display all the ideas for this combination of texts
3 ideas
| 7503 | Plato never refers to examining the conscience [Plato, by Foucault] |
| Full Idea: Plato never speaks of the examination of conscience - never! | |
| From: report of Plato (works [c.375 BCE]) by Michel Foucault - On the Genealogy of Ethics p.276 | |
| A reaction: Plato does imply some sort of self-evident direct knowledge about that nature of a healthy soul. Presumably the full-blown concept of conscience is something given from outside, from God. In 'Euthyphro', Plato asserts the primacy of morality (Idea 337). |
| 2173 | As religion and convention collapsed, Plato sought morals not just in knowledge, but in the soul [Williams,B on Plato] |
| Full Idea: Once gods and fate and social expectation were no longer there, Plato felt it necessary to discover ethics inside human nature, not just as ethical knowledge (Socrates' view), but in the structure of the soul. | |
| From: comment on Plato (works [c.375 BCE]) by Bernard Williams - Shame and Necessity II - p.43 | |
| A reaction: anti Charles Taylor |
| 22375 | Moral judgements need more than the relevant facts, if the same facts lead to 'x is good' and 'x is bad' [Foot] |
| Full Idea: It is suggested that anyone who has considered all the facts which could bear on his moral position has ipso facto produced a 'well founded' moral judgement, ...How 'x is good' can be well founded when 'x is bad' is equally well founded is hard to see. | |
| From: Philippa Foot (Moral Arguments [1958], p.96) | |
| A reaction: This seems to be a warning to particularists, if they hope that moral judgements just emerge from the facts. It doesn't rule out physicalist naturalism about morality, if the attitudes we bring to the facts have arisen out of further facts. |