The Problematic
"Reflection on perfect goodness is most commonly carried out as part of the project of philosophical theology. One prominent methodological strand of philosophical theology is perfect being theology, in which the nature of God is made more explicit by identifying God as an absolutely perfect being and working out what features an absolutely perfect being must exhibit." (Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy)
The above, in essence, is the summary of the projected research. The project that has been the eternal project of philosophy: The question of the whatness of the perfect good and of the how of the access to it. In a word, the question of the relationship between ethics and metaphysics.
The strand along which I propose to argue the case can be postulated as: 'As the metaphysics, so the ethics.' We begin by asking what the attributes - metaphysical and ethical - are of this good. The stating of this question is another way of positing the question between the here and the beyond; of the problem of the continuities and discontinuities across the limits of death; of that immemorial question of whether anything does continue beyond the fatal boundary; of the question of death and transcendence; of being and nothingness.
Our method would consist in abstracting the metaphysical good from its ethical counterpart. (I term them counterparts in all philosophical deliberation.) And as, for the sake of analysis, we extricate the inextricable with the scalpels of logic, we intend not to shy away from listing and examining all speculative possibilities, including, the complete independence of the one from the other and the negation of the one and of the both. This brings us straight to the heart of our thesis that passes through the Nietzschean revaluation of the the histories of ethics and metaphysics.
It is too simplistic to aver that the relationship between ethics and metaphysics is simple, symmetrical, and transparently derivative. But, to cite, for example, the case of the western tradition, the attributes that define the good in the realms both of metaphysics and ethics have evinced a certain commonality and sameness ever since the conception of the idea by Plato in all its transcendental-metaphysical fullness. The manifestations of the good in the here and the beyond do have mutual bearings in the philosophical systems of the world. The afterlife of man, in the last analysis, is an extension of his earthly life.
To more tellingly illustrate our thesis by resorting to a figurative cast of language: Man's life has always cast a long shadow on his afterlife. Our task here is to probe the shapes and intensities of these shadows. It is beyond humanity's (and considering almost the divine magnitude of the task I advisedly use the word humanity here instead of human) capacity to compass the infinite spectrum of these shadows.
Our approach to the problematic of 'good', therefore, would lie through a consideration of two contrary cases of the conception of this idea - that of Nietzsche and of Gandhi - two men inhabiting the two ends of the spectrum in thought and personality. The extreme phenomenon of any condition has the merit of casting under sharp focus the features that would be lost in its more general manifestations, thus lending itself better to the analytic vision. Also, by selecting the contraries from among the potentially infinite particulars of a universal for contemplation, one has, in a certain sense, compassed the range of the particulars in both quantitative and qualitative terms.
Nietzsche
Our first case is easy of statement but difficult of elucidation. 'Good' is a problematic and atypical idea in Nietzsche. We cannot state the case more directly and better than by demonstrating it with the following quote from him:
"What is good? All that heightens the feeling of power in man, the will to power, power itself. What is bad? All that is born of weakness. What is happiness? The feeling that power is growing, that resistance is overcome." (The Antichrist, section 2)
This is a typical and, in a certain fundamental sense, an epitomic instantiation of the Nietzschean project that culminated in an irreversible and subversive transvaluation of western moraliti(es). More critically, this definition of the good is also the antithesis of the whole Judaeo-Christian valuation of the concept that has so profoundly undergirded the western value-system - a value-system that Nietzsche stands over against as its very philosophical Antichrist.
Gandhi
The personality of Gandhi is elusive of all delimitations and definitions. He has meant all things to all minds: saint, thinker, politician, and even a hypocritical rogue! But what is undeniable is the influence of his life and thought on the whole of the modern world (and not just India).
Gandhi was not a conscious philosopher but his thought was rich in philosophical meanings. Fertile, complex, and unsystematic, on a deeper perusal one can unravel multitudinous and, almost, eclectic strands of influences upon his thought - from Buddha, Socrates, and Mohammed to Ruskin, Thoreau, and Hemchandra. But more than anything, Gandhi was, avowedly and admittedly, a deeply religious man who rendered his soul open and receptive to all the significant religious currents of history. Two of the most sovereign influences on him were the New Covenant enunciated by Jesus in the Sermon on the Mount and the Jaina philosophy of Ahimsa. It would be no hyperbole to declare that Gandhi's soul was steeped in the moral dye of these precepts.
Therefore, to understand Gandhi's overt ethics and implicit metaphysics, we must have recourse to the cardinal tenets, moral and metaphysical, of these thought-systems, by textually unconcealing the philosophical substratum on which the beatific edifice of Gandhian thought stands founded.
One western contemporary with whom Gandhi felt some spiritual kinship was Leo Tolstoy. For Tolstoy, the whole of Christ's ethical teachings is distilled in these words - "Resist not evil." (Matthew 5:39) Also, the Jaina principle of good or truth as non-violence could not be more unambiguous, lucid, and categorical.
A summary of this comparative study
We exhaust the spectrum of moralities as we move from 'resist not evil' to 'power as the highest good.' By undertaking this comparative study of the two cases of ethical (and metaphysical) contradistinction, we expect to deduce something of the nature of morality and of metaphysics and of the relationship between the two.
PS: I apologize for the overlong and slightly lapidary proposal note.
"Reflection on perfect goodness is most commonly carried out as part of the project of philosophical theology. One prominent methodological strand of philosophical theology is perfect being theology, in which the nature of God is made more explicit by identifying God as an absolutely perfect being and working out what features an absolutely perfect being must exhibit." (Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy)
The above, in essence, is the summary of the projected research. The project that has been the eternal project of philosophy: The question of the whatness of the perfect good and of the how of the access to it. In a word, the question of the relationship between ethics and metaphysics.
The strand along which I propose to argue the case can be postulated as: 'As the metaphysics, so the ethics.' We begin by asking what the attributes - metaphysical and ethical - are of this good. The stating of this question is another way of positing the question between the here and the beyond; of the problem of the continuities and discontinuities across the limits of death; of that immemorial question of whether anything does continue beyond the fatal boundary; of the question of death and transcendence; of being and nothingness.
Our method would consist in abstracting the metaphysical good from its ethical counterpart. (I term them counterparts in all philosophical deliberation.) And as, for the sake of analysis, we extricate the inextricable with the scalpels of logic, we intend not to shy away from listing and examining all speculative possibilities, including, the complete independence of the one from the other and the negation of the one and of the both. This brings us straight to the heart of our thesis that passes through the Nietzschean revaluation of the the histories of ethics and metaphysics.
It is too simplistic to aver that the relationship between ethics and metaphysics is simple, symmetrical, and transparently derivative. But, to cite, for example, the case of the western tradition, the attributes that define the good in the realms both of metaphysics and ethics have evinced a certain commonality and sameness ever since the conception of the idea by Plato in all its transcendental-metaphysical fullness. The manifestations of the good in the here and the beyond do have mutual bearings in the philosophical systems of the world. The afterlife of man, in the last analysis, is an extension of his earthly life.
To more tellingly illustrate our thesis by resorting to a figurative cast of language: Man's life has always cast a long shadow on his afterlife. Our task here is to probe the shapes and intensities of these shadows. It is beyond humanity's (and considering almost the divine magnitude of the task I advisedly use the word humanity here instead of human) capacity to compass the infinite spectrum of these shadows.
Our approach to the problematic of 'good', therefore, would lie through a consideration of two contrary cases of the conception of this idea - that of Nietzsche and of Gandhi - two men inhabiting the two ends of the spectrum in thought and personality. The extreme phenomenon of any condition has the merit of casting under sharp focus the features that would be lost in its more general manifestations, thus lending itself better to the analytic vision. Also, by selecting the contraries from among the potentially infinite particulars of a universal for contemplation, one has, in a certain sense, compassed the range of the particulars in both quantitative and qualitative terms.
Nietzsche
Our first case is easy of statement but difficult of elucidation. 'Good' is a problematic and atypical idea in Nietzsche. We cannot state the case more directly and better than by demonstrating it with the following quote from him:
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