This seems like crackpot realism, especially from a revolutionary socialist -- unless you retain the belief, which I doubt, that History (Is-ness)is on Our Side. There are lots of reason to look deeply into oughtness, one reason being so that we will not be too easily reconciled to unacceptable Isness. Another reason is that it's not necessarily obvious in a lot of cases what we Ought to do. People of good will and roughly congruent orientation can disagree sharply about Oughts and it seems unsatisfactory to write off those differences are so basic that they cannot be fruitfully discussed, at least not without a good deal of preliminary discussion to start with.
I agree that if there is no Is that can support an Ought -- if what is proposed is impossible or practically impossible -- that it's beside the point. In fact, if some goal cannot be attained I'd say it isn't even an Ought.
But writing off all Oughts in favor of Is's leaves us with the position that, according to Thucydides, the Athenians took at the island of Melos about halfway through the Peloponnesean war. Athens wanted the allegiance and tribute of of previous neutral Melos. The Melians, originally (I believe) a Spartan colony, demurred. They appealed to justice and the Athenians replied that that was the argument of people without superior arms, and "the strong do what they can while the weak suffer what they must." After a brief, furious, futile battle, the Athenians then put all the men on the island to the sword and enslaved the women and children.
Is that really where we want to be, Doug?
--- Doug Henwood <dhenwood at panix.com> wrote:
>
> On Dec 19, 2006, at 8:59 PM, Michael Pollak wrote:
>
> > In reality? Or in the realm of oughtness?
>
> Why do that? Oughtness doesn't have much to do with
> reality - what's
> gained by gazing deeply into it?
>
> Doug
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