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Single Idea 7410

[filed under theme 22. Metaethics / A. Ethics Foundations / 2. Source of Ethics / j. Ethics by convention ]

Full Idea

If men are their own judges of what conduces to their preservation, ..all men make different decisions about what counts as a danger, so (for Hobbes) the grimmest version of ethical relativism seems to be the only possible ethical vision.

Gist of Idea

Self-preservation is basic, and people judge differently about that, implying ethical relativism

Source

report of Thomas Hobbes (The Elements of Law [1640]) by Richard Tuck - Hobbes Ch.2

Book Ref

Tuck,Richard: 'Hobbes: a very short introduction' [OUP 2002], p.74

A Reaction

This might depend on self-preservation being the only fundamental value. But if self-preservation is not a pressing issue, presumably other values might come into play, some of them less concerned with the individual's own interests.

The 29 ideas with the same theme [morals as social rules, rather than private or true]:

6017 Nomos is king [Pindar]
6016 Early sophists thought convention improved nature; later they said nature was diminished by it [Protagoras, by Miller,FD]
536 We should follow the law in public, and nature in private [Antiphon]
1557 To gain the greatest advantage only treat law as important when other people are present [Antiphon]
5070 Socrates conservatively assumed that Athenian conventions were natural and true [Taylor,R on Socrates]
1563 Every apparent crime can be right in certain circumstances [Anon (Diss), by PG]
2173 As religion and convention collapsed, Plato sought morals not just in knowledge, but in the soul [Williams,B on Plato]
5071 The Cynics rejected what is conventional as irrational, and aimed to live by nature [Taylor,R on Diogenes of Sin.]
3024 Cyrenaics teach that honour, justice and shame are all based on custom and fashion [Aristippus young, by Diog. Laertius]
5075 Aristotle said there are two levels of virtue - the conventional and the intellectual [Taylor,R on Aristotle]
21 Moral acts are so varied that they must be convention, not nature [Aristotle]
2807 Some say slavery is unnatural and created by convention, and is therefore forced, and unjust [Aristotle]
5855 We all feel universal right and wrong, independent of any community or contracts [Aristotle]
3045 Stoics say justice is a part of nature, not just an invented principle [Chrysippus, by Diog. Laertius]
13325 Trouble in life comes from copying other people, which is following convention instead of reason [Seneca]
1477 Being manly and brave is the result of convention, not of human nature [Plutarch]
7410 Self-preservation is basic, and people judge differently about that, implying ethical relativism [Hobbes, by Tuck]
2368 Men's natural desires are no sin, and neither are their actions, until law makes it so [Hobbes]
6680 It is a funny sort of justice whose limits are marked by a river [Pascal]
19956 True goodness is political, and consists of love of and submission to the laws [Montesquieu]
9750 We must only value what others find acceptable [Kant, by Korsgaard]
21998 Bourgeois interests create our morality, law and religion [Marx/Engels]
23874 Armies and businesses create moralities in which their activity can do no wrong [Marx, by Weil]
2875 That which is done out of love always takes place beyond good and evil [Nietzsche]
22471 Nietzsche thought it 'childish' to say morality isn't binding because it varies between cultures [Nietzsche, by Foot]
23879 In a violent moral disagreement, it can't be that both sides are just following social morality [Weil]
15672 Actions norms are only valid if everyone possibly affected is involved in the discourse [Habermas]
8002 Sophists don't distinguish a person outside one social order from someone outside all order [MacIntyre]
20174 Relativists say all values are relative; pluralists concede much of that, but not 'human' values [Kekes]