Combining Texts

Ideas for 'poems', 'Habermas' and 'A Defense of Presentism'

unexpand these ideas     |    start again     |     choose another area for these texts

display all the ideas for this combination of texts


1 idea

23. Ethics / D. Deontological Ethics / 3. Universalisability
One can universalise good advice, but that doesn't make it an obligation [Finlayson]
     Full Idea: 'Early to bed and early to rise' is a universalizable maxim, but, though it might be good advice, there is obviously no such obligation.
     From: James Gordon Finlayson (Habermas [2005], Ch.6:83)
     A reaction: I take it that Kant's rule won't distinguish moral guidance from prudential guidance. Unfair, I think. I may be a lark, but when I universalise this maxim I see that it can't be willed as a universal rule, because we should tolerate the owls.