OUCH!: Tepper on politics. A couple quick thoughts: 1) OK, so, uh, why is minimizing pain the goal here? Is it just that it’s easier to get people to agree on what minimizes pain? That seems like a bit of a lowest-common-denominator politics–“Don’t try to institute anything controversial”–and besides, I’m not sure it’s true. What about other possible goals like protecting the ones we love; honor; human dignity and/or avoidance of degradation (I hope we can agree that people who suffer retain their dignity, so avoiding degradation isn’t the same thing as avoiding pain); finding truth (even if it hurts)?

2) To the extent that Tepper is talking ethics rather than strictly politics, he might want to consider whether an avoiding-pain-based philosophy can account for or praise heroism.

3) Fun with Nietzsche–I think there’s a lot of truth to this: “‘Willing’: means willing an end. ‘An end’ includes an evaluation. Whence come evaluations? Is their basis a firm norm, ‘pleasant’ and ‘painful’?

“But in countless cases we first make a thing painful by investing it with an evaluation.

“The extent of moral evaluations: they play a part in almost every sense impression. Our world is colored by them.”

So. That’s some random stuff to chew on. The post Tepper links to is also interesting and worth your surfing time.