(urth) What's So Great About Ushas

[Lane Haygood]

It may not be that the Hierogrammates are "morally superior" to  
humans, in that we all have the same capacity for judging moral and  
immoral actions, but rather that their nature makes them able to  
perceive moral dimensions on acts that we cannot.

In Kantian philosophy, mankind's knowledge is necessarily limited by  
the structure of his experience. The linearity of time forces to  
understand the world in a causally-regular, temporally-ordered way. We  
arrange the manifold of experience according to definitive A-then-B  
schema not because things really _are_ that way, per se, but rather  
because _we are that way_ and anything else would be unintelligible.

But consider the Hieros. They aren't so bound to live life in one  
direction, and indeed, may experience time and cause-effect in  
_reverse_. For humans, then, we judge death, even the deaths of  
millions, to be immoral or bad because we, bound up as we are in our  
linear thinking, cannot conceive that there might be something truly  
_after_ death.  I think that most people hope for an afterlife, but  
none of us really knows, in the true sense of knowledge, that there is  
such a thing.

My problem, however, with viewing the flood as a "necessary evil" is  
that it attempts to define what is "good" or "bad" by its effects.   
It's consequentialist, and I object categorically to all forms of  
utilitarianism.  Rather, if the flood has any moral dimension at all  
(which it might not) it must be good or bad in itself.  The Kantian  
test for such a thing would be whether a rational being in Severian's  
stead, knowing all of the relevant details about his action, would  
have brought the white fountain and re-energized the sun.  The effects  
of that, such as causing the deaths of all the Urthlings, are  
secondary to the question of whether the New Sun itself is moral. As  
to whether Ushas is preferable to Urth, I think that, at least in  
Wolfe's universe, that question isn't answerable by a human, because  
we would lack the sort of insight in to things that the Hierogrammates  
possess, being so unbound by time.

Lane
On Jul 12, 2008, at 3:34 PM, b sharp wrote:

>
>
> Roy thanks for your clarification. I misread or misunderstood Paul's  
> qualification that the surgeon
> had foresight. I agree that the discussion should move on to  its  
> proper subject, the Hierogrammates,
> but I felt it was important to establish the ultimate moral  
> superiority which comes with the God-like
> foresight that includes impact on every atom in the universe.
>
> I get the impression Paul is sneering at the notion that some  
> individuals have better moral
> judgement than others. Yet our entire way of life is based on the  
> notion. We give no credence
> to the moral authority of invertebrate animals and very little to  
> even the most intelligent animals.
> Children start with almost none and are gradually given more as they  
> attain adulthood. Some
> adults are given more moral authority than others and some  are even  
> elected and paid to do nothing
> but make moral decisions that affect the lives of others.
>
> As I see it, Wolfe, with this story, and religions which espouse  
> angelic beings are proposing that there
> are individuals who have less moral authority than God but have more  
> than any human.  Thus if Paul B
> or Peter Wright feels justified in making moral judgement on  
> Hierogrammates or angels, well, they are
> allowed to but (pretending Hieros and angels are real) they are not  
> qualified.  They are like the
> endangered mountain gorilla who judges the game warden who protects  
> them and the poacher as equally
> "bad" because they both intrude on territory and drive noisy, scary  
> metal boxes.
>
> I don't know if angels really exist but I think Gene Wolfe thinks  
> they do. And I think he intended
> Hierogrammates to represent them as beings much closer to God than  
> humans and thus morally superior
> to us.  They are not meant to be evil manipulative aliens though  
> they might look like they are from a gorilla
> perspective ;-).
>
> -bsharp
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