After reading Robin Wright's Essay on the NYT Opinionator (http://opinionator.blogs.nytimes.com/2010/03/30/tigers-rapid-redemption/), I found this particular reader's comment to be very thought provoking.
Woods owes the American people nothing but a good golf game. He is not our moral hero now and he never should have been in the first place. This American ethos of moralization is pathetic and it obfuscates the most essential character of what it means to be human. Our celebrities are not our heros, they are not even 'ours'. They are artists and athletes that excel in a particular area and share their talents with us. I don't mean to suggest that we are plebeians graced with the privilege to view their talents, but I do not think that we should judge them as anything but the performers they are. The author's suggestion that Woods is somehow pursuing golf success solely for the spoils it brings is misguided on two fronts. Firstly, it is a brash and stupid assumption, as well as a mean spirited thing to say about a person. Secondly, even if he did spend many, many years perfecting his golf game just so he could pick up women (which seems unlikely), it would make absolutely no difference to his talent. To say that Woods' contribution to golf is somehow negated by his philandering is like saying Gauguin's contribution to art is somehow worthless because he was he failed his family. If we have truly reached a point where a person's unethical actions negates absolutely all of his actions then our society has been poisoned by something truly and profoundly tragic. In his Shame and Necessity, the great ethical philosopher Bernard Williams lamented that
"We are in an ethical condition that lies not only beyond Christanity, but beyond its Kantian and its Hegelian legacies. We have an ambivalent sense of what human beings have achieved, and have hopes for how they might live (in particular, in the form of a still powerful ideal that they should live without lies). We know that the world was not made for us, or we for the world, that our history tells no purposive story, and that there is no position outside the world or outside history from which we might hope to authenticate our activities. We have to acknowledge the hideous costs of many human achievements that we value, including this reflective sense itself, and recognise that there is no redemptive Hegelian history or Leibnizian cost-benefit analysis to show that it will come out well enough in the end" (166).
We should all take a hint from Williams. The task of being human and living a robust life is not defined solely by one's ethical or moral actions. We are robust creatures capable of great achievements and great follies and our ethical character diminishes once we start condemning people on the basis of some moral litmus test.
by WillL of Southborough, MA
Tiger, I hope you win the Master's.
Friday, April 2
Tiger's Moral Hazard
After reading Robin Wright's Essay on the NYT Opinionator (http://opinionator.blogs.nytimes.com/2010/03/30/tigers-rapid-redemption/), I found this particular reader's comment to be very thought provoking.
Woods owes the American people nothing but a good golf game. He is not our moral hero now and he never should have been in the first place. This American ethos of moralization is pathetic and it obfuscates the most essential character of what it means to be human. Our celebrities are not our heros, they are not even 'ours'. They are artists and athletes that excel in a particular area and share their talents with us. I don't mean to suggest that we are plebeians graced with the privilege to view their talents, but I do not think that we should judge them as anything but the performers they are. The author's suggestion that Woods is somehow pursuing golf success solely for the spoils it brings is misguided on two fronts. Firstly, it is a brash and stupid assumption, as well as a mean spirited thing to say about a person. Secondly, even if he did spend many, many years perfecting his golf game just so he could pick up women (which seems unlikely), it would make absolutely no difference to his talent. To say that Woods' contribution to golf is somehow negated by his philandering is like saying Gauguin's contribution to art is somehow worthless because he was he failed his family. If we have truly reached a point where a person's unethical actions negates absolutely all of his actions then our society has been poisoned by something truly and profoundly tragic. In his Shame and Necessity, the great ethical philosopher Bernard Williams lamented that
"We are in an ethical condition that lies not only beyond Christanity, but beyond its Kantian and its Hegelian legacies. We have an ambivalent sense of what human beings have achieved, and have hopes for how they might live (in particular, in the form of a still powerful ideal that they should live without lies). We know that the world was not made for us, or we for the world, that our history tells no purposive story, and that there is no position outside the world or outside history from which we might hope to authenticate our activities. We have to acknowledge the hideous costs of many human achievements that we value, including this reflective sense itself, and recognise that there is no redemptive Hegelian history or Leibnizian cost-benefit analysis to show that it will come out well enough in the end" (166).
We should all take a hint from Williams. The task of being human and living a robust life is not defined solely by one's ethical or moral actions. We are robust creatures capable of great achievements and great follies and our ethical character diminishes once we start condemning people on the basis of some moral litmus test.
by WillL of Southborough, MA
Tiger, I hope you win the Master's.
