At 03:23 PM 04/09/2005 -0700, you wrote:
>But notions of knightly honor are not what makes a
man
>moral. Making hard choices is. Doing what
you
>believe to be right, no matter how much you want to
do
>what you believe to be wrong, is. And, by
that
>standard, Spade is a moral man.
I think Jim sums this up nicely, but I'd like to add two
observations regarding morality. First was that this
conversation began by asking about a philosophy of noir.
Philosophy and morality are not the same things. A working
philosophy may be entirely immoral, or amoral.
Second is the question about love and morality. The word
"love" covers a lot of territory, but in the context of Spade
and romantic or sexual attraction, love is more biological.
Seems to have something to do with surging hormones and being
in the right place at the right time. Of course, other
notions of love may extend from that, and there are moral
questions about loyalties to loved ones, but I think Jim's
right when he says Spade's moral fibre was illustrated by his
resistance to a biological urge. Not that Spade made the
right choice, necessarily, but by his terms, a moral
one.
Best, Kerry
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