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Ideas for 'fragments/reports', 'Quaestiones Disputatae de Malo' and 'Discourse on the Origin of Inequality'

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4 ideas

22. Metaethics / A. Ethics Foundations / 1. Nature of Ethics / g. Moral responsibility
1850 Without free will not only is ethical action meaningless, but also planning, commanding, praising and blaming [Aquinas]
     Full Idea: If we are not free to will in any way, but are compelled, everything that makes up ethics vanishes: pondering action, exhorting, commanding, punishing, praising, condemning.
     From: Thomas Aquinas (Quaestiones Disputatae de Malo [1271], Q6.reply)
     A reaction: If doesn't require some magical 'free will' to avoid compulsions. All that is needed is freedom to enact your own willing, rather than someone else's.
22. Metaethics / A. Ethics Foundations / 2. Source of Ethics / b. Rational ethics
19769 Rational morality is OK for brainy people, but ordinary life can't rely on that [Rousseau]
     Full Idea: Although it might be appropriate for Socrates and minds of his stature to acquire virtue through reason, the human race would long ago have ceased to exist, if its preservation had depended solely on the reasonings of its members.
     From: Jean-Jacques Rousseau (Discourse on the Origin of Inequality [1754], Part I)
     A reaction: He takes our natural compassion to be the basis of morality. Hume combines that with a natural social prudence. Apes live successfully together in groups, without a Socrates. See MacIntyre on the failure of reasoned morality.
22. Metaethics / C. The Good / 1. Goodness / g. Consequentialism
1851 Good applies to goals, just as truth applies to ideas in the mind [Aquinas]
     Full Idea: Good applies to all goals, just as truth applies to all forms mind takes in.
     From: Thomas Aquinas (Quaestiones Disputatae de Malo [1271], Q6.reply)
     A reaction: In danger of being tautological, if good is understood as no more than the goal of actions. It seems perfectly possibly to pursue a wicked end, and perhaps feel guilty about it.
22. Metaethics / C. The Good / 1. Goodness / h. Good as benefit
19752 If we should not mistreat humans, it is mainly because of sentience, not rationality [Rousseau]
     Full Idea: If I am obliged not to do any harm to my fellow man, it is less because he is a rational being than because he is a sentient being.
     From: Jean-Jacques Rousseau (Discourse on the Origin of Inequality [1754], Pref)
     A reaction: How should sentience and rationality be weighted here? Kant demands instrinsic respect for beings on the grounds of their rationality. What could ever justify doing needless harm to anything? An open goal for virtue theory here.