicate an aspect under which something is to be considered. The study of 'being qua being' concerns the most general class of things, viz., everything that exists. And it studies them under their most general aspect, namely, as things that exist. It thus raises the question of what it is for something to exist." "Readings in Ancient Greek Philosophy"; S. Marc Cohen; http://faculty.washington.edu/smcohen/433/arintro.htm

Excellence when viewed as meeting the standards of what it is for something to exist requires understanding the form and function of the thing that exists. In art, for example, it is aesthetics that makes such judgements. In human anatomy, it is the scientific understanding of the organ in question, or of the human taken as a whole. An "excellent specimen" of humanity would have a head precisely 1/7 the length of his/her entire body, his/her brain would be of a specific weight, there would be no deformities, no mental abberations, no diseases, etc.

The boundaries of what is "excellent" are being pushed further all the time. The "excellent" performance of the Americans in the first Modern Olympics would not meet the worst performances of today's Olympians. A new, round diamond larger than any found before it is now the standard of "round diamonds qua round diamonds," in other words, the new standard of "excellence" in the diamond industry.

Thus, "excellence" is based on the knowledge of what it means for any thing according to the highest standard of existence for that thing.

Q. Why is philosophy called Queen of all Sciences?

A. Actually, philosophy is called the Science of Sciences, or sometimes the First Science. The Queen of Sciences has been, at times, either Theology, or Mathematics, and sometimes it merely depended on who was doing the defining. Leonardo da Vinci regarded it as math. ""Let no man who is not a mathematician read my work," da Vinci once wrote about the 50 pages of his mostly "technical" drawings on view at the National Museum of History and Technology in Washington, in 1974.

Philosophy is the First Science because "Science was born as a result and consequence of philosophy;" wrote Ayn Rand [and] it cannot survive without a philosophical (particularly epistemological) base. If philosophy perishes, science will be next to go." It is not the special sciences that teach man to think;" she said elsewhere, "it is philosophy that lays down the epistemological criteria of all special sciences."

The Naturalism that was advanced by the first philosophers, the pre-Socratics and the Atomists, endured for nearly 1000 years until Augustine undercut Naturalism with theism. Without philosophy, man would perish, because what we call "philosophy" is "formal." But man's mind works philosophically whether he knows it or not; epistemology is necessary for him to form his base of knowledge; metaphysics gives him his "world view"; ethics is the way he believes he ought to treat other people; and politics is ethics tranlsated into law.

Man had all these forms of philosophy in his mind before the pre-Socratics discovered they existed.

Note: I will be the featured speaker at the Center For Inquiry (CFI) meeting, October 16, 2008, in Portage, Michigan. The topic is "Atheism as a 'Religion' Protected by Courts According to the Establishment Clause" CEC


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