Posted by Kali on May 05, 1997 at 02:30:44:
In reply to Re: Identity and Principles - Alternative Realities Again, II posted by Zoe on May 02, 1997 at 21:37:45
Lots of things seem self-evident until we experience the wider, real world. For example...as a child, everything my parents said seemed to make sense. It all had a logic to it - and internal logic. Now that I'm older, and have had time and experience enough to come up with an independent world view, I realize that my parents, while not necessarily wrong, didn't have a monopoly on logical reality or on life-experience.
] ] ] Second of all, yes, identity is derived from one's own principles, but the operative words here are own principles. . . But the PROBLEM I still have with the situation is that Fanny isn't really "right," she is lucky. There is really no skill of experience in her "insight." She plagiarised the fruit of another's moral education . . .
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] I sent the first part of the message without finishing it because my session was about to be terminated. Let me see if I can finish this quickly.
] Do you think it impossible that Fanny could have found Edmund's principles self-evident, and so made them her own? I suppose you must, but I'm not so sure. I'm not rereading MP right now, but I do know that when I've read it in the past, Fanny's morality has never struck me as something external to her. I do find her rather passive-aggressive, but I don't know if I've gotten that from the book or the BBC adaptation.
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