{"id":711,"date":"2024-06-24T04:38:52","date_gmt":"2024-06-24T04:38:52","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/2024\/06\/24\/moral-progress-our-tantalusian-predicament\/"},"modified":"2024-06-24T04:38:52","modified_gmt":"2024-06-24T04:38:52","slug":"moral-progress-our-tantalusian-predicament","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/2024\/06\/24\/moral-progress-our-tantalusian-predicament\/","title":{"rendered":"Moral Progress: Our Tantalusian Predicament"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><span style=\"font-family: georgia, palatino; font-size: 14pt;\">If I drive to Santa Fe, the town stays put while I get closer and closer. Moral progress is different. A good part of the moral journey involves the recession of the destination. This morning I discovered that C. S. Lewis had had a similar thought.&#0160;<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-family: georgia, palatino; font-size: 14pt;\">&quot;No man knows how bad he is until he tries very hard to be good.&quot; (<em>Mere Christianity<\/em>, 124)<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-family: georgia, palatino; font-size: 14pt;\">Allowance made for&#0160; a bit of exaggeration, our moral predicament is describable as Tantalusian.&#0160; Remember your Greek mythology?<\/span><\/p>\n<blockquote>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\"><span style=\"font-family: georgia, palatino; font-size: 14pt;\"><strong>Tantalus<\/strong>&#0160;(<a class=\"mw-redirect\" href=\"https:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Ancient_Greek_language\" title=\"Ancient Greek language\">Ancient Greek<\/a>:&#0160;<span lang=\"grc\">\u03a4\u03ac\u03bd\u03c4\u03b1\u03bb\u03bf\u03c2<\/span>&#0160;<span title=\"Ancient Greek (to 1453)-language text\"><em lang=\"grc-Latn\">T\u00e1ntalos<\/em><\/span>), also called&#0160;<strong>Atys<\/strong>, was a&#0160;<a href=\"https:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Greek_mythology\" title=\"Greek mythology\">Greek mythological<\/a>&#0160;figure, most famous for his punishment in&#0160;<a href=\"https:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Tartarus\" title=\"Tartarus\">Tartarus<\/a>: for trying to trick the gods into eating his son, he was made to stand in a pool of water beneath a fruit tree with low branches, with the fruit ever eluding his grasp, and the water always receding before he could take a drink. (Wikipedia)<\/span><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n<p><span style=\"font-family: georgia, palatino; font-size: 14pt;\">Something of a <em>stretch<\/em>, but a <em>tantalizing<\/em> conceit that I couldn&#39;t resist.&#0160;<\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>If I drive to Santa Fe, the town stays put while I get closer and closer. Moral progress is different. A good part of the moral journey involves the recession of the destination. This morning I discovered that C. S. Lewis had had a similar thought.&#0160; &quot;No man knows how bad he is until he &hellip; <a href=\"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/2024\/06\/24\/moral-progress-our-tantalusian-predicament\/\" class=\"more-link\">Continue reading<span class=\"screen-reader-text\"> &#8220;Moral Progress: Our Tantalusian Predicament&#8221;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[39,360],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-711","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-human-predicament","category-moral-failure"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/711","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=711"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/711\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=711"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=711"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=711"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}