How is that Going to Help your Putting Game?

    In continuation from the previous posting, narrowing ethics down to the form of how things are communicated will limit its scope but, perhaps, this narrowing will give us a framework to work with. But, now, the question of relevance comes up, which should be answered. By suggesting that this framework will give us a clear view of the moral landscape that we are beholden to daily, there is then the specific question of how this new focus will treat ethics: what will this narrow compartment say to the whole field of philosophy?

    First, most moral actions are not to be evaluated in practice because they are not directed toward us as moral agents. But, words, in contrast, have a public standing especially if they are printed in a medium such as a newspaper. Consider that public actions are usually accompanied with a explanation, if they are important enough to be executed by important moral agents. But we need not concern ourselves now of the exact statistics of the relations between words and actions. I just want you to note down the distinctions, so that morals could be seen separately from political action.

    From this elementary observation of how words and actions relate, we can then form the idea of how words precede actions. If significant or political actions require an explanation for its use, then we can take the next step to say that how that explanation is expressed will show its moral signification for that action. Another way of putting this distinction is that the moral justification for an action will reveal itself to be praiseworthy through how it is intended to be taken by means of its verbal backdrop given by the moral agent.

    So given that actions are important, then the form of the words used to uphold them will prove their worth through their moral signification. This quality will be revealed by looking at how and why those words used in such a context of moral actions. We will require at least a few tools to build up this moral framework of signifying praise and blame. That will be next.

Ethics

    Usually ethics is cast in terms of actions, where the focus is on correct behavior. Even if that focus is the case, I would like to focus on words rather than actions. Actions speak louder than words, yes. But, perhaps, looking into words will preserve correct action, if the focus was fixed on the form of how correct speech is to be formed for those seeking to live rightly.

    Now Wittgenstein said that his Tractatus was essentially ethical, even though the publication has propositions that are mainly not about ethics, but how words capture states of affairs. Through the picture theory of meaning, he proposed a way of how propositions show the logical way they work within the framework of logical space.

   From correct modes of speech, we can follow correct behavior. This will cover speech acts such as suggesting action as well as informatory discourse that is the bulk of speech. One overall element suggested from the Book of the Courtier is that speech should have sprezzatura, a quality that shows one did not put a lot of effort to make it happen. This rhetoric would stand out by how it is performed.

   So if it could be suggested that how words should be used is not through its content but its form, in this context through the speaker's way of speaking, what is lost?  We have lost focus on how actions are performed to concentrate on words. And we are not looking to what is said but how something is said. From all of this winnowing, can how words are said serve as a guide to an ethical outlook?

    If we borrow another proposition from the Tractatus: Ethics and aesthetics are one and the same (6.421), we can take this criterion and say that it severs as a way to evaluate how pleasing speech is, which is in essence rhetoric. So, perhaps, the justifications for behavior can be evaluated by how pleasing they are. What this does is take the proper subject of ethics, behavior, and evaluate it through the way those actions are defended. I will say more on this latter.

City Life

This ritual yeartide, when I seek full consent

To wander around a city, where I have wooed

You both unhappily and relentlessly,

Continues to convict me that nothing

Remains to me but honor and life, which is safe.

But your recent anger is death to me for

Which I plea to be pardoned to play freely

In a double game where masks are worn

By us, never seeing the other’s opposing side.

Soon your presence will be worth all this waste,

But in the meantime as I remember your face

This city becomes a universe of dear spite.

An Effusion of Blood

I feel your skepticism seeping towards
the abortive state of art and scholarship in Turkey.
Yes, especially on the northern border!

Their discourse grows golden apple sour through
their rote learning and often wearying spiritual exercises
Inflamed with so intense a desire

Inspired by an extraordinary zeal for philosophy
Grant me chastity and continence, now!
I think we should spit in their sea.

I am your captain, follow me!
The first son of his mother’s body.
The young lord keeper.

Nant, son of Nant, Mason of Krondor

For three score years and five
did Nant
tithe and tithe and tithe.
To Church and God and Priest
did Nant
tithe and tithe and tithe.
Not once in three score years
and five
did prayers yield a boon,
Not once in three score years
and five
did even fateful goddess smile,
And now that Nant's full three
score years and five
do finally come to pass, the tithing
finally ends.

found on a gravestone near a mausoleum