more on this theme | more from this text
Full Idea
I doubt whether morality is an object of final value. It seems to have more to do with distributing the things we finally value (like health or security) than something we value for its own sake.
Gist of Idea
Morality is not a final value; it concerns how we distribute the things we actually finally value
Source
Tom Cochrane (The Aesthetic Value of the World [2021], 1.3)
Book Ref
Cochrane,Tom: 'The Aesthetic Value of the World' [OUP 2021], p.17
A Reaction
Note the paradox of the virtue of compassion, that it actually requires miserable suffering to exist. It can't be an ultimate value if the total elimination of suffering is a good. I think Cochrane is right.
Related Idea
Idea 24168 Aesthetic value appreciates a thing objectively, as a good in its own right [Cochrane]
| 24164 | Even non-theists can wonder what, if anything, makes the universe good [Cochrane] |
| 24165 | Pleasure has an intrinsic (independent) value, but that is not a final (for its own sake) value [Cochrane] |
| 24166 | Pleasure serves to maintain our relationship with its source [Cochrane] |
| 24167 | Love is a mutual reciprocation, not just a desire for something [Cochrane] |
| 24169 | We can treat value as a verb; we value something when we positively engage with it [Cochrane] |
| 24168 | Aesthetic value appreciates a thing objectively, as a good in its own right [Cochrane] |
| 24171 | Morality is not a final value; it concerns how we distribute the things we actually finally value [Cochrane] |
| 24173 | We can only understand form if we grasp the whole of which things are parts [Cochrane] |
| 24174 | Beauty is fittingness, of details uniting within a pattern [Cochrane] |
| 24175 | Accounts of sublimity differ over whether we learn something good about ourselves [Cochrane] |
| 24176 | A person's activities have value when they receive full attention [Cochrane] |