[percy-l] Percy-L Digest, Vol 161, Issue 25

Michael Larson larsonovic at gmail.com
Wed Jul 29 16:33:45 EDT 2020


Tom,

You're not annoying me. I appreciate the dialogue. I'll try to respond.

I'll start with your question: " How does the notion of a 'hierarchy of
subjectivity' come from the possibility of infinite subjective
interpretations and the fact some of those interpretations are better than
others?"

It comes contained in the last part of your question itself: "... the fact
that some of those interpretations are better than others." If some
interpretations are better than others, a hierarchy is by nature already
established and an objective standard is likewise already implied.

When you speak of how you grade student writing, you are talking about
evaluating their display of a rhetorical skill set, not about their grasp
of the truth. Those are two different things. Either one can be judged
hierarchically. Elegance and cohesiveness of communication make a scale
that is independent of what is true. One person may offer an elegant
defense and plenty of cohesive reasoning as to why the earth is flat.
Another person might stumble through a weak defense of the spinning globe.
We might rank the former ahead of the latter in the skill set of rhetoric,
but we might rank the latter ahead of the former in his apprehension of the
truth as to the physical nature of the earth.

The same is true when we look at a piece of literature: one person might
write beautifully about something that goes quite astray of what the story
means while another person might struggle in attempting to articulate what
is essentially a deep understanding of that same story. Of course, we are
most pleased when the two skills--communication and apprehension--are
joined in a single work. Take, for example, Tolkien's marvelous essay (a
lecture, actually), "The Monsters and the Critics." Prior to that lecture,
many well-known scholars had failed to grasp both the artistic genius and
the deep layers of meaning in *Beowulf*. In fact, they disdained many of
the very things that Tolkien was able to rescue--and not because his
subjective interpretation was more popular. It wasn't. In fact, it wasn't
fully known until he put it into words, but when he did, many objective
truths about the poem were made manifest to anyone who cared to see them
and especially to those who had always had a sense for them but lacked the
articulation. In short, Tolkien's interpretation was better than that of
prior critics, and people knew it. They knew it because it is possible for
humans to recognize when something is objectively true, especially when it
provides relief against that which has been less than fully true.

What I am asserting here seems in direct opposition to what you say a
little later in your post: "I propose to my students that the reason for
objectively seeking out different interpretations is not to pick the right
one." My first thought about this is that there might not be a "right one."
The presence of several interpretations is no guarantee that any of them
has a good grasp on what is being interpreted. Alternatively, they might
all be basically "right," more or less, though perhaps with differing
levels of rhetorical effectiveness. In any case, I would always encourage
my students to compare and contrast, to evaluate arguments, to measure what
they read against reality, insofar as they have access to it. When the
object is truth, then everyone--critics and readers--is essentially working
together toward the same goal, though some with more success than others.

But it sounds like, for you, the object is not so much truth as it is to
work out a kind of subjective *average *in one's own mind. You say, "[The
reason for seeking out different interpretations] is to get a non-objective
sense of the center and most comprehensive comprehension of all those
various interpretations." There is nothing wrong, of course, with
understanding a variety of interpretations, but if the end of that
understanding is merely to find the center of that variety, then we have
diverted our gaze from the object under consideration and shifted it to the
amalgamated opinion of the considerers. This is not exactly pure
subjectivism, which would be interested only in one's own opinion, but it
is a kind of preoccupation with potential means rather than the use of
those means toward their natural end: to arrive at truth regarding the
object under consideration.

In your paragraph about morality, I'm not sure I follow the shift from
moral code to moral bond. To recognize a moral code, whether subjective or
objective, is a different mental act than to trust a neighbor not to harm
you. The former is concerned with classification (i.e. this is good, this
is evil) while the latter is concerned with prudential judgment (I predict
that you will not burn my house down). So once again, both acts can be
present: I can judge (whether accurately or not) that someone's burning
down my house would be an evil act even as I also judge (whether accurately
or not) that I do not think you will commit this act. Then if you do
actually burn down my house, I will know that my trust was misplaced; the
house will go up in smoke, but the classification of arson as evil will be
quite untouched by those flames.

It's true that if this happened, I would no longer trust you not to burn my
house down. And yes, it's also possible, depending on how much I trusted
you to begin with, that I might start to doubt, in general, my judgment of
who is trustworthy and who is not. But to lose trust in others or in one's
ability to assess the trustworthiness of others is not the same as losing
the sense that some things are moral and that other things are immoral.

I too find Lance and Margot to be untrustworthy in serious ways. The acts
that reveal their untrustworthiness are also acts I understand to be
objectively immoral. I would argue further that to even speak of trust and
distrust once again implies an objective sense of morality in the one who
trusts or distrusts. What makes us trust someone are typically things
understood to be morally good: honesty, forthrightness, patience,
stability, etc.. What makes us distrust someone are typically things
understood to be morally bad: lying, deception, short-temperedness,
fickleness, etc.. We know these things. Deep down.

Mike




On Sat, Jul 25, 2020 at 11:00 AM <percy-l-request at lists.ibiblio.org> wrote:

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>    1. Re: Percy-L Digest, Vol 161, Issue 15 (Thomas Gollier)
>
>
> ----------------------------------------------------------------------
>
> Message: 1
> Date: Fri, 24 Jul 2020 09:28:39 -0700
> From: Thomas Gollier <tgollier at gmail.com>
> To: "Percy-L: Literary and Philosophical Discussion"
>         <percy-l at lists.ibiblio.org>
> Subject: Re: [percy-l] Percy-L Digest, Vol 161, Issue 15
> Message-ID:
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> 0LA9cqbgMwXndurQoeVMw1-Z7xEKTjw at mail.gmail.com>
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>
> Mike,
>
> I hope I'm not annoying you, or others, by pushing this discussion further,
> but I haven't had an
> exchange online like this since the good old days of the Peirce list, and
> I'm getting to the point
> where I'm thinking it would be worth the time it would take to scan in
> 'Lancelot' and go through
> it paragraph by paragraph as if it were a philosophical treatise on the
> nature of confessions in
> general.
>
> With that said, then, I was floating comfortably along in your message
> until I hit the sentence:
>
>     So when we admit a hierarchy of subjectivity, we admit as well the
> existence of an objective
>     truth, else the hierarchy of subjectivity has no basis against which to
> be measured.
>
> How does the notion of a "hierarchy of subjectivity" come from the
> possibility of infinite subjective
> interpretations and the fact some of those interpretations are better than
> others?  It's more like the
> "better" comes from a sense of the center of those possibilities.  I
> realize, for instance, that I have
> to grade my students' interpretations of an argument on a hierarchical
> scale, but I never grade them
> on whether I think their interpretations themselves are better or worse.  I
> grade them on whether
> their interpretations are consistent and complete.  These are what I would
> consider "objective
> realities" suitable to a hierarchical measurement.  And, I propose to my
> students that the reason for
> objectively seeking out different interpretations is not to pick the right
> one.  It is to get a non-objective
> sense of the center and most comprehensive comprehension of all those
> various interpretations.
>
> So when we shift to the question of a "moral code" ? I'd prefer to call it
> "moral bond" ? with my
> neighbor, I see that morality as a non-objective matter of trust.  I trust
> my neighbor not to burn my
> house down (1) because I will not burn his house down, and (2) because he
> has shown no inclination
> to burn mine down.  It's an act of faith, so long we don't look at "faith"
> as believing in miracles, precisely
> because there is no "objectivity" to it.  If he does burn my house down,
> the reality of it ? and I do think
> there is a reality to it, the medieval reality of universals ? disappears
> in the smoke as if it was never
> there in the first place.  And what's more important, and what Percy brings
> out so forcefully with Lancelot
> and his wife, is not only that I can no longer trust him or her ? that's
> obvious ? it's that I can no longer
> trust myself as a judge of trustworthy persons and the possibility of such
> relationships.  I probably wouldn't
> go to a priest or a psychiatrist myself, but I would certainly need some
> kind of confessional confrontation
> with myself.
>
> Anyway, thanks again for pursuing these things with me,
> Tom
>
> On Thu, Jul 23, 2020 at 9:17 AM Michael Larson <larsonovic at gmail.com>
> wrote:
>
> > Tom,
> >
> > Thanks for your comments.
> >
> > Yes, if we are talking about Percy's vision in *Lancelot, *then we cannot
> > ignore his Catholicism as a framework for the "reality" the novel
> exposes.
> > If, on the other hand, we are talking about readers making their own
> > meaning, then his Catholicism and even its implications for the
> characters
> > may be safely ignored. But this brings us back to that same issue of
> > objectivity. Readers are free, of course, to make whatever subjective
> > meaning they want to make of any piece of literature. But as soon as we
> > admit this freedom, there arises, once we begin to see the
> interpretations
> > rolling in, a kind of hierarchy of subjectivity. That is to say, some
> > readers come nearer to understanding the heart of the story than others.
> > This is inevitable, and even people who do not admit much in the way of
> > objective reality seem to know intuitively that one interpretation of a
> > story is better, nearer to the truth, than another. But what do we mean
> by
> > "the heart of the story"? What do we mean by "the truth" of it? Why do we
> > know that one critique comes nearer to it than some other and not as near
> > as another? We know it because there is indeed an objective meaning that
> > hangs around a story, and we can tell when somebody's notion gets nearer
> or
> > farther from that meaning, maybe even to the point where the notion is
> > simply a private flight of fancy, having nothing at all to do with the
> > story in question. So when we admit a hierarchy of subjectivity, we admit
> > as well the existence of an objective truth, else the hierarchy of
> > subjectivity has no basis against which to be measured.
> >
> > The same is true for morality. Subjective moral orders do exist, of
> > course. But their existence in no way precludes the existence of an
> > objective moral order as well. You and I and many others might agree that
> > it is morally wrong to burn down a neighbor's house and especially so
> when
> > the neighbors are inside. We might find a few people who see no moral
> > problem with burning down buildings so long as they feel sufficiently
> > angry, but most people would agree that arson in general is wrong. That
> > popular agreement, however, is not what makes it objectively true.
> Popular
> > agreement about a moral issue is merely, as you say, intersubjectivity.
> But
> > reality is not a democracy. It cares not what the prevailing subjective
> > opinion happens to be at a given moment and in a given place. Either
> there
> > is something objectively wrong with arson, or there is not. Either there
> is
> > an objective moral law that precludes malice against one's neighbor, or
> > there is not. Whether or not an individual believes in the existence of
> > such a moral order has no bearing on whether or not it exists.
> >
> > Lancelot provides a good example of the coexistence of subjective and
> > objective morality. He has designed his own subjective moral code, and he
> > believes it to be "right," which implies that he believes it to coincide
> > with an objective moral order. He even says that he will give Percival's
> > God some time to act in accordance with his perceptions (256). Percival,
> on
> > the other hand, has adopted (or readopted, perhaps, after listening to
> > Lancelot's chilling tale) the moral order proclaimed by the Catholic
> > church. You could say, of course, that the Church's moral theology is
> just
> > another subjective moral order, and that would be true in the sense that
> it
> > is articulated by a particular body. But its subjectivity in no way
> > prohibits it from aligning with the objective moral order as well. The
> same
> > is true for Lance's morality. The fact that it is subjectively his does
> not
> > in itself preclude it from aligning with reality as regards the true
> nature
> > of things in their moral context. Lance's read on God's world is like a
> > reader's interpretation of Percy's *Lancelot*. It may be close or far or
> > somewhere in between with regard to the reality of the thing being
> observed.
> >
> > Though Lancelot and the Church (via Percival) do not agree exactly on
> what
> > the objective moral law entails, they both believe it exists. The modern
> > world, however, does not. That final conversation on the final page of
> the
> > book: "But you know this! One of us is wrong. It will be your way or it
> > will be my way." *Yes.* "All we can agree on is that it will not be their
> > way. Out there." *Yes.* "There is no other way than yours or mine, true?"
> > *Yes*.
> >
> > Lance is asserting, and Percival is agreeing, that there is a "right" way
> > and that the modern world is not on it. The world's new motto is, "IF IT
> > FEELS GOOD DO IT" (255). The whole idea of an objective moral order has
> > been rejected, and the cascading consequences for that are described in
> > great detail in the pages of the novel. Although both men (Lance and
> > Percival) reject the modern mantra, Lance's reaction is characterized by
> > anger and disdain (and eventually coldness), whereas Percival's is
> > characterized by sorrow mixed with the hope of repentance and its flower,
> > redemption.
> >
> > Best,
> > Mike Larson
> >
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