Thanks for posting that... even though I don't read French....
Good discussion, folks. Sephiroth, I'd agree that we do have a tendency to create these contasting Manichean ideas as a simpler way of handling things; in a sense, that's one of the things Moorcock is addressing with his out-and-out fantasy work: out reliance on simplistic myth to resolve complex issues, and how turning to such a shallow view of things continually trips us up, yet at the same time, dealing with the complexity often pits a person against the view of the majority, who do seem to prefer simple answers -- witness Elric, who, the more he strives to avoid falling into traditional roles and become a more developed person, the more bewildered and lost he becomes... yet whenever he does simply go for the roles laid out for him, it destroys the very things and people he holds dear....
And G.C.... as intimated above, I agree: it takes a great deal of courage to deny that evil (as also good) lies outside us; they are purely human concepts with no absolute application in a universe which has no such innate values. This is not to deny that other types of life develop "morals" -- they do, morals (or ethics) being the adjustment of any organism to the dynamics of its environment to achieve equilibrium leading to the maximum benefit for individual and species (in normative conditions) -- but that the human version of such is more complex or intellectualized, and also externalized, because of the way our brains have evolved. However, projecting those things on the universe serves the dual (at least) purpose of allowing us to feel entitled because we have a concept of how things "ought to be", rather than how they are, and therefore a sense of righteous indignation and "getting our own" when we strike out from a sense of disappointment because the universe turns out
not to behave that way....
Incidentally... this theme has seen a lot of very broad (in the heroic fantasy) and very subtle (in the Cornelius, Pyat, and other books) depictions and explorations, and ties in with the "Eternal Fool" idea, I'd say. I think one of the best examples of this is Rickhart von Bek in
The Brothel in Rosenstrasse, where the playing out of fantasies in parallels the society outside the brothel's walls, with the breaking down of both the micro- and macrocosm as both the sexual and the political aspects of life (and the aspect of the politics of sex, for that matter) become increasingly distorted as certain characters strive to maintain an ideal they've developed without regard to the destruction brought about by that ideal's clash with reality; another, of course, being the Pyat of the
Reminiscences of Mrs. Cornelius Between the Wars.....
If you're interested, I had a go at some thoughts on Brothel in an earlier thread...
http://www.chronicles-network.com/fo...301-post5.html